Meet Lega Nord’s “unofficial chaplain”
This is a guest post by Seismic Shock
A couple of months ago, I took a look at the BNP’s connections with Italian Far Right party Forza Nuova, whose thugs have intimidated Italian Protestants. Forza Nuova’s priest Giulio Tam openly embraces fascism, and conducts memorial services for Spanish Falangists in 2007, and the Italian Far Right.
Now that news comes that UKIP is forming an alliance with Italian separatist party Lega Nord, bringing in other European hard-Right parties, it’s worth taking a similar look at UKIP’s ally in Italy. Whilst this alliance is probably a “marriage of convenience”, it is nevertheless worrying that UKIP are lending legitimacy to those involved in neo-fascist politics.
One of Lega Nord’s MEPs, Mario Borghezio, has a conviction for setting fire to the belongings of immigrants who were sleeping under a bridge. Borghezio’s links to neo-fascists in France have recently been exposed in a French video documentary.
According to the Huffington Post, SSPX priest Floriano Abrahamowicz is considered the ‘unofficial chaplain’ of Lega Nord.
Who is Floriano Abrahamowicz?
In late January 2009, British Catholic SSPX priest Richard Williamson made headlines due to comments in an interview on Swedish TV playing down the numbers of Holocaust victims (Williamson estimated the real count to be between 200,000-300,000) and denying that the Nazis employed gas chambers to kill Jews.
Some days later, in an interview with Italian newspaper Tribuna de Trevise, Abrahamowicz defended his fellow SSPX member, claiming that the gas chambers were only used by the Nazis for ‘disinfection’, and complaining about the importance given to the Holocaust. The SSPX promptly dismissmed Abrahamowicz, distancing themselves from Holocaust denial.
Earlier this month however, in an interview given to Stephen Heiner, Abrahamowicz suggested that Holocaust denial is far more widespread in the SSPX than most assume. Heiner claims:
My fellow-priests agreed with all that I said in my interview with the Tribuna de Trevise. But no one imagined the media effect it would produce. So it was the very fact of publicly attacking the Jews which made my confreres and superiors tremble and then shook their friendship.
In an extreme example of the Livingstone Formulation, Williamson’s Holocaust denial was merely ‘criticising Zionist policy’, which has become the ‘new Messiah’:
Touching the new Messiah, i.e. criticising Zionist policy, is the ultimate lèse-majesté. At present the Vatican is bowing down before the Zionist reign. So the Society, by entering into friendship with Ratzinger’s Vatican ought to sacrifice to the gods… In order to avoid saying that it is forbidden to touch the new Messiah, the affair has been classified as a “historical question”, falling outside the competence of a bishop.
If true, Abrahamowicz’s claim that he has support from other SSPX priests is of some concern. Equally concerning is that UKIP has entered into an alliance with a party that considers Florian Abrahamowicz as a moral authority.
UKIP have just run a campaign in Norwich North claiming to offer an alternative to the BNP. UKIP leader Nigel Farange has said of the BNP:
“There are no circumstances, no possible situations, in which we would even consider doing any type of deal with the BNP whatsoever [...] I’m simply amazed that the BNP thought we would even consider such a thing, given that we are a non-racist, non-sectarian party.”
So, Mr. Farange, what makes Lega Nord any different?
Comments
| 26 July 2009, 10:56 am |
Democracy is failing the Western world in Europe at least. We have been disenfranchised by the EU Bohemoth. We are being doverned by an unelected Prime Minister here in the UK. We are being denied the fundamental right of free speech to attack as downright deceitful and outrageous claims to the absolute certainty of the existence of the God Delusion. Multicultural imposition was never part of any political manifesto of any party, but in 25 years the the politicians have succeeded in undermining 2000 years of progressive development as a nation.
We hear now that History is to become an elective for 14 year olds but they want to give the vote to airheadded teenagers of 16,
Block voting by ethnic minorities, a corruption thro the abuse of postal voting makes a nonsense of the cause for which our troops are dying in Afghanistan and beyond, They are even taking Britannia from our coinage. DEMOCRACY IS EATING ITSELF.
| 26 July 2009, 11:02 am |
This is a silly partisan post. A few quick links brings us Liebour’s chums here and Lib Dim pals here. Frankly, it exposes what a mess th Europarliament is, what a sham th so-called (non-existent) European demos is, and what a partial bugger you are. I wonder when we’ll see posts on their guilty associations, hmmm?
