Fascism

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Fini says the word fascism is misapplied to his party. "If we were in the U.S., we'd be called Republicans," he declares. "In France we'd be Gaullists." He believes the Italians who support him are voting issues -- jobs, health care, crime -- not ideology. "There isn't one Italian in a hundred who would ask me about fascism, racial laws and Nazis," he says. The neofascist label, he insists, was unfairly tagged to his party by the press and his political opponents.

Fini joined politicians in condemning skinhead violence. He said the - marchers in Vicenza should be "put in coal mines so they can break rocks with their heads." When told that his National Alliance colleague Buontempo thought highly of the demonstrators, Fini simply said, "Buontempo is mistaken."

If such controversies were happening only in Rome, they might be dismissed as stray spikes on an otherwise healthy European heartline. But other nations are experiencing their own unhealthy twitches. France has its National Front, led by the anti-immigration populist Jean-Marie Le Pen. He has led the party to a solid 10% vote in a series of elections dating back to 1988, despite a penchant for crude crematorium quips, a reportedly secret admiration for Hitler and a not-so-secret racism. The extreme-right neofascist British National Party, which advocates anti-immigration policies, last year startled the political establishment by winning a seat in the local government of a poor London district. In May's municipal elections, they lost it again but, encouraged, the B.N.P. together with a handful of other small rightist movements fielded 68 candidates, winning up to 7% of the vote -- but no seats -- in some districts.

Britain's soccer terraces are fertile soil for the neofascist recruiters. In Spain, ultrarightist youths have combined a fondness for Nazi paraphernalia and street violence with a rabid attachment to their home teams, venting their anger on football-field rivals. In Madrid, local matchups resemble a military exercise, as armed police patrol the grounds to separate hooligan bands. Recently, three members of one Barcelona fan club, who frequently boasted of neofascist opinions, were sentenced to 15-year prison terms for killing a young supporter of a rival club.

Nowhere are neo-Nazi outbursts more unsettling than in Germany. In one week in May, German authorities recorded the beating of a Zairian asylum seeker in Halle, the torching of a Turkish kindergarten near Bonn, the vandalizing of a Jewish cemetery near Wurzburg, five arson fires at a refugee shelter in Hauzenberg and the arrests of 26 neo-Nazis for chanting "Sieg Heil!" during a party in a Berlin suburb. Such occurrences have become so commonplace they rarely make the front pages and are simply considered a routine part of the German political landscape.

As elsewhere in Europe, the skinheads in Germany have an impact on fringe politics. While far-right parties, such as the Republikaners, eschew violence and discourage stiff-arm salutes, they profit politically from the < undercurrent of anti-immigrant and nationalist sentiment stirred up by the neo-Nazis. The Republikaners have scored as high as 15% in local elections, and charismatic party leader Franz Schonhuber, who served in Hitler's SS, is a member of the European Parliament.