National Alliance (Italy)
National Alliance (
Italian:
Alleanza Nazionale, often shortened to
AN) is a right-wing
Italian political party. It was formed by current secretary
Gianfranco Fini from the
Italian Social Movement (
MSI), the ex-fascist party, which was declared dissolved in January
1995, and conservative elements of the former
Christian Democracy, which had disbanded in
1994 after two years of scandals and various splits due to
corruption at its highest levels, exposed by the
Mani Pulite investigation. Former MSI members were however still the bulk of the new party. Its headquarters are located in
Rome.
The
logo follows a template very similar to the
Democratic Party of the Left, with the previous logo in a small circle (as a means of legally preventing others from using it). The name was suggested by an article on the Italian newspaper
Il Tempo written in 1992 by
Domenico Fisichella, and echoes the name of the left-wing
Democratic Alliance, a contemporary short-lived project of a lay centre-left coalition whose founder was
Ferdinando Adornato.
Its electorate is mainly in the central-southern regions, but it also competes in the north-east with the
Lega Nord, its ally in the ruling right center coalition
Casa delle Libertà. The relationship of AN with the Northern League can be tense at times, especially about issues of national unity, but the two parties share views on other issues such as
immigration; AN's view is normally more moderate than Lega Nord's.
AN's political program emphasizes:
*
Catholicism, close to the official
Church position, also due to the participation of the former members of the Christian Democracy;
*
law and order, especially laws aimed at controlling
immigration and promoting national cohesion, also due to the partitipation of the members of the former MSI.
Distinguishing itself from the MSI, AN has used the expression "post-Fascist" to characterise itself, and proclaims its commitment to
constitutionalism,
democracy and
political pluralism. However, while the uncontested leader Gianfranco Fini has been steering mostly clear of strong association to the fascist pasts, many high-ranking members (often dubbed
colonels), such as
Ignazio La Russa, have been caught in statements defending the combatants of the
Repubblica Sociale Italiana, the German
puppet state in northern Italy during
World War II. Some proposals have been laid out by members of AN to make the status of RSI
veterans equal to that of
partisans.
Alleanza Nazionale has distanced itself from
Benito Mussolini and
Fascism and made efforts to improve relations with
Jewish groups. With most hardliners leaving the party, it seeks to present itself as a respectable
rightwing party.
Nearly two-thirds of the party's supporters approve of the
capitalist system and hold favourable views on the
privatisation of
state industries.
In January 1995, as officially Gianfranco Fini proclaimed MSI's dissolution, and the foundation of the AN, he announced the abandonment MSI's ideological stances, symbols, gestures and salutes that had closely identified it with the Mussolinian past.
Despite Fini's success in distancing the party's image from the former MSI, including the suppression of anti-Jewish comments in public and the party organ "Il Secolo d'Italia", there remain contradictions within the party, mainly in regard to its fascist past.
A rare anti-Semitic manifestation was a March 1999 leaflet produced by the AN's
Julius Evola Club in
Sestu (
Cagliari). The leaflet quoted alleged
Talmudic passages as proof that Jews compared
gentiles to beasts. In response to protests, the local AN president claimed that the references were intended to be "neither racist, nor anti-democratic nor anti-Jewish".
The AN club in
Fiumicino (close to
Rome), called for a square to be named after fascist leader
Ettore Muti, while the president of the region of
Latium,
Francesco Storace, asked that each city dedicate a street to
Giorgio Almirante, the predecessor of Fini as the leader of the now-defunct MSI, and a
criminal of war during
World War II.
When Gianfranco Fini visited
Israel in late November
2003 in the function of Italian deputy prime minister, he labeled the
racial laws issued by the fascist regime in
1938 as "infamous". He also referred to the RSI as belonging to the most shameful pages of the past, and considered fascism part of an era of "absolute evil".
As a result,
Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the former fascist dictator
Benito Mussolini, and some hardliners left the party; she stated that "absolute evil" for her was piazzale Loreto, the square in
Milan where her grandfather's remains were shown to the public in the final days of World War II.
The party has taken part in the first three
House of Freedoms coalition governments (
1994 and from
2001) of prime minister
Silvio Berlusconi, in the second and third of which Fini is deputy prime minister and, from November
2004,
foreign minister.
|
Logo of the National Alliance for the 2006 general election. |
In
1998, it had a membership of 485,657 in 11,539 branches, 89 deputies and 41 senators in the
Italian Parliament and nine members of the
European Parliament.
The AN suffered a 5 % loss in the
1999 elections to the European Parliament, obtaining only 10.3 % of the vote. It recovered somewhat in the April regional elections, gaining 12.8 % nationwide, and well over 20 % in Rome and Latium.
In the May
2001 national elections AN obtained 96 seats out of 630 in the Chamber of Deputies and 46 seats out of 324 in the Senate. The party lost a few key seats in the
2003 local elections such as the Province of Rome, but its position remained firm. The party obtained 11.5 % of the vote and 9 seats in the June
2004 European Parliament elections. In the
2005 regional elections AN lost almost all the remaining key seats, such as the Region of Lazio.
In the
European Parliament, its
MEPs work within the group of the
Union for a Europe of Nations.
For the
general election of April 9 and 10, 2006, the party presented a new logo, which includes the name of Fini in it. In the Lower chamber, the NA received 4,703,256 votes (12.34%), thus securing 71 seats.
In Senate, where Berlsuconi's coalition managed to retain majority, the National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale) got 4,234,693 votes, i.e 12.40 % and thus 41 seats.
In July
2005, three of Fini's "colonels" (
Altero Matteoli,
Ignazio La Russa and
Maurizio Gasparri), among the most powerful politicians in the party, were overheard in a café close to the
Italian Parliament by an
intern of the newspaper
Il Tempo. [
1] They were recorded making unflattering comments about Fini's health, political capacity and unfitness to run the upcoming political campaign for the
2006 national elections.
As the news was made public, the three tried to apologize, but an allegedly furious Fini fired all of them on
July 18, and assumed complete control of the party. He proceeded to reengineer the party's structure, and assigned the new posts.
In the
congress that had been held a few weeks before these events, Fini had criticised
factionalism in the party, and received explicit criticism for that—possibly for the first time so explicitly in a party that has a long tradition of obedience to its leader.
In occasion of the
general elections in April 2006, AN re-proposed the House of Freedoms (with new allies). The alliance however was considered to have only a narrow chance of winning after the failing economic policies of the government during 5 years. Surprisingly the centre-right lost by just 24,000 votes in favor of the centre-left coalition (The Union). Individually AN received nearly 5 million votes, amounting to 12.4%. The party won 41 out of 315
senators and 71 out of 630
deputies.
*
Azione Giovani web site*
Azione Giovani Isola d'Ischia web site*
Continuity or change in the ideology of the Alleanza Nazionale*
The annual report of Anti-semitism worldwide,
1997,
1999,
2003 and between.
