NEW LEADER EMERGES IN ITALY

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25081, 13 January 1947, Page 3

NEW LEADER EMERGES IN ITALY

Rise of “Common Man’’ Party

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

NEW YORK, December 28 In Italy to-day, a fat, sandy-haired former Fascist with a flair for invective is preparing for tpe day when he hopes his own party will take over the government. He is Guglielmo Giannini, editor and self-styled critic Nattily dressed in a satin shirt and loud sports jacket, he flourishes a riding crop with the swagger of a German major and keeps an automatic in a hip holster, writes Lawrence W Shenfield in “This Week” news magazine. When I met him in a Rome night club he cocked an eye behind his monocle, stretched a hand across the table, and said, smiling: “Well! lam always glad to meet one of our liberators.” But he could not conceal a sneer as he added: “Tell me, when do you Americans expect to leave Italy?” A short .time later, in an interview with a United Press correspondent he i charged that Mr Roosevelt was the man responsible for the Second World War And when another correspondent asked him about the threats on his life he was supposed to have received Giannini simply stroked his pistol and remarked. “I am never alone.” Before I left Naples last winter, Corrado Alvaro, Italy’s profoundest political writer, told me: “Despite everyone’s fears of Russia, there is little chance that Communism soon will gain control in Italy. Our real danger today is a new form of Fascism.” Coming at the moment carabinieri police in Rome had pounced on stacks of Communist rifles and machine-guns, Signor Alvaro’s concern puzzled me’ But recent events have proved him correct. To-day a new Fascism is on the upswing in Italy—and may shortly make a strong bid for power. “They Work in the Open” One night last April four men broke into a grave near Milan and stole Mussolini’s body. They left a letter: “The Duce is among us again,” it read. “The time will come when the Duce in hi£" coffin will parade through the streets of Italy. . . .” The letter was signed, “Democratic Fascist Party.” Now the thieves are in gaol; but in Gorizia recently mobs shouting •Duce ” tried to break up an anti-Fas-cist demonstration. The new Fascism does not work underground—it operates openly. Italy’s Communists are far from beaten. But when Stalin backed the claims of Marshal Broz to Trieste, wh.ch Italians passionately want to keep, he knocked the props from under them. Their prestige wrecked, the Communists polled only 4.287,000 votes out of a total of 22,000,000 in the election of the new Republican Constituent Assembly—less than 20 per cent. The Socialists alone collected 387,000 more. But the biggest surprise of all was Giannini’s neo-Fascist Party, the “Common Man Front.” which amassed the surprising total of 1.198.0Q0 votes and 30 seats in the new Constituent Assembly—only five fewer than Mussolini won in the last election before the march on Rome in 1922.

Who are Italy’s new Fascists? There are numerous groups of them throughout the country, but Guglielmo Giannini’s party is the most important. With many of Mussolini’s Fascists in its ranks, it numbers some 2,000.000 people. Professor Ferruccio Parri, a Partisan leader who served as Premier in 1945. describes them as “not a political party, but a mob. They are a disorganised mass of malcontents who may well be the instigators of another totalitarian regime.”

Their rallying point is Giannini’s weekly newspaper, “L'Uomo Qualunque”—“The Common Man.” Published in Rome, it has an average circulation of 500.000 and at times has reached 8004)00 —the highest in Italy* it is a libellous, scandal-mongering sheet whose four pages are crammed each week with vicious attacks on the government, the Allies and Communism. It asserts that to-day, instead of one Fascist Party, there are six new parties—“just six times as bad.” Many Italians,* disgusted with the bitter fights among Italy’s political factions, have adopted precisely this View of democracy at work. “He Hates Democracy” Giannini himself edits “The Common Man.” At first merely wide-open “gripe” sessions, his editorials now outline a positive programme as well. He wants an “administrative” state to be directed by the "common man”— not by “politicians.” “Nobody elected Mussolini and his . henchmen,” he argues. “But who elected the antiFascist party leaders?” As an orator. Giannini is eloquent. He bristles with energy and his voice rasps with excitement. More than anything else, he hates democracy. He and his followers would prefer swift, sure—if necessary, harsh — action by a strong leader. So far, he has not tried strong-arm methods. But the majority of Italians to-day are his potential followers. This does not mean that Italians do not want democracy. Most of them do, and are labouring to make it work: but Italy’s new democratic government. faced with huge problems and bewildered by dissension, is failing them. With chaos threatening and a stem winter coming, Italians are clamouring for quick relief. In Florence, I heard a shopkeeper Bay: “For my wife and five children I get three pounds of bread a day—just four small, crusty loaves—and once a week two pounds of spaghetti. For the rest, we must go to the black market. Our only salvation,” he finished, smacking his fist on the counter. “is a go-getter who will give us Something to eat.” Main Problem is Food Food is at the heart of Italy’s entire problem of rehabilitation. To get food, her industries must turn out farm machinery for use at home and manufactured goods for sale abroad. To" start her factories humming, however, she must have coal. But even the 120.000 tons of coal Italy is capable of producing each month canhot be mined because miners have had to stop work and scrounge for food for their families. Since then, the bread ration has been cut nearly in half. Italians get fewer than 1000 calories a day if they eat on their ration cards—fewer than any other people in Europe. American Boldiers get 3600. Already, before I left Rome, the huge flocks of pigeons that once delighted tourists in St. Peter’s square had nearly disappeared. I asked a friend what had become - of them. “That’s simple.” he replied. “The poor who live in the slums behind the colonnades trap and eat them.” If the new Fascism wins out, history will be repeating itself. Just 25 years ago last month Mussolini convened the first Fascist Congress at Rome. Organised amid Italian anger at unfavourable peace terms and capitalising on unemployment, inflation, strikes and riots, the Fascists recruited thousands of desperate men. Before another year had passed. Mussolini s armed squadristi marched on . the capital and made him Prime Minister. •Authorities now recognise that we Riay well take warning from those events. “I am only stating a sober fact when I say that the general economic conditions that originally gave *ise to Fascism exist in Italy to-day,” Dr. Lauchlin Currie, former assistant to President Roosevelt and a specialist in Italian affairs, recently declared efter a two months’ visit. Just as after World War I. Italians outraged at the prospect of a peace settlement which will deny Italy con«ol of Trieste and Fiume and may strip her of her colonies. France has Jtfeady snipped off pieces of her northern border. Italians feel that their declaration of war against Germany and their substantial contributions to frihed victory—an entire fleet, six pniy divisions and hundreds of milhons of dollars in food and services—should be adequately recognised. .As in 1921. there is inflation, and ’•tdespread unemployment. Italy—a “ation of only 45,000,000 —has more

