Fascism, White Nationalism in Ireland

http://www.wsm.ie/c/pro-life-mass-murder-arrested-fascist-belfast

Pro Life Pro Mass Murder? - arrested for protesting fascist on 'Rally for Life' march

Date: Mon, 2012-07-09

Saturday's Youth Defense march in Belfast saw a WSM member arrested for protesting the presence of Michael Quinn, the fascist who told the Sunday World that he would "he would have "no problem" with an Anders Breivik style-massacre" in Ireland. When Quinn was pointed out to stewards on the so called 'Rally for Life' they protected him and allowed him to continue on the march. On Sunday Youth Defence deleted posts of the picture of Quinn on the demonstration from their Facebook page and banned people who posted the picture or demanded to know why they had allowed Quinn to march. 

One woman described how "I posted up a picture of Micheal Quinn from the Belfast rally on the Youth Defence page. One person replied going something like 'that is a massive generalisation' and before I could reply, by posting up the youtube of his racist rant my post was removed and I was banned from posting on their page. They seem to be particularly sensitive about people revealing Quinn's presence as I had previously posted a link to the Danish survey on mental health and abortion which was not removed and is still rumbling away according to my alerts."

A member of Anti-Fascist Action Ireland, who has been following Michael Quinn's entry into far-right politics since 2010, posted the same image to the Youth Defence page and was also then banned. "I wanted to alert their supporters that long-term YD activist Michael Quinn is now a self-confessed and active White Nationalist and has been building links with Irish neo-Nazis, formerly of the group Celtic Wolves, and Greek fascists from Golden Dawn. For my trouble, my post was deleted and I was banned from the page."

Other people also contacted us to tell us their posts on the same topic had also been deleted from the page. So what are Youth Defence trying to hide and what does it tell of the real nature of the 'Rally for Life'?

Quinn's links with those around Youth Defence go back a long way. On July 11th 2000 the Independent described him as a member of Youth Defence after a court appearance with five other Youth Defence members. The others listed included Justin Barrett and Maurice Colgan. Barrett's link with the far right have already been broadly exposed in the mainstream press but AFA told us that "The former National Organiser of Youth Defence, Maurice Colgan, shared a flat with Anthony Barnes, lead singer of Dublin neo-Nazi bonehead band ‘Celtic Dawn”, in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Colgan was seen at least once, at a YD leafleting session, wearing a Celtic Dawn t-shirt. His friend Barnes was later convicted for assault, slicing a political opponents neck with a beer bottle."  (as reported in the Dublin Tribune, Nov 15 1990)  (Read more )

The Sunday World article revealed that "As the news of the sickening Norwegian terror attack broke last week, DRM chief Quinn (51) took to the web to broadcast his sickening support for the murders." The article then went on to point out that "Fascist Quinn ran for election in Dun Laoghaire in 1992 as an 'Independent pro-life' candidate but failed to gain popular support. He went on to become a supporter of Justin Barrett, the anti-Nice treaty campaigner disgraced over alleged links to European neo-nazis . Barrett and Quinn were arrested at a violent anti-abortion picket of a Dublin hospital in 1999 but the charges were later dropped." Another Sunday World article sub headed "Sick Irish thugs' recruitment drive with members of racist BNP group" published April 29 2012 revealed that Quinn had previously travelled to Belfast to meet with the far right British National Party and loyalists. 

There was also controversy over Quinn's presence on last years anti-choice march in Dublin - in short there is no excuse for claiming not to know who and what he is. Quinn is certainly a nut, but after the Breivik massacre in which 76 people were killed, many of them teenagers, nuts cannot be simply dismissed as harmless. The fact that Quinn was not only tolerated but protected by stewards exposes the lie that is the entire 'Pro-Life' label. Those on the pro-choice counter rally were chanting"Pro Life, that's a lie, they don't care of women die" as the march passed. The continued toleration and protection of Quinn reveal that the fundamental truth of that slogan is much deeper than many of those chanting it probably realized. (Watch a copy of Quinn's post massacre youtube video)

