Portrait of a Party

Democratic Italy last week escaped the rock of Scylla only to veer toward the whirlpool of Charybdis. When the returns were in from the 8,000,000 voters in southern Italy's municipal elections, the Communists had been held in check and Rome had been saved by Premier Alcide de Gasperi's Demo-Christian bloc. But a discredited old dogma made a startling comeback and created a new danger.

Five years ago, the police were arresting the chiefs of the neo-Fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (M.S.I.); last week, in elections involving 40% of Italy's voters, the Fascists and their monarchist cronies made the largest gains of any coalition, captured Naples (Italy's third city), Bari, Foggia, Salerno, twelve out of 31 provincial councils and 21% of the vote--and emerged as the third party in Italy.

They had picked up votes from the disillusioned and impatient who abound in Italy's uneven economy. To these unhappy Italians they sold nostalgia, a promise to resurrect the old days when Italy strutted before the world as a first-class power, when decisions were made for, not by, the people, and when the Duce took care of everyone. Most important of all, the M.S.I, won backing from among the same group that financed Mussolini's rise--rich landowners and industrialists who fear even De Gasperi's mild reform program and want insurance against change.

Illustrious Name. The actual party leaders are no fiery Mussolinis but a couple of unexciting Fascist wheelhorses: Giorgio Almirante, head of the five-man M.S.I, bloc in the Chamber of Deputies, a thin, drab man with ferret eyes and a receding chin which he remembers to thrust out periodically; Secretary Augusto de Marsanich, who dotes on being remembered as one of the original squadristi who ''marched" on Rome.

Their party began to go places only after it found a glamorous front man: Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, 46, who bears one of Italy's most illustrious names (Borgheses have been popes, cardinals and generals). Prince Junio is one of the few authentic Italian heroes of World War II. He commanded the two-man submarines that crept into Alexandria Harbor one dark December night in 1941, blowing up H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth and H.M.S. Valiant and for a time paralyzing the British in the Mediterranean. When the beaten Mussolini fled to north Italy and founded his short-lived Fascist republic, Borghese went along, served as chief of staff .of a nonexistent navy. For his cruelty toward partisans and hostages, Borghese was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment, but got out in 1948.

Under Any Name. On the speaker's stand, Borghese talks loftily and in generalities. The more raucous Fascist political effects are left to the moth-eaten old (69) Lion of Ethiopia, Rodolfo Graziani, recently arrested for giving the Fascist salute at the funeral of Mussolini's sister.

The disturbing rise of such figures, dramatized by last week's election, gave impetus to the Demo-Christian bill to outlaw all neo-Fascist movements, which has already been approved by the Senate and has a good chance of passing the Chamber. If it does, the neo-Fascists vow to return under some other name. Admitted a weary Demo-Christian leader: "It's very difficult to legislate a disease like Fascism out of existence."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.