Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 10, 1994                   TAG: 9404110175
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ANTIPOLITICS?

In Italy, the neo-fascist National Alliance made a strong showing in recent elections, as one partner in a victorious right-wing coalition that included the separatist Northern League and a billionaire Ross Perot-type, Silvio Berlusconi, who likely will become the next prime minister.

At a triumphal National Alliance rally in Rome, 2,000 youths thrust up their hands in straight-armed salutes and chanted, "Duce! Duce!" Their leader, who may be invited into Berlusconi's government, makes no effort to hide his admiration for Benito Mussolini.

In Ukraine, ethnic Russians have voted in referendums to form closer ties to Moscow. In one eastern province, the majority Russian population voted 10-1 for economic integration with Russia.

In Russia itself, ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who has gotten into more than one fist fight in the parliament, is pressuring his government to forge closer ties with Russians in the bordering state, even though Ukraine is now sovereign.

In Germany, ultra-rightists have been surging in state elections, as many Germans have become fed up with uncontrolled immigration and rising unemployment. Violence against Turkish "guest-workers," by the German equivalent of racist skinheads, has swelled.

Last winter, Zhirinovsky visited a prominent right-wing German politician, Gerhard Frey of the German People's Union, to proclaim his friendship.

The common factor underlying these developments is weariness with conventional politics. But that is no reason to dismiss the events as mere expressions of disillusionment, alienation and protest.

History's lessons are often murky, but some are crystal clear; and one of the clearest is the deadly danger of mixing resentful populism with extremist nationalism. Germans today are calling the phenomenon "antipolitics."

Apparently, it was not enough to undergo the horrors of World War II. A dark impulse was not forever wiped out. Hence, in the uncertain aftermath of the Cold War's end, the fight against fascism must go on.