The "Rally for Life' was otherwise the standard march of the religious far right determined to continue the regime which makes it possible to criminalize Irish women and doctors. The organizers pulled their usual branding routine of having young women carry the front banner but apart from this banner and a couple of other 'created to be photographed' clumps the march was overwhelmingly composed of religious fundamentalists, men, women over 50 and young children. In other words almost no one on the march was someone who might find themselves pregnant in the near future yet all were determined that a women with a crisis pregnancy should not be allowed to decide themselves whether or not to continue with it.  Many of those marching thrust rosary beads into the faces of those on the counter protest or waved religious placards.  Many of the older men were either wearing priests collars or were wearing the standard priest black shirt with the collar removed. (Facebook album of photos from the march).

The anti-choice march seemed quite a bit smaller than last years march, despite the massive amount spent promoting it and running coaches to it from all over the island. On the other hand the 'organised on a shoestring' counter rally had grown in numbers in comparison with that last year with as many as 300 taking part.

Those attending included a coach load of pro-choice campaigners from Dublin who had been moved to action by the shocking Youth Defence billboard campaign aimed at traumatizing the tens of thousands of Irish women who have had abortions abroad. As we previously reported women outraged at these bill boards have torn many of them down, splashed them with paint or covered them with counter slogans.

All this in the context in the south where the Labour Party seems so scared of Youth Defence that rather than legislate for abortion in the very limited circumstances of the X-Case judgement they voted down a Dail bill to do just this and are hiding behind seeking a report from yet another committee. This 20 years after the X-case and after all previous governments have either tried and failed to overturn this judgment in referenda or also hidden behind getting reports from committees. This pathetic situation has gone on far too long, every day women are forced to make the difficult and often expensive trip aboard for an abortion or risk using medication ordered off the internet to self-induce an abortion at home.

Youth Defence have been crowing about their success in stopping legislation being passed under the weird '100,000 babies saved' slogan. Weird because in reality about that number of women in Ireland have obtained an abortion since 1992 through travel or self inducement. Women have not been prevented exercising choice by Youth Defence, its just been made much more difficult for them. It's time Youth Defence were stood up to, their constant campaigns of shaming and traumatizing women ended and abortion made available, free and on demand as part of the Irish health services north and south. 

Alexander Selchow

http://fireandflames.blogsport.de/2011/01/15/427/

Göttingen: Gathering to Remember A. Selchow, Murdered by Fascists

15. Januar 2011

Approximately 300 people took part in a gathering today to remember Alexander Selchow, murdered by Nazis in a suburb of Göttingen on the night of January 1st 1991.

Speeches were held by several antifascist groups (Jugend Antifa, Antifaschistische Linke International, Redical) as well as reformist organizations. Directly following the gathering, over 150 people took part in a brief spontaneous demonstration through Göttingens inner city, with chants pointing to the parallels between Nazi activity and state policy, as well as to the current case of a Göttingen antifascist who is „wanted“ by the police, and in solidarity with which the demonstration next Saturday in Göttingen is to take place.

You can read more detailed reports (in German) at the ALI website and at Monsters of Goettingen.

Dr. George Tiller

http://www.peaceandfreedom.org/home/articles/general/516-dr-tillers-murder-fascist-terrorism-and-its-pampered-apologists

Dr. Tiller's Murder: Fascist Terrorism and Its Pampered Apologists

by Mara Verheyden-Hilliard
Attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice
Statement on behalf of the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition

The rampant terrorism and violence against women and health care professionals who dare to provide women's health services took its latest victim when Dr. George Tiller was brutally gunned down in his church on Sunday in Wichita, Kansas.

The government and the corporate media coddle these anti-women terrorists.

In the last 30 years, right-wing bigots have carried out 5,800 reported acts of violence against women's health care providers, including targeted assassination, bombings, arsons, death threats, kidnappings and assaults, according to NARAL.

Hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of women have been assaulted and harassed by the right wing as they tried to see a doctor.

The Fascist Strategy

By targeting and intimidating health care providers, the fascist movement hopes to effectively ban abortion services in the United States. If they were to succeed, not only would it deprive women of their fundamental right to control their own bodies, it would be a health care catastrophe. One out of three women in the U.S. have an abortion by the time they are 45, according to Planned Parenthood.

