DEADLY VIOLENCE
D
eadly violence is nothing new on the far right. Violence played a key function in the rise of fascist states. Fascism had to be seen to be capable of wielding violence. From the 1910s, paramilitary organisations enforced the will of fascist leaders. But, at least in some periods, this capacity for wielding violence has had to be curtailed lest it alienate more passive supporters. In January 1925, Mussolini made a speech to the Chamber of Deputies: he claimed responsibility for the violence of his blackshirts and challenged his opponents to remove him. He then took charge of restoring order to Italy within forty-eight hours. This tension between order and violence – order as violence and the command of chaos – lasts until this day. Violence doesn’t happen randomly or from nowhere. Nor do far-right terrorists murder from personal conviction alone. Both extreme ideology and a structure of radicalisation are required. Even the incomparable darkness of the Holocaust can be understood as arising from a combination of extreme ideology and a collection of mechanisms of radicalisation, 155
