 the heart of Romano Prodi's coalition government, the Democratic Left (DS) and the unfortunately named rainbow grouping, the Daisy (Margherita).
The Democratic Party is led by the popular and populist Mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni, who readily blames immigration for Rome's rise in crime. But he will be hard-pressed to beat off the challenge of the new political confection of media tycoon and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
He has just launched a new party to replace his old Forza Italia party, with which he has been having his differences. Berlusconi held a festa in Milan's Piazza Duomo, complete with rippling life-size images of the leader, to launch the party and then, in true populist style, invited its members - of which he claims more than 1m already - to name it themselves.
On Sunday night he announced that the members had chosen to call it the People of Freedom party. "We have reached a historic turning point, nearly a revolution," he said. "Instead of making pacts between the heads |
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| Forza Nuova is a right-wing party shamelessly cashing in on the martial imagery of Mussolini’s Fascism |
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of parties, we have decided to start off with the citizens".
According to the polls, the next election, whenever it comes, will be a shoo-in for Berlusconi and no doubt for some unsavoury allies to the right.
Unless Italian stand-up comedian and satirist Beppe Grillo gets his way. He declared September 8 'V' Day - standing for Vaffanculo Day, literally 'Fuck-off Day'. A huge rally in Bologna was a wild success, and within a couple of days 400,000 voters had signed a petition against Italy's entire political class.
Grillo's manifesto called for all 25 Italian MPs currently claiming immunity to stand trial, and for the party secretaries to be prevented from nominating government ministers in a coalition, in which their voice is more powerful than that of the prime minister. Grillo is trying to stop the creeping return of the bad old ways of fascism, and the rule by authority based on conformismo, and garantismo - conformity and guarantee of position underpinned by thuggish force. Fat chance. 
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 4, 2007
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Europe's modern Fascists
The Fascist focus of the Islamo-phobes
