A question on Neo-Fascism.

[The Magistrate]

4. A couple of points, Sir

First, race is a supremely powerful appeal, working on a wholly visceral level. From a demagogue's point of view, Mussolini's lack of emphasis on race stands as one of the great weaknesses of his movement, and accounts for its relatively shallow rooting in Italy. Nowadays, in Europe, immigrant Moslems provide an obvious, clearly visible focus for racial animus. Long-standing hate between Greeks and Turks, extending even to mutual exchanges of genocidal killing and expulsion within the previous century, probably provides some extra 'zing' in the individual case you are focused on.

Second, it is worth remembering that most countries the Nazis occupied had willing collaborators, drawn from native rightist circles. These attachments in many instances lasted throughout the occupations, and can even be found to have persisted after the war. To these people, their country did not suffer under Nazi occupation; in their view, the Nazis killed the people who ought to have been killed, and would have been killed by their own governments if their political life had been healthy, and not so tainted by leftists and Jews ( largely, then, interchangeable categories to such people ). Hitler was a great darling of the European right before the Second World War, viewed as the great champion against Bolshevism.