The only question is whether women will be maimed or left to die because they cannot access quality health providers. Dr. Tiller took over his medical practice from his father, a doctor who began performing abortions himself in the 1940s after a patient whom he refused to help died in a back-alley abortion.

Dr. Tiller, like many other health care heroes, kept providing abortion services to women despite the threats. He had been shot previously in both arms; had his office bombed, shot at and frequently vandalized; and he and his patients were routinely threatened, intimidated and attacked.

Dr. Tiller kept providing health care services because, as his family said in a statement, he was “a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere.” He was past retirement age, with four children and 10 grandchildren, and he lived under a virtual military siege because of the terrorist threats. But he didn't stop.

It Wasn't Just the Gunman

This assassination is the culmination of a coordinated assault by the right wing. This included the Kansas Attorney General's efforts to prosecute Tiller, the demonization of Dr. Tiller by Bill O'Reilly, who ran dozens of hit pieces targeting him as a "murderer," and by "Operation Rescue," which prominently called him "America's Doctor of Death."

In the aftermath of the murder, amid reports that the killer had worked with them, Operation Rescue scrambled to take down their prominent "Tiller Watch" webpage, apparently sanitizing it, while their founder continued to call Dr. Tiller a "mass murderer” and held a press conference to do so.

The New York Times coverage of the murder was pathetic. On its front page it stated, "Officials offered little insight into the motive, saying that they believed it was 'the act of an isolated individual' but that they were also looking into 'his history, his family, his associates.'"

The decision to question or suggest uncertainty as to the killer’s "motive" reflects an effort to depoliticize and isolate this most violent of political acts and to disconnect the killing from right-wing groups who seek as their goal to deprive women of their rights using assassination as they see fit. Some right-wing groups and leaders have been quick to announce that the killing was not a homicide, but a justifiable act of "salvation."

The mass media has leapt to the defense of many anti-woman, right-wing groups who directly targeted Dr. Tiller by giving their spokespeople more time in the wake of Dr. Tiller's death to express their primary grievance with his murder -- that it might make them look bad.

Fake Terrorism and Real Terrorism

In recent months, Dr. Tiller reported to the FBI that the threats were increasing.

Obviously, stopping real terrorism is not a "priority" for the FBI, which has allocated limitless resources to infiltrate and sabotage lawful political organizing all over the country. The FBI and police have disrupted and spied on progressive organizations that built a powerful anti-war movement in the last years. They have paid agents provocateur to infiltrate and frame up organizations and individuals engaged in dissent.

Nor is any mosque or Muslim community center safe from FBI infiltration and disruption activities. From Southern California to upstate New York, undercover FBI agents are trying to entrap Muslim youth into "terrorist" plots that emanate from the FBI itself.

The U.S. government's use of the terrorist label is used to frame up and imprison Muslims in the United States. Just last week in Dallas, representatives of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) were sentenced to as much as 65 years in prison for the “terrorist” crime of raising money for desperately needed humanitarian relief. HLF had been the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. The charity's "crime" was that the humanitarian relief was going to those starving and dying in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine. The U.S. government has determined that it is an act of terrorism to get medicine to hospitals and food to children when U.S. foreign policy supports the strangulation of a civilian population for geostrategic reasons.

When Anthrax Threats Were No Big Deal

Yet, when it comes to the right-wing organizations that engage in violence and threats, the FBI and the corporate media are conspicuously mute.

For instance, shortly after the September 11 attacks, letters containing anthrax were sent to media and Senate offices. Hundreds of anthrax threats were also sent to reproductive health clinics, according to the website of NARAL, which states: "Between October 15 and 23, 2001, more than 250 abortion and family planning clinics in 17 states and the District of Columbia received letters purporting to contain anthrax. In each instance, a powdery substance was accompanied by a letter stating, 'You have been exposed to anthrax. We are going to kill all of you.' An additional 270 letters were sent to clinics during the first week of November."

