Nicholas Farrell

Now that the forces of evil have transformed Silvio Berlusconi into a condemned man, there remains just one person on the planet who can save Italy: Roger Scruton. If the famous philosopher were just to come to Italy to deliver a single speech, his very words would be enough to set in motion la rivoluzione. That at least is the view of the Circolo Culturale Margaret Thatcher, a group whose mission it is to establish at long last, after all those centuries lived without one, a proper Anglo-Saxon Tory party in Italy. So far it has failed, but its members, like all true believers, have not lost their faith. A year or so ago, Tullia Vivante, the presidentessa of the Thatcher Circle, an effervescent widow in her seventies, decided to enlist my support in getting Scruton to come to Venice.

Ah Italia! Such a great place to get your head round great art and great women but what a crappy little country. How else can you describe a place that condemns a 76-year-old man to seven years in jail and bans him for life from public office for a crime that both he and his victim deny — a crime to which there were no witnesses and for which there is no evidence? That is what has just happened in Milan in the infamous Bunga Bunga trial at which three women judges (and no jury) found the media tycoon and three times prime minister guilty on Monday of ‘prostituzione minorile’ (Berlusconi of course is appealing).

The truth is that the new Sunderland manager Paolo Di Canio is right: Italian Fascism was not racist — at least not until its fatal alliance with German National Socialism. In truth, there is nothing necessarily racist about Fascism. That many football hooligans and the entire Liberal Left disagree is irrelevant — irrelevant, that is, to the truth. Racism in the context of Fascism essentially means hatred of Jews rather than, say, of blacks. But here’s the funny thing: Fascism, unlike National Socialism, was not anti-Semitic. True, the words 'Fascist' and 'Nazi' are interchangeable these days, and often synonymous with the word 'racist'. But Benito Mussolini, who founded Fascism, was not anti-Semitic. Indeed, many top Italian Fascists were Jews.