Left Wing Nazis

From The Times’ Richard Owen, 26th May:
‘Balaclava-clad gangs, some wearing bandanas emblazoned with swastikas, smashed shop windows with iron bars and baseball bats and beat up shopkeepers in a hitherto bohemian neighbourhood of Rome.

Members of the gangs shouted “Get out, bastard foreigners” as they attacked Bengali shopkeepers in the explosion of xenophobic violence.

Gianni Alemanno, the capital’s new right-wing Mayor, condemned the attacks, which took place in the eastern suburb of Pigneto, an area with a reputation for tolerance, on Saturday night.’

Now, the organiser of this outrage has been arrested and has admitted his part. He has a tattoo of Che Guevara on his arm and is proud of his left wing credentials. The Pigneto raid, described in most of Europe’s lefty press as ‘Nazi-style’ was organised by the Left, in association with the Camorra, who felt the immigrants were muscling in on their patch.

I am not trying to excuse the extreme right, who are just as vile as the extreme left, but trying to explain that this isn’t as straightforward as people think, and the chance of pinning the Nazi label on it all has been accepted with a little too much alacrity.