It’s not 5 minutes since you were linking through to anarchist websites glorifying violence in cahoots with your old mucker Murphy as part of his post on the far-left instigated violence in Greece.
So Mr Shock, what makes you any different?
| 26 July 2009, 12:58 pm |
That’s your evidence? Some moron from the Indie says this SSPX wanker is Lega Nord’s ‘unofficial chaplain’, so therefore it’s true? Newsflash: Leftist loonies from the Indie say many things without the slightest evidence – few of them are true. I notice that in the midst of all your links providing evidence for what a scumbag the ‘chaplain’ is, you don’t provide a single one backing up the claim that he is connected to Lega Nord.
Epic fail. Man, some people are crapping themselves about UKIP, aren’t they?
| 26 July 2009, 1:15 pm |
The Lega Nord faction in the European Parliament signing up with the UKIP faction there was (however distasteful Lega Nord may be) the principal reason that the unambigiously fascist parties there were unable to form a bloc (and all the benefits that brings to those parties). So in fact one should be thankful for that alliance.
I’m afraid that as a matter of principle, I have long found that the use of the preposterous expression “the Livingstone formulation” generally makes it impossible to take an article in which the expression features seriously; as it’s clear that what is going on is petty grudge-bearing and axe-grinding.
Still, I must say, having considered voting UKIP at the recent elections, I didn’t, basically as I was disgusted at the sole emphasis of their campaign on anti-immigration; their choice of coalition partners similarly unimpresses me.
But – still, overall, for the reason above, it’s a good thing that this alliance came about.
And no, of course UKIP aren’t “Nazi” (I very much doubt that they are on balance sympathetic to the brand of Catholicism offered by the SSPX either, or indeed to Catholicism at all) or anything close to it. Pretending they are “BNP lite” is an intellecually bankrupt and dishonest position.
| 26 July 2009, 1:56 pm |
DSD – Abrahamowicz celebrated a mass (in Latin, of course) for Lega Nord leader Umberto Bossi in 2007. He didn’t do that just by chance. It shows a clear sympathy between Abrahamowicz and the Lega Nord. That, out of all the priests in Italy, Bossi had this man perform a mass for him is quite revealing about the real politics of the Lega.
The full interview with Abrahamowicz in “La Tribuna di Treviso” is even worse than Seismic Shock suggests. For instance, Abrahamowicz revives the absurd claim that the Jews murdered God. He calls them “the people of deicide”.
Gas chambers are just a “technical aspect”, and “I don’t know if they were used to kill people or not, because I haven’t studied the question”.
Maybe there were six million victims, he admits – but in the next breath declares “The number [of six million] is derived from what the head of the German Jewish community said to the Anglo-Americans shortly after the liberation. In the heat of the moment, he fired off a number. But how could he know?”
Then he gets into familiar relativist territory. The Holocaust, he suggest, was no different from the allied bombing of Dresden, Churchill committed genocide, and “the Israelis certainly can’t tell me that the genocide they suffered from the Nazis is less serious than that of Gaza”.
It really is a bad idea for a supposedly respectable party such as UKIP, to associate with an organisation that is linked with this holocaust denier.
| 26 July 2009, 2:48 pm |
As you say in Palermo, I repeat to the Lega, “va fanculo a te e gli mortacci tuoi!” (fuck you and you’re dead relatives)
| 26 July 2009, 3:54 pm |
It’s all a bit tenuous really. A UK “nationalistic” party, (and I am not using that term in a pejorative sense as I believe there is room for political parties to defend their national interest and not sell out to the EU), joins a right wing voting block in the EU parliament for strategic reasons with a number of other nationalist parties.
Of course not all nationalist parties share a matching set of views, and forming a loose alliance at the EU Parliament not mean they all adopt each other’s policies.
As it turns out an Italian right wing party in this block has historically had a link (”unofficial” – via a leading member) with a deranged anti semitic priest. The party promptly and publicly disassociated itself from any relationship with the priest when his views became public.
And this somehow taints UKIP. As I said all a bit tenuous. There are more important issues to worry about here at home at present.
| 26 July 2009, 4:07 pm |
Re Caughtshort (Isn’t it strange how these democrats feel the need to give themselves a title?)