Very few people know about this kind of extreme terrorist intimidation. Can you imagine the reaction of the FBI and the media if anti-war organizers or Arab Americans were linked to anthrax threat letters? There would be screaming headlines and nationwide police sweeps.

Coddling Right Wing Terrorists

But in 2007, in Washington, D.C., when a man showed up at an immigrant rights rally, covertly carrying a map of the demonstration area with sight lines drawn on it, with a cache of weapons including a converted fully automatic M1-Carbine and apparent plans to massacre participants, you probably never heard about it. Why? Because the man, Tyler Froatz, was a right-wing vigilante bent on attacking immigrants and their supporters.

Froatz, who organized with the Free Republic and acted as a spokesman for the Minuteman, stalked a May Day demonstration in 2007. He was arrested after he was confronted by a courageous young woman working as an organizer with the ANSWER Coalition. She was then assaulted by him when she objected to the racist signs he was posting depicting the graphic slaughter of immigrants, including pregnant women and children.

In addition to the weapons Froatz brought with him, in his apartment was found a large arsenal of rifles, handguns, ammunition, a Molotov cocktail, a hand grenade and a 100,000-volt taser gun.

So is Froatz in the special terrorist prisons in Terre Haute or Marion? No. He was released to the custody of his parents in Connecticut and thereafter allowed to plead to a minor weapons charge. The U.S. Attorney’s Office never charged him with any terrorism-related offense or hate-crimes offense. And today, members of Froatz’s group, the Free Republic, celebrated this latest cold-blooded terrorist murder of Dr. Tiller in their postings.

More than Bullet-Proof Vests and Federal Marshals: A New Strategy is Needed

The murder of Dr. Tiller is a misogynist attack against all women. It is also the foreseeable outcome of a climate of bigotry and vilification fostered by the right wing, normalized by the media and the U.S. government.

A political calculus has been made by the government as to what will be deemed terrorism: what political acts will be crushed and what political violence will be supported or tolerated. As it stands, there is no mobilized effective counter to this fascist violence and the threat that it poses. It’s time for a new strategy and a new challenge.

There must be a multi-faceted mobilization of women themselves and of all those men who stand with us against anti-woman bigotry.

Nikita Kalin

http://www.afed.org.uk/blog/state/293-russian-anarchist-anti-fascist-murdered-request-for-support.html

Russian anarchist anti-fascist murdered

Sunday, 04 March 2012 

On the 9th of February at 6:30am in area of the institute "FIAN", a janitor found the body of Nikita Kalin, born 1991. At 8:00am police arrived, and at 11:00am, police contacted the mother of the murder victim. Nikita was from a simple working class family and never hide his anti-fascist and anarchist views. According to his mother, Nikita was stabbed 61 times and his ribs fractured multiple times, as well as having head wounds as well. No property was stolen. Currently a murder suspect has been arrested and the blood of Nikita was found on their clothes

It is obvious that Nikita was attacked by a group. The police also told the mother off the record that the detained suspect is a National Socialist activist and that he refuses to name any other co-conspirators. Despite the brutality of the murder the investigation has still not questioned the mother of Nikita, or his friend who was the last person who saw him alive. Due to this we suspect that there will be an attempt to cover the case, as often happens in Russia. The accused has already hired a lawyer

We suspect that the investigation is working in interests of the arrested,
and thus support is necessary. At this point, a human rights organisation has provided a lawyer, but funds are still needed for funeral costs.

[…]

Carlos Javier Palomino

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/spai-d08.shtml

Spain: 16-year-old murdered by fascist

By Vicky Short

8 December 2007

Violent social and political conflicts have exploded in Spain’s main towns, following the passing of the Law of Historical Memory by the Spanish Congress last month. The Law officially condemns the mass executions and other crimes carried out during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the military dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975) that followed The conflicts have already claimed several victims, one fatal, and provoked pitched battles between police and anti-fascist demonstrators. Several youth have been stabbed by neo-Nazi and racist thugs, and beaten up and imprisoned by the police.

