SIEG FAIL: DECODING ITALIAN BLACK METAL NATIONALISM

One of the problems with the debate surrounding far right ideology within black metal is the fluidity of the terminology. Deciphering a band's belief system is like wrestling with smoke because there's little common language between parties. While a casual music fan might use 'Nazi' as a broad, catch-all term for any extreme racism or ethno-nationalism, a band espousing those beliefs, but contemptuous of the actual philosophy of National Socialism, as practised by Adolf Hitler and friends, can easily deny the claim. While the set dressing of National Socialism is common knowledge – certain words and symbols setting off alarm bells instantly – less well known branches of fascism can slip through the net, as evidenced by that cringe-worthy observation occasionally made about how 'ironic' it is that countries on the receiving end of Nazi aggression (latter definition) can produce Nazis of their own (both definitions), which ignores whatever inglorious tradition of homegrown nationalist movements or inglorious history of militaristic or authoritarian regimes there might be.

Italian fascism was born out of futurism, itself a reaction to perceived deficiencies in early 20th Century Italy – still largely rural and provincial with Italian unity being a fairly recent memory – by a frustrated elite who wanted the nation to grasp the future with both hands "however daring, however violent". Though its relics survive in art, design and architecture (by no means the least of which is the ubiquitous Moka coffee pot whose harsh, modern lines have been funnelling espresso into the faces of futurist pioneers since 1933), its politics found an ally in Benito Mussolini who combined socialist rabble-rousing, hawkish aspirations to a fully militarised and radicalised population, myths of Italian greatness, and, most importantly as far as the futurists were concerned, a desire to transform Italy into a modern, industrialised powerhouse. In 1919, after only a year, the Futurist Political Party formed by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the author of the 'The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' which saw war as necessary for the human spirit, was willingly absorbed into Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento. A paramilitary movement aimed at dissatisfied veterans of the First World War, the Fasci transformed into the PNF in 1922 – the Partito Nazionale Fascista whose existence is now exclusively prohibited by the Italian constitution.

It's a source of great academic delight that just as there's a direct link between the futurists, who came into being in 1909, and Mussolini's PNF who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943, there's one from then on into the present. Movimento Sociale Italiano – MSI being a not so veiled reference to the slogan 'Mussolini sei immortale' (Mussolini, you are immortal) – was formed in 1946 by the supporters of Mussolini who managed to escape the end of the war without being hung from a lamp post. The most notable of whom was journalist Giorgio Almirante who rose from being a minor member of the PNF to Chief of Cabinet of the Minister of Culture of the short-lived Nazi puppet state in Northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic. When the MSI finally dissolved in 1995, its leading lights transferred their affections to new organisations - Gianfranco Fini forming the more mainstream, conservative National Alliance which took him right to the top as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs in Silvio Berlusconi’s government of 2001 to 2006. His legacy of that time in office being the Boss-Fini Act which capped immigration.

More traditionalist ex-members of MSI, concerned by Fini's new direction and apparent compromise, formed Tricolore Flame, or else enlisted in Roberto Fiore's Forza Nuova who are currently forcibly dismantling refugee camps on the island of Lampedusa, closer to North Africa than Italy. Fiore spent a lot of time in the UK in the '80s cosying up to the National Front (where he befriended now British National Party leader Nick Griffin, the two implausibly running a nationalist tour company together), evading questioning for a series of bombings perpetrated in 1980 by the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari of which he was a member. The architect of the NAR bombing campaign, underlining this neat link between the past and the present, was Stefano Delle Chiaie. Delle Chiaie was a former member of MSI who left in 1960, outraged by their 'recognition' of democratic Italy by standing in elections instead of carrying on their proud tradition of street thuggery and bellowing racist slogans from the sidelines.

The bands within Italian clique Black Metal Invitta Armatta are filled with quasi-fascist iconography, but little that a casual inspection would reveal as genuinely rooted in far right politics – there's no shortage of bands milking the aesthetics of fascism or Nazism in the name of controversy, after all. It's the group's logo (see right), used on their 2007 compilation 'Signum Martis' and appearing on various items of merchandise, that serves as the first major ideological signifier, being as it's identical to that used by poet Gabriele d'Annunzio's short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro (below left).

The forerunner to Mussolini, in September 1919 d'Annunzio led 2,000 Italian nationalists to occupy the Croatian city of Rijeka (then Fiume), which was being handed over to the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia as part of the general divvying out of Hapsburg domains after the First World War, chasing out the British, French and Americans to proclaim a proto-fascist republic with himself as Duce. Lasting until 1920, he remained active in Italian politics as an occasional critic and rival of Mussolini, and a staunch advocate of Italian expansionism. He has been described as the 'John the Baptist of Italian fascism' and his brief reign in Fiume introduced many of the practices that Mussolini would later employ including the the title of Duce, the Roman salute, the use of the black shirt uniform, the use of the patriotic song 'Giovinezza', the birth of a corporatist society in which everything within the society or the state was supposed to contribute to its whole, and the use of castor oil to torture, humiliate and kill.