As a non airheaded 57 year old I find the notion of giving the vote to 16year olds less of a threat than continuing to give the vote to x million Sun readers or, possibly worse, y million Daily Mail readers.
| 26 July 2009, 7:00 pm |
This is a seismid shock indeed. I think Seismic Shock did VERY WELL to throw himself in to the poisonous mixed salad of right wing deviations, no matter if he msifires at times. But I don’t think he does.
Here I am in Italy, and much of what you say is news to me. I will have to buy the Repubblica in future.I have read th Ukips political programme and it is not that far removed from the Lega Nord. The minister of the Interiore, Maroni of the Lega has pushed through legislation to stigamatise all illegal immigrants as illegal. Here they ran into a problem: there are atleast 5000 foreign badanti (female assistants) to the old, infirm and crippled whom Italy can ill afford to do without. So the governement is working at some sort of solution to keep them off the hook, not very satisfactorily. That’s how complicated inter-ethnic relationships are.
These female assistants cannot be isolated: they must have husbands and families, so where do you go from there? the inter-ethinic relationships are inextricably complicated.
Tosi, our mayor of the Lega wanted to drive out Srilankan, Arab and other shopkeepers, with the escuse that their shops were unhygenic, but the local Bobbies simply accept a little bribe, 20 euros, 50, even a cigarette and all is left as before without even a check up. Is this a case of petty corruption saving humanity?
The Ukip want to get out of the EU, for god’s sake that would leave me and thousands Brits like me in the shit in Italy. We are performing a useful task here, teaching the English Language and culture (Atleats I am, mostly ‘functional English is taught which is undoubtedly more useful). But these people with theories and would be laws tend not to care about human lives.
| 26 July 2009, 8:13 pm |
. The minister of the Interiore, Maroni of the Lega has pushed through legislation to stigamatise all illegal immigrants as illegal.
Well, that’s because they ARE illegal, you know.
| 26 July 2009, 8:15 pm |
We are performing a useful task here, teaching the English Language and culture (Atleats I am, mostly ‘functional English is taught which is undoubtedly more useful). But these people with theories and would be laws tend not to care about human lives.
There are thousands of Americans worldwide teaching English in countries such as Italy. The US doesn’t feel the need to abandon its soverignt and destory a thousand years of history just because of selfish gits like yourself.
| 26 July 2009, 8:17 pm |
These female assistants cannot be isolated: they must have husbands and families, so where do you go from there? the inter-ethinic relationships are inextricably complicated.
They are still illegal and should NOT be in the country. Which part of “they have no permission to be in the country” do you not understand?
| 26 July 2009, 8:17 pm |
Episode 2: Lega gossip.
There is a big, vociferous man called Franco in the trattoria I used to go to. I found out later that he was a fanatic of the Lega. he once asked me if I was a Leghista. I replied that this for me was the worst insult I could receive. So he, ” What party do you support then?” I replied none, and that I would support a party that put the human being at the centre of its considerations.
Later he persuaded me to take his party’s newspaper home – called Libero – this word liberty has been so much abused that I wonder if we can ever use it again, Ask Oliver Kamm. I read a few lines and nearly vomited. –
And yet this galumphing Franco, had a very human side to him. He is very fond of me and entirely accepts my gayness. He sells underwear and socks at the market and has for long had an illegal immigrant working for him. I know that he has done everything he can to legalise him, but I don’t know if he has succeded.
Another time a group of obviously Leghista workers were working on the roof of my building. I had to go up to check something about my antennae. They were extraordinarily rude to me as a foreigner. At one point I looked at them and said, “I have understood everything. You are of the Padania (ie, the Lega).” Amazingly, the felt ashamed of themselves and came down to my flat to report and were extra-polite. Is there some hope for humanity?
| 26 July 2009, 8:28 pm |
They were extraordinarily rude to me as a foreigner
Oh you poor diddums.
| 26 July 2009, 9:04 pm |
Morgoth – there is a difference between expelling illegal immigrants and making their presence here a crime. Then I have made it clear that some of the illegal immigrants perform an essential social services which this country cannot do without. Things are not all black and white as your damaged or labotomised brain would like them to be.
Are you a member of the BNP? or the infiltrator of a far right association? Even the Lega has had to admit that Italy can’t do without those social assistants, so as not to leave crippled and senile people to their own devices.