One of the first confrontations took place in the Madrid Underground on Sunday November 11. Sixteen-year-old Carlos Javier Palomino died on the spot in the station of Legazpi after being stabbed in the heart. Another 19-year-old male received a stab wound to the chest, which caused his lung to collapse. He was taken in critical condition to hospital. Another youth was shot in the eye later by police Others sustained lesser injuries.

The young people were travelling in a group with the intention of stopping a demonstration organised by the ultra-right-wing party “Democracia Nacional” in Usera, a working class district where many immigrants live. The demonstration was extremely provocative, called under slogans such as “Against anti-Spanish racism” and “Against immigration.” It had been authorised by the Madrid government and was protected by hundreds of policemen. The fascist Frente Nacional (National Front) later held another protest against immigrants, with the slogan “For your security and that of your family.”

After the stabbing, 24-year-old Josué Estébanez de la Hija, an Army soldier serving in the King’s Immemorial Regiment, was pursued and caught outside the Underground station. After being treated in hospital, he was taken into custody, suspected of carrying out the fatal stabbing of Carlos Javier Palomino. The soldier, of reported Nazi leanings, was travelling in the same train in order to take part in the Usera racist demonstration.

Since the death of Palomino, several demonstrations have been organised to protest his killing all over Spain. Most of them have ended in battles with riot police, who have been out in force. One demonstration in Caceres on November 22 ended in a further stabbing by a Nazi supporter of an anti-fascist youth, who is gravely ill in hospital. Many more youngsters have been badly hurt, either by fascist thugs or the riot police in further demonstrations.

The anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrations have coincided with numerous rallies organised by extreme right-wing groups, including the fascist Falange Española. There were rallies honouring the dictator Francisco Franco on the anniversary of his death on November 20, 1975, and also the founder of the fascist movement, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. These included a demonstration that marched from Madrid to the Valle de los Caidos (the Valley of the Fallen), the monument built inside a mountain near Madrid by the slave labour of Franco’s republican prisoners, where Franco and Primo de Rivera’s tombs occupy the place of honour. With their stiff-armed salutes and cries of “Viva España!,” the fascists gathered outside the tomb of the late dictator in advance of the implementation of the law. There were chants of “Reds no, Reds no!” and (Socialist Party Prime Minister) “Zapatero—you son of a bitch!”

Many of those in attendance said they would defy the new law. Jorge Espinos, a 21-year-old economics student, does not believe the government has the will to defy the fascists. “We will come regardless.... I am here because I am Spanish, and Catholic, to honour the memory of our Caudillo, the purest sword in Europe,” before adding: “My grandfather killed 156 reds with his machine gun in Galicia in 1936, and then went off to eat seafood.”

The most violent battles between anti-fascist demonstrators and the riot police occurred in front of the Falange headquarters, in Reyes Catolicos Street in Madrid, when dozens of demonstrators attempted to protest outside the nearby cathedral where a memorial to Franco was taking place. Many youth were hurt. The number of injured was kept down because the young people erected barricades to stop the advance of the police.

Many videos depicting the attacks by police on protests can be found on the front pages of Spanish daily newspapers. The youth taking part in these anti-fascist demonstrations are being dubbed in the media as “redskins,” “okupa” (squatters), “punks” and “ ‘truly violent’ anarchists.” Dozens of them have been arrested and beaten up.

“Elvira,” a reader of El Pais, the daily paper closest to the governing Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), commented on November 21, “I cannot understand why, in this supposed democracy...a mass is allowed [to be celebrated] in honour to the biggest assassin that Spain has had, Franco. That the singing of the Cara al Sol [the fascist hymn] is permitted. And that people who are demonstrating against these acts and against the assassination of our comrade Carlos are detained, stopped and attacked. I disagree. The freedom of speech is a right.”

Calls to ban demonstrations have been heeded by local governments that have prohibited some anti-fascist demonstrations, while openly racist and fascist ones are allowed and protected by police. Their argument is that the demonstrations against immigrants and working people are being called by legal political parties that have to be allowed their freedom of speech. Despite the ban on counter-demonstrations, these have gone ahead in the face of a massive police presence. Coshes and rubber bullets have been used on the demonstrators.

Students all over Spain have also organised demonstrations in protest at the murder of Palomino, as well as regional general strikes. Again, police have used brute force against them.

Some demonstrators n the Madrid district of Prosperidad carried political placards reading, “Aznar, Acebes and Fraga [the right-wing opposition Popular Party leaders], their fascism is catching” and “PP, refuge for fascists?” They were forced to withdraw them by the organisers. The PP was founded after the death of Franco as a parliamentary vehicle for former Falangists. Manuel Fraga, who had been a minister under Franco, was one of the founders of the party. José Maria Aznar was the PP Prime Minister in the last administration, and Angel Acebes is the party’s current general secretary.

The Catholic Church has been in the forefront of defying the provisions of the new law, and organised several pro-Franco acts. It has celebrated masses all over the country, including at the Valley of the Fallen, where a rally was also staged in contravention of the legal prohibition of events there. By staging nominally “religious acts” such as masses for the soul of the dictator Franco and the founder of the Falange Espanola, the Church and its supporters have encouraged and in many cases organised extreme right-wing forces.

Björn Söderberg

http://libcom.org/library/sac-activist-murdered-fascists

SAC Activist Murdered by Fascists

Björn Söderberg, a veteran union activist in the Swedish syndicalist union, Sveriges Arbetares Centralorganisation, SAC, was murdered by fascists on the evening of October the 12th. Söderberg, in his forties, was shot three times outside his apartment in the Stockholm suburb of Sätra. One shot was directly through the head.

He had recently played a crucial role in exposing a well-known fascist, Robert Vesterlund, at his workplace in southern Stockholm. The fascist had won the confidence of his work-mates and had been elected as the local union steward. Upon being exposed however, the fascist was removed from his union position and later left the union. In subsequent newspaper articles Vesterlund was quoted as saying "It's time to get tough." Since then, Vesterlund kept close tabs on Söderberg, amongst other things obtaining his passport photo (by law, a public document in Sweden).

Vesterlund's fascist career began in the youth organisation of the fascist parliamentary party Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats). He recently joined the notoriously violent Swedish nazi group, Ariska Broderskapet (Aryan Brotherhood). Vesterlund was also involved, though never questioned by the police, in a car-bombing incident in June 1999, in which an anti-fascist journalist and his eight-year-old son were badly injured.

The police have arrested three fascists suspected in connection with Söderberg’s murder.

The SAC held demonstrations across Sweden in memory of Söderberg and against fascist violence on Saturday the 23rd of October. The same day, fascists bombed the SAC-owned house Joe Hill Gården in Gävle. As well as being the offices of the local federation of SAC, the house has great symbolic value as the birth place of Joe Hill. (Joe Hill left Sweden and emigrated to the United States where he earned a name for himself within the ranks of American syndicalist union IWW-Industrial Workers of the World). No one was killed, but parts of the house were demolished.

The demonstrations were, with a few exceptions, organised by the Swedish syndicalists, though other groups such as the large reformist unions, bolsheviks and other leftist organisations gave their support. Demonstrations ranged from 20,000 people in Stockholm, 6000 in Gothenburg, 3000 in Malmö, down to the hundreds in small towns like Borås and Luleå. In all, 25 cities and towns throughout the country saw demos. The Syndicalist Youth federation, SUF, criticised attempts in certain places to tone down the political content of the protests as going "directly against the views held by Björn Söderberg, in whose memory they were holding the manifestation, and against the principles of syndicalism!" The SUF added, "The fascists of Sweden understand that the Swedish syndicalists and workers movement as a whole are the only threat they have to take on seriously."

The most brutal fascists are involved in the NSF (National Socialist Front) and Combat 18. Sweden is also one of the largest exporters of "white power" music. The murder comes against a background of increasing fascist attacks on both anti-fascists and the police. However, according to AntiFascistisk Aktion, "the Swedish State continues to portray anti-fascists and extra-parliamentary activists as "public enemies no.1", while remaining docile in the face of repeated fascist violence." They draw the logical conclusion: "we shall be forced to defend ourselves. The best defence is a good offence."