The first band on 'Signum Martis', Spite Extreme Wing are unambiguous in their content. Their 2004 debut 'Non Dvcor, Dvco' is based on the writings of Julius Evola, an Italian philosopher and mystic who defined 'spiritual racism', as opposed to the 'scientific racism' of the Nazis, in his 1941 manuscript 'Synthesis of the Doctrine of Race' which came to define the Italian racial policy and anti-Jewish laws of the 1940s. Also in his credits he translated notorious antisemetic forgery 'The Protocols on the Elders of Zion' into Italian, idolised the SS and the fascist Iron Guard in Romania, and carried on his links with the far right well into the post-war era, speaking at fascist rallies in the 1970s and was held in high esteem by the new generation of extreme nationalists as a key writer and spiritual leader. It's also thanks to Julius Evola, whose less obviously political output concerned eastern philosophy (although in light of his long association with genocidal nationalism, the belief that a heroic master race will emerge from the chaos is particularly chilling), that almost all of these bands can be found talking about Kali Yuga, the final, destructive stage of the earth's rotation according to Hindu scripture. Another song on the album, 'A Chi L'ignoto?', is inspired by the aforementioned Gabriele d'Annunzio.

The same album confirmed Spite Extreme Wing's position unflinchingly: “Black metal is to us the violent and revolutionary reference to the world of tradition. A pure European expressive form. Differently from folk traditional or pre-modern instruments aren't used, with the black metal the modern civilization is disembodied using its dirty means. Here is the originality of the suggestion, it’s the avant-gardism of the idea: the Archeofuturism.”

Archeofuturism is where all of Italy's fascist birds come home to roost – although coined by French 'New Right' thinker Guillaume Faye, his book 'Archaeofuturism', helpfully translated into English in 2010, was originally published a decade ago as a manifesto called 'L’archeofuturisme'. Archaofuturism posits that Europe's survival is in embracing technology (a la futurism) and ancient traditions (a la the stage dressing of most fascist regimes, with obvious similarities to Mussolini's 'New Roman Empire' and Hitler's Nordic dream) in strictly hierarchical societies with strict gender roles.

Dressed up in the language of science fiction, it's best understood in simple terms: Archeofuturists believe in expelling all Muslims and immigrants from Europe. Archeofuturists believe that only Europeans are capable of building a civilisation. Archeofuturists believe in a strict, fuedal class system. Archeofuturists believe in a homogeneous ethnic and cultural nation within a greater European Imperium, and contrary to most fascists, embrace the European Union as a step towards employing that. Archeofuturists are openly and unashamedly racist, misogynist and authoritarian.

Second band on the compilation, the more ambient post-black metal outfit Janvs, have few overt references. The god Janus is the only one in the Roman pantheon who was native to Italy and not a transplant from Greece, but they're also influenced by Julius Evola's ideas on society, and their drummer, Massimo Altomare (see left), has an openly National Socialist solo project, Disiplin, whose lyrics, themes and songtitles are all thoroughly immersed in the Third Reich. He's proudly linked to NSBM and writes about the subject in great length on his website: “As rightly comprehended National Socialism is the supreme synthesis of Aryan archetypes and Aryan awareness, the NSBM is the equally supreme synthesis of revolutionary zeal and radical philosophy.”

Altomare's other band, Black Flame, are third on the compilation. Starting off more conventionally Satanic, the band have steadily begun to hint are more politically motivated subject matter, with most recent album, 2008's 'Imperivm', and the song 'Black Svn Thoery', alluding to Nazi occultism. But there's little there other than Altomare's presence that suggests anything deeper than black metal's traditionally juvenile Third Reich fetishism a la 'Panzer Division Marduk'.

Frangar, who bring up track six, are also unapologetically nationalist, performing in uniform and assigning each other military ranks. 2007's 'Totalitarian War' celebrates the birth of the Nazi puppet Italian Social Republic on '1943', and their '1915 – Tutto Per La Patria' (everything for the fatherland) celebrates the year Italy entered the First World War – a pair of t-shirts develop the theme with classic fascist propoganda images – the chap modelling it is even wearing the bandanna of fascist Italy's elite commando unit Decima Flottiglia MAS (see above right). Although deeply linked to the Italian black metal far right, they've got impressive international links – at one point featuring a member of notorious French NSBM outfit Ad Homonim.

There's a tendency for apologists of nationalist black metal to accuse any questioning of their beliefs as, ironically, 'censorship', when it's their attempts to have them go unexplored that's the only act of censorship. Claims to be 'apolitical' are ludicrous – all art is political and the references and themes chosen reflect – consciously or unconsciously – something of the way the artists behind them see the world.

Knowledge and debate are the tools by which we reach conclusions, and this is nothing more controversial or combative than that first step.