You are typical of the people I describe above as being more interested in rules and principles than in human beings, and this is one of the most catastrophic phenomena of our times.
Yes, I have American friends who teach English here. I’ll have to ask them what happens to them afterwards. But if they have taught here long enough, they get a pension and can even become citizens.
The EU provides favourable treatment for the citizens of member countries. Is there anyhting wrong with this principle of alleviating people’s problems? An Australian friend, even though she has an Italian pension, lives in daily terror of her papers not being quite bureaucratically in order and being thrown out. She has lived here for most of her life and doesn’t have any other home on this earth by now.
And then some of these far right groups are supported and guided by un-Christain priests! The New Testament introduced a religion of compassion. I hope Obama manages to do something about welfare in the USA.
| 26 July 2009, 9:26 pm |
Morgoth – “Oh you poor diddums”
The more you write the more you reveal.
| 26 July 2009, 9:38 pm |
Mahmoud, Venichka, Mrs Ben: I don’t think UKIP is a fascist party, but like it or not, they are lending legitimacy to fascists, and this I think is a concern for anti-fascists.
Now UKIP have chosen an alliance with Lega Nord we now have an interest in what Lega Nord says and does, as we do with the League of Polish Families and the Latvia People’s Party, etc, and any other dodgy allies of Labour and the Tories.
By all means highlight these links too, and we can approach the question of dodgy alliances together. I think part of the responsibility of being a voter in the UK and Europe is calling our leaders to account for who they’re lining up with.
Another subject this article was touching on was Abrahamowicz’s claim that his comments were strongly supported by other SSPX priests, and his claim that the SSPX public condemnation of Holocaust denial was largely an exercise in face-saving.
Paul, thanks for encouraging comment, and you too Felix, sorry to hear of your unpleasant experience with Leghistas. As a sidenote I’m taking an interest in my blog in fascist priests across Europe and have recently come across a few in Italy, hence my interest in Abrahamowicz.
| 26 July 2009, 10:06 pm |
Well, I dispute that UKIP are “lending legitimacy to fascists” (and I think that much-abused and overused latter term is indeed more or less appropriately applied to Lega Nord – who are really odious xenophobes and who very much with a history of supporting or taking part in violent action intended to undermine what passes for democratic politics in Italy);
Now I DO strongly disapprove of their involvement in the Italian Government, and particularly those who brought them into that, real, substantive, important, as governing a state, alliance: but I suppose too that one, surprisingly positive, consequence of that (and Berlusconi’s desperate attempts to appear internationally, if not exactly “respectable” as that was clearly a lost hope a long time ago, but at least then not an out-and-out renegade) has been forcing them to distance themselves from the likes of the BNP, Jobbik, Greater Romania Party, Ataka etc, who are (even) harder line than them – which presumably was a major factor in enticing them into the more moderate bloc that UKIP are part of.
Not least, as I said before, it is the case that UKIP’s involvement in forming a bloc that Lega Nord also form a part of has – far more than anything else, given the election results – PREVENTED the formation of an effectively “fascist” bloc in the European Parliament.
As for the League of Polish Families, I thought that they had more or less collapsed (certainly as a political force at a national level: but also at the European Parliament). I don’t think they have any MEPs at all in the current parliament? The election results shown here http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/archive/elections2009/en/poland_en.html certainly don’t show any (unless they were absorbed into another electoral group for the elections, but I don’t recall that happening)
So, no, in the general scheme of things, were I to be a UKIP supporter, I wouldn’t be terribly happy at several of their current European Parliament bloc affiliates.
But regardless of that, the fact of the matter is that the formation of this bloc has neutered the most hard-line “fascists” or similar in the European Parliament.
And, were pressure to be put upon UKIP to leave this bloc, or kick Lega out (and, I guess, for the latter to end up in opposition in Italy)…and for it to succeed, maybe we are in a position where there are sufficient numbers for a “fascist” (or at any rate xenophobic nationalist) bloc to be formed. So to my mind, much better to leave things as they are, for now. If UKIP start adopting Lega tactics, sure, then we have a problem that has to be dealt with. But I don’t rate that as being even close to likely.
This may be the first and last thing to thank Silvio Berlusconi, however indirectly, for.
| 26 July 2009, 11:02 pm |
Are you a member of the BNP? or the infiltrator of a far right association?