Carlo Rosselli

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Rosselli

Carlo Rosselli

Carlo Rosselli (16 November 1899 – 9 June 1937) was an Italian political leader, journalist, historian and anti-fascist activist, first in Italy then abroad. He developed a theory of reformist, non-Marxist Socialism inspired by the British Labour movement, that he described as "liberal Socialism". Rosselli founded the anti-fascist militant movement Giustizia e Libertà.[1] Rosselli personally took part in combat in the Spanish Civil War where he served on the Republican side.[2]

Life

Birth, war and studies

Rosselli was born in Rome to a wealthy Tuscan Jewish family. His mother, Amelia Pincherle Rosselli, had been active in republican politics and thought and had participated in the unification of Italy. In 1903 he was taken to Florence with his mother and siblings. During the First World War he joined the Italian armed forces and fought in the alpine campaign, rising to the rank of second lieutenant.

After the war, thanks to his brother Nello, he studied in Florence with Gaetano Salvemini, who was to be from then a constant companion of both the Rosselli brothers. It was in this period that he became a socialist, sympathetic to the reformist ideas of Filippo Turati, in contrast to that revolutionary thinking of Giacinto Menotti Serrati. In 1921 he graduated with a degree in political sciences from the University of Florence with a thesis titled: "sindacalismo" (Syndicalism). Later he undertook a law degree that he would pursue in Turinand Milan, where he met Luigi Einaudi and Piero Gobetti.

He graduated in 1923 from the university of Siena. For some weeks he visited London where he studied the workings of the British Labour Party: the English Labour movement would deeply influence him.

The rise of Fascism

An active supporter of the Partito Socialista Unitario of Turati, Matteotti and Treves, he began writing for "Critica Sociale", a review edited by Turati. After the murder of Matteotti, Rosselli pushed for a more active opposition to Fascism. With the help of Ernesto Rossi and Gaetano Salvemini he founded the clandestine publication "Non mollare". During the following months, fascist violence towards the left became increasingly severe. Ernesto Rossi left the country for France, followed by Salvemini. In February 1926 fellow activist Piero Gobetti was assassinated in Paris by a Fascist hit squad. Still in Italy, Rosselli and Pietro Nenni founded the review "Quarto Stato", which was banned after a few months.

Later in 1926, he organized with Sandro Pertini and Ferruccio Parri the escape of Turati to France. While Pertini followed Turati to France, Parri and Rosselli were captured and convicted for their roles in Turati's escape and sentenced to a period of confinement on the island of Lipari (1927). It is then that Rosselli began to write his most famous work, "Liberal Socialism". In July 1929 he escaped to Tunisia, from where he travelled to France, and the community of Italian antifascists including Emilio Lussu and Francesco Fausto Nitti. Nitti later portrayed Rosselli's adventurous escape in the book Le nostre prigioni e la nostra evasione (Our Prisons and Our Escape) in an Italian edition in 1946 (the 1929 English first edition was titled Escape).

Exile in Paris: Giustizia e Libertà

In 1929, with Lussu, Nitti, and a Parisian circle of refugees which had formed around Salvemini, Rosselli helped found the anti-fascist movement "Giustizia e Libertà". GL various numbers of the review and the notebooks omonimi (with cadence weekly magazine and salary) and was active in the organization of various spectacular actions, notable among which was the flight over Milan di Bassanesi (1930). In 1930 he published, in French, "Socialisme Libéral".

The book was at once a passionate critique of Marxism, a creative synthesis of the democratic socialist revisionism (Bernstein, Turati and Treves) and of classical Italian Liberalism (Francisco Saverio Merlino and Gaetano Salvemini). But it contained also a shattering attack on the Stalinism of the Third International, which had, with the derisive formula of "socialfascism", lumped together social democracy, bourgeois liberalism and fascism. It was not surprising, therefore, when one of the most important Italian Communists, Togliatti, defined "liberal Socialism" "libellous anti-socialism" and Rosselli "a reactionary ideologue who has nothing to do with the working class".

Giustizia e Libertà joined the Concentrazione Antifascista Italiana (The Italian Anti-Fascist Concentration), a union of all the non-communist anti-fascist forces (republican, socialist, nationalist) trying to promote and to coordinate expatriate actions to fight fascism in Italy. They also first published the "Giustizia e Libertà Journals".

After the advent of Nazism in Germany (1933), the paper began to call for insurgency, revolutionary action, and military action in order to stop the Italian and German regimes before they plunge Europe into a tragic war. Spain, they wrote, seems the destiny of all fascist states.

The Spanish civil war

In July 1936 the Spanish Civil War erupted as the fascist-monarchical led army attempted a coup d'état against the republican government of the Popular Front. Rosselli helped lead the Italian anti-fascist supporters of the republican forces, criticizing the neutrality policy of France and Britain, especially as Italy and Germany sent arms and troops in support of the rebels. In August, Rosselli and the GL organized its own brigades of volunteers to support the Spanish Republic.

With Camillo Berneri, Rosselli headed the Matteotti Battalion, a mixed volunteer unit of anarchist, liberal, socialist and communist Italians. The unit was sent to the Aragon front, and participated in a victory against Francoist forces in the Battle of Monte Pelato. Speaking on Barcelona Radio in November, Rosselli made famous the slogan: "Oggi in Spagna, domani in Italia" ("Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy").

After falling ill, Rosselli was sent back to Paris, from where he led support for the anti-fascist cause, and proposed an even broader 'popular front' while still remaining critical of the Communist Party of Spain and the Soviet government of Joseph Stalin. In 1937, Berneri was killed by Communist forces during a purge of anarchists in Barcelona. With the fall of the Spanish Republic in 1939, Giustizia e Libertà partisans were forced to flee back to France.

Murder

In June 1937 Carlo Rosselli and his brother visited the French resort town of Bagnoles-de-l'Orne. On 9 June the two were killed by a group of "cagoulards", militants of the "Cagoule", a French fascist group,[3][4][5] probably on the orders of Mussolini.[6]

Thought

Carlo Rosselli only published a single book, "Liberal Socialism", in his life. This work marked Rosselli out as a heretic in the Italian left of his time (for which Karl Marx's Das Kapital, variously interpreted, was still the bible). Undoubtedly the influence of the British labour movement, which he knew well, is visible. As a result of the electoral successes of the Labour Party, Rosselli was convinced that the 'norms' of liberal democracy were essential, not only in building Socialism, but also for its concrete realization. This stands in contrast to Leninist tactics, in which these rules, once power is taken, must be set aside. This 'Rossellian' synthesis is that "[parliamentary] liberalism is the method, Socialism is the aim".

The Marxist-Leninist idea of revolution founded on the dictatorship of the proletariat (which he felt, as in the Russian case, was synonymous with the dictatorship of a single party) he rejected in favour of a revolution that—as famously put in the GL program—is a coherent system of structural reforms aimed at the construction of a Socialism; that does not limit, but indeed exalts, freedom of personality and of association. Writing in his final years, Rosselli became more radical in his libertarian positions, defending the social organization of the CNT-FAI he had seen in Anarchist Catalonia and Barcelona during the civil war, and informed by the rise of Nazi Germany.

References

^ Spencer Di Scala. Italian socialism: between politics and history. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. Pp. 87.

^ Spencer Di Scala. Italian socialism: between politics and history. Boston, Massachusetts, USA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996. Pp. 87.

^ Stanislao G. Pugliese Death in Exile: The Assassination of Carlo Rosselli, Journal of Contemporary History, 32 (1997), pp. 305-319

^ M. Agronsky, Foreign Affairs 17 391 (1938)

^ Rose, Peter Isaac (2005). The Dispossessed: An Anatomy Of Exile. University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 138-139. ISBN 1-55849-466-9

^ Pugliese, Stanislao G. (July 1997). "Death in Exile: The Assassination of Carlo Rosselli". Journal of Contemporary History 32 (3): 305–319. doi:10.1177/002200949703200302.

Works

Carlo Rosselli, Liberal Socialism. Edited by Nadia Urbinati. Translated by William McCuaig (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1994).