At 5 p.m. on September 18, during a festival held by Brothers of Italy—a neoconservative party descended from the neofascist tradition—the “Courage Award” was presented to Sarvnaz Chitsaz. She chairs what I consider the improbable Women’s Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), associated with the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The award was part of a pro-imperialist event titled “Youth in Revolt: Stories from the Border.”
Marco Scurria, deputy leader of the governing party’s group in the Senate, took part in the discussion. Alessandro Orsini has described the party as a powerful lobby aligned with the Israeli far right. By giving the MEK a platform, Giorgia Meloni has, in effect, embraced the ideology of counterrevolutionary mass violence in West Asia. Alongside “state terrorism,” such as that which I attribute to Tel Aviv, there is also an alliance with violent, anti-state ideologies.
Collective historical memory must not allow the crimes of this counterrevolutionary organization to be erased. I hold the MEK responsible for the assassinations of several of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists, alleging that it acted as a Trojan horse for Mossad.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein—who, having abandoned Baathist socialism, chose to attack Iran in what we remember as the “dirty war” of 1980–88—the MEK took refuge in Albania. From there, it orchestrated cyberattacks against Iranian targets. The MEK’s arrival at the “Balkan crossroads” should be understood within a process of Balkanization planned by the United States at the expense of the unity of local populations. It is a destabilizing force directed against the class memory of Yugoslav socialism.
The MEK Funded Vox’s Election Campaign in Andalusia
The MEK’s financial support for the neo-Francoist Vox party belongs within the Islamophobic “Black International” promoted by Benjamin Netanyahu, a proponent of the “ethnic state” in the 21st century.
By reviving the idea of race—an unscientific way of understanding social relations, as geneticist Guido Barbujani has explained—Netanyahu has deliberately assumed the role of the world’s most dangerous postmodern dictator. He has managed to bring a “mass murderer,” to use the term from criminology, such as Anders Breivik onto the same side as a long-serving politician such as Meloni.
In 2019, the liberal Spanish newspaper El País published an investigation, later discussed by the Voltaire Network, showing conclusively that “the 2014 European election campaign of the Andalusian party Vox was financed by the People’s Mojahedin (MEK) to the tune of €800,000.” That sum amounted to 80 percent of Vox’s campaign funding.
Israel is building a genuine Black International, which may also include the new Italian party Futuro Nazionale. Vox and the Zionist entity share the same ideological foundation: Islamophobia. In an article published on December 14, 2018, titled “Vox: The Neo-Francoism That Appeals to Israel,” I quoted several unambiguous statements and then offered my political assessment of them. They are worth reading again:
1. Israel is not only part of our roots, our history and our culture; it is also the only true democracy in the entire region from Morocco to Afghanistan. Its institutions are open and do not discriminate on grounds of gender or religion. Salim Joubran is an Arab Israeli judge who sits as a full member of the Supreme Court. More than one and a half million Israeli citizens are Arabs.
2. Israel is a Western country in its culture, values, institutions and way of life. It is an open, young, dynamic and prosperous nation. Far from being a land of blood and violence, Israel has become a genuine technological hub whose advances benefit the entire world.
3. Israel has suffered successive waves of attacks: first from the armies of neighboring countries that never accepted the creation of the Jewish state; then from terrorists; and now from campaigns of disinformation and manipulation intended to achieve through legal channels what could not be achieved through violence, terror and armed conflict. Vox condemns the moral equivalence drawn between the victims—Israel—and its enemies.
The Zionist entity is a beacon for neofascists around the world, anticipating by many years today’s discourse—perverse in sociological and criminological terms—about “Super Sparta.” Israel’s imperialist bourgeoisie, long associated in my view with mass violence and supremacism, seeks to build a new architecture of power. In 2018, I reached this conclusion about neofascism:
From this perspective, Vox is much closer to the Italian Social Movement of Almirante and Giulio Caradonna, a member of the P2 lodge, than to Carrero Blanco, whom I characterize as responsible for mass violence. The State of Israel is a product of British colonialism, and Zionism is a cog in global counterrevolution. The Alt-Right, with its eclectic approach to ethnicity, fits within this social and geopolitical picture. It is a “perverse” invention of its guru, Steve Bannon, a former banker skilled in communications marketing and online disinformation.
Donald Trump, whom I regard as a sociopathic fascist, has accelerated the union of postmodern fascism and “21st-century imperialism,” to borrow the phrase of Marxist sociologist James Petras. He has brought that union into the media spotlight through his bluster.
The MEK Has Caused a Humanitarian Catastrophe
According to Iranian analyst Alireza Niknam, the MEK has committed appalling crimes, ranging from drug trafficking and organ sales to the exploitation of prostitution across national borders. Niknam sets out his allegations in detail and says that some have already been established in court:
One of the most horrific crimes committed by the MEK was the forced transfer of members’ children from Iraq to European countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom, where they were then left without guardians. In the 1990s, the organization forcibly separated hundreds of children from their parents and transferred them to Europe.
When its involvement in money laundering through these children in the United Kingdom and Germany was discovered, however, it cruelly abandoned them and fled those countries. This inhumane act had devastating consequences for the children involved.
All this produced a humanitarian tragedy and exposed the immorality of the organization to which Brothers of Italy has given a platform:
Many of these children, deprived of support and protection, fell prey to human-trafficking gangs. Some were sexually exploited, turning their lives into a humanitarian disaster. Without identity documents or social support, they were easily exploited by trafficking networks.
Niknam’s article is excellent: it cites sources, reconstructs the MEK’s history and deconstructs the ideology of the imperialist “super-clan.” It also raises a question. If, as Niknam writes, the MEK collaborated with “regional mafias,” is there reason to suspect a link between the organization and, for example, the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta?
In conclusion, Meloni has presented anti-Iranian terrