Queen Fascist Shocker!

The Queen became embroiled in controversy yesterday as she met Italian Foregin Minister Gianfranci Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the "post-fascist" The National Alliance (Alleanza Nazionale, AN). The post-fascist signifier is in truth fairly meaningless. The AN grew out of the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI) which was established in 1946 by supporters of the executed Benito Mussolini. Essentially the MSI helf and meeting in 1995 and decided it wasn't going to be fascist anymore (I'm simplifying slightly, but not much). As you might expect, such a shift in ideology doesn't go very deep. The party held a demonstration widely seen as anti-semitic in 1999 and members of the party in Fiumicino near Rome called for a square to be named after fascist leader Ettore Muti. More recently the party has raised money to supporter former West Ham player Paulo Di Canio after he was fined for a fascist salute during a game in January.

It shouldn't come as any great surprise to see the Royal Family hob-nobbing with a Fascist shit like Fini. Prince Phillip's reactionary, racist views about... Well, everybody, are well know and who could forget Prince Harry's choice of fancy dress costume (or his decision to go to a 'natives and colonials' party in the first place)? Beyond these superficial comparisons, there is a long history of affinity between "the Firm" (as the family are known) and Fascism. The former King Edward VIII, who became the Duke of Windsor after abdicating in 1936, told an interviewer in 1970, "I never thought Hitler was such a bad chap," while Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, the father of Princess Michael of Kent, was a member of the Nazi party and an honorary member of the SS. (Parenthetical aside: Does anybody have any idea what somebody would have had to do to become an "honorary member" of the SS?). Perhaps the most interesting example is the Queen Mother, regarded by many as a stalwart in the fight against German Fascism. In fact she was an advocate of appeasment and a Hitler sympathiser and it has been suggested that she was so bigotted and prejudiced that she had to be prevented from giving interviews until she (finally) popped her clogs.