Fini's long journey from reviled right-winger to respectable Foreign Minister

Italy: Italy's new Foreign Minister has deftly distanced himself and his party from its origins in post-Mussolini fascist tendencies…

Italy: Italy's new Foreign Minister has deftly distanced himself and his party from its origins in post-Mussolini fascist tendencies, writes Paddy Agnew, in Rome

Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, allegedly once offered the following pithy definition of fascism: "Absolute pragmatism, transplanted into politics".

History might suggest that Il Duce was referring to his own Italian brand of fascism rather than to that of his one-time admirer, Adolf Hitler. Be that as it may, Il Duce would surely applaud the pragmatic rise and rise of his political heir, Gianfranco Fini, the man who last week was named as Italy's Foreign Minister.

Over the last 15 years or so, 52-year-old Mr Fini has masterminded the remarkable evolution of his party (now called Alleanza Nazionale or AN but previously known as Movimento Sociale Italiano or MSI) from political limbo to government. In the process, he has altered the party's image from that of a quaint ragbag of fascist nostalgics into a modern, democratic, right-wing government party. More importantly, he has seen his party's vote increase from the average 6 per cent regularly picked up by the MSI during the first 50 years of the post-war period to the 15.7 per cent registered at the 1996 general election.

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Along the way, the savvy Mr Fini has made a number of "politically correct" moves. At a celebrated conference in Fiuggi in 1995, he persuaded the party to change its name, scrapping not just the old MSI title but also its pro-Mussolini, pro-fascist connotations.

Two years earlier, he had made a symbolic visit to Rome's Fosse Ardeatine graves, site of an infamous March 1944 Nazi German reprisal that claimed 335 civilian lives, including 85 Jews, and which owed much to Italian fascist collusion. Throughout the second half of the 1990s, he regularly condemned Mussolini's 1938 Hitler-inspired racial laws, whilst he also oversaw the drafting of an AN party statute denouncing anti-Semitism.

Other important "symbolic" gestures included a 1999 visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp and a visit last year to Israel where he denounced Mussolini's years in power as "a shameful chapter in the history of our people". So forthright was his condemnation of Mussolini on that occasion that it prompted Il Duce's granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, to leave AN.

Whilst there may well still be those in Mr Fini's party who experience a fascist nostalgia, followers who yearn for an era that was allegedly a time of modernisation and law and order, it would seem churlish to deny Mr Fini all credit for having done his utmost to sever the link with Il Duce and fascism.

If there is an element of pragmatism, not to say opportunism, about his conversion on the road to the Foreign Office, however, that is obviously linked to the role played by his most important political ally and sponsor in the Italian New Age, namely current Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Without Mr Berlusconi's public vote of confidence in him in 1993, Mr Fini's reformist ideas might never have gained credence with the electorate. Without Mr Berlusconi's political support, he and his party would still be in the wilderness.

So then, he is no longer a fascist, but what is he now? His record in government office - he has been deputy Prime Minister since 2001 - may shed some light. For a start, he was on hand at police headquarters during the July 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, a summit marred by serious rioting, the police killing of a protester, Carlo Giuliano, and a controversial night-time "blitz" on the headquarters of the No Global Social Forum protest movement, a blitz that prompted international outcry.

On that occasion, many believed that Mr Fini had reverted to type, that of the former "Blackshirt", MSI youth leader all too eager for a scrap with lefties and pacifists.

Although he was originally among those who most warmly applauded the 1992 anti-corruption investigations of the Milan-based "Clean Hands" pool of magistrates, he has since echoed Mr Berlusconi's claims that the judiciary is politically biased (against Mr Berlusconi). Likewise, he sees no contradiction between his party's strong "law and order" line and the approval of "ad personam" legislation designed to resolve Mr Berlusconi's well-documented judicial and conflict of interest problems.

Mr Fini's political present, too, can be judged by the so-called "Fini Bill", governing drug abuse. Currently going through parliament, his intended legislation takes a repressive, hard line on drug abuse, refusing to differentiate between soft and hard drugs and urging penalties for habitual users of both.

He is also an enthusiastic supporter of Italy's involvement in the Iraq war.