andrio 2 t'-?H 0 ’ 000 unemployed. Strikes this fail 8 +x r€ on t J ie lncr ease. In Rome er? of angry job-seek-the Viminale Palace, seat anJ . Government, fighting off-tanks furniture - Police later + P ro< ? f that two former Fascists 7® r ® \ne instigators of this uprising. As in 1921, the Government is powerless to prevent revolts. Home-made Bombs ivr2? i? of Giannini’s “Common Man Front may emerge as the dominant party m Italian politics. On the October 28 anniversary of the March on Rome thousands of Fascists this year celebrated with black flags and home-made bombs. In also every way Guglielmo Giannini impressed me as another 11 Duce. Known as a third-rate playwright, he >me me ,T editor O|; a fl!m magazine in t? 26 - He was not yet a member of S 1 ® Fa ?sist Par ty. although he flooded Party Secretary Achille Starace’s office with letters like this: “In all his journalistic activity, the undersigned has given constant proofs of comprehension of and devotion to the movement created by the journalist Benito Mussolini, and within the limits of his capßcity has done all he could to further this movement.”

In 1930 Giannini was granted a nunor post in the propaganda ministry. Finally, in 1941, he was rewarded by membership in the Fascist Party 1925 1 Seniority dating from March, Indicted and Acquitted

A few months after Rome’s fall in I? 44 ,. he , brought out the “Common Man and made it his mouthpiece. The first edition of 20,000 ‘ copies sold out the first day and had to be reprinted three times. Giannini’s following soon grew so great that the Government indicted him on his Fascist record. His paper was suspended temporarily “for inciting crime,” and he was denounced m the British Parliament. But he was acquitted by the Italian courts. Giannini has often protested loudly that the courts were being too lenient with former Fascists. But when his backers, the wealthy Scalera Salvatore and Michele, who made millions from Fascist construction contracts in the colonies, were acquitted, Giannini devoted whole columns to disclaiming any hand in the matter. Yet in December, 1945, the Scalera brothers helped Giannini bring out another neo-Fascist newspaper. “11 Buonsenso”—“Common Sense.”

The Scaleras, like many rich Italians, would like to see the return of the monarchy, which backed Mussolini and made their profits possible. Giannini campaigned zealously for the king prior to the elections; and the day before his “Common Man Front,” supposedly “non-party,” held its first national convention, he enrolled himself in the Monarchist party. “I would not have entered politics at all,” he had told me only a few months before, “if I had not received thousands of letters imploring me to do more than just criticise.” Plainly, Giannini is anxious to disguise his motives. Who stands between the “Common Man Front” and its objectives? Unity among Italy’s many self-willed parties, each pursuing a course for the betterment of some particular group, is becoming increasingly difficult. Mr Palmiro Togliatti and his Communists seem interested only in recouping their prestige. The Socialists, led by Mr Pietro Nenni, lack discipline and unity. Mr Nenni, an honest but vacillating journalist, made a bid for left-wing solidarity by engineering a pact with the Communists that only succeeded in splitting the Socialists down the middle. “The Only Hope” « If Italy’s political leaders do not begin soon to pull together. Giannini may carry the day. Virtually Italy’s only hope for the present is square-jawed, brisk Premier Alcide de Gasperi, a resolute antiFascist who commands the Christian Democrats, Italy’s most- powerful party. But as Italy’s chief spokesman at the Peace Conference, he missed a chance to restore Italian pride and confidence when he failed to obtain easy peace terms. A skilled diplomat, he now looks to compromise to preserve his tottering cabinet. Above all, however, he must eet the people food and beat down inflation. Italy has already made important strides in recovery. Only two years ago her economy was at a standstill; to-day, many of her industries are going full blast. Textiles have recovered 100 per cent.; electricity, 90 per cent.; paper. 70 per cent. In spite of this record, Mr de Gasperi is convinced his task will be impossible without outside help. “When UNRRA closes down, he said a short time ago, “Italy must get assistance from abroad to keep the wheels turning until she can go ahead on her own. Otherwise, Fascism will® return.” Can’t Step In Why do the Allies permit neoFascists to thrive at all in an occupied country? The reason is that as a group the Fascists are so loosely organised that it is impossible to suppress any but the most notorious. Further, the “Common Man” is licensed by an Italian press agency over which we have relinquished control. To date, nothing Giannini has done gives us a pretence to step in. If, however. he attempts a coup d’etat, then according to the armistice terms British and American troops may go into action. Short of this, all we can do to prevent another catastrophe in Italy is to give her people the help they need to rebuild a healthy and productive Meanwhile, Guglielmo Giannini bides his time.