Oh fuck off.
This is the prime example of why the left is so fucked – as soon as you question their shibboleth of the grand project of importing a different complient client electorate since the first electorate won’t vote for them, then they accuse you of being a fascist.
Which part of “Illegal immigrants are here illegally and do not have any right to be here” don’t you understand?
| 26 July 2009, 11:15 pm |
“Abrahamowicz celebrated a mass (in Latin, of course) for Lega Nord leader Umberto Bossi in 2007. He didn’t do that just by chance. It shows a clear sympathy between Abrahamowicz and the Lega Nord”
Yikes. By that logic the US Democratic Party is just chock full of raving lunatic racists who think that amongst other things that AIDS was caused by nasty white people. And we’re talking about decades of religious services in the latter case, not a single Mass…
Still, at least you provided some evidence, unlike the rather desperate author.
| 26 July 2009, 11:22 pm |
Something else not mentioned is that one of the main reasons that UKIP felt the need to renew their old affiliation with Lega Nord (ended bizarrely because one their MEPs wore a Mohammed T-Shirt!) is also of course that the EU changed their funding rules to try and wipe out the smaller dissident ‘Groups’ in the Toy Parliament, leaving only the big four to continue marching in glorious lockstep.
“The Ukip want to get out of the EU, for god’s sake that would leave me and thousands Brits like me in the shit in Italy.”
Do you really believe that all Britons on the mainland would be forced onto the next plane home? Cobblers. I’ve heard some weak excuses for EU membership before, but that’s in the Top Ten. And also quite extraordinarily selfish.
| 26 July 2009, 11:58 pm |
Mrs Ben – it was SSPX who distanced themselves from Abrahamowicz, not Lega Nord.
| 27 July 2009, 2:55 am |
Burn the bastard as a heretic – that’ll teach him.
| 27 July 2009, 7:49 am |
Just a minor correction – Williamson is actually a bishop, not merely a priest which is why his odious remarks were considered much more severely than say other priests with similar views.
As to the SSPX’s anti-semitism, just have a look at the “traddie Catholic” websites* back around the time that Williamson got hammered for his comments – their supporters were out in serious numbers spewing hatred in defence of him and the SSPX.
*I’m sure Venichka or John Palubiski can refer you as appropriate.
| 27 July 2009, 1:12 pm |
Felix – If I was in a country (not my own) where lots of people looked askance at me and felt strongly about it I’d think – ok shit I’m not liked here, not immediatley put they down as some sort of neanderthals who don’t recognise their good luck of having me grace them with my presence. I wouldn’t look for ways of undermining them, which you have admitted fascinatingly in your mention of the Frankfurt school of deliberate selective destruction (’bait’ taken you see) of SOME existng realities. (ie would you do it Saudi Arabia?) Have you no sympathy? Ever asked them sincerely why they feel so nervous of immigration? That’s normal , freindly, non-destructive thinking – research it.
| 27 July 2009, 2:37 pm |
My dear Comprehensive boy, I was just defending myself as the weaker party with the men on the rooftop. The lesson worked very well as the men then became very friendly and polite. A social barrier had been broken. I have zero sense of superirioty and talk with workers every day in my Trattoria. They are not afaraid of immigrants like me; they are afraid of those with a darker skin. I can understand their fears and we often talk about them. ‘Third world’ immigration has also enriched our lives here. Fortunately there are often positive signs even from people who vote for the Lega. I read in the paper today that an Indian boy is teaching cricket to Italian school children, and more than once a Moroccan has saved an old lady from being robbed by Italians.
I have, on occasion, attacked English and German tourist for being rude to Italians.
There really are thuggish elements in the Lega, thug no.1 being their leader Bossi. The Lega vice mayor of Treviso said he was going to do an ethnic cleansing of Gays in his town and had already sent out police to hunt them down. Just googled. The Gays will take counter measures meeting en masse for collective kissing.
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For
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/support-the-PM/
Against
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/please-go/
Note that many of the names in the “For” petition look a bit unlikely. Number 10 quickly remove the spam names from the other petition to keep it as short as they can. However, the ratio against Mr Brown is huge!
There is still time for you to vote here, so make the most of it.
Also, if you agree with this petition, please tell others about it, and tell them to spread the word as well. This is the way to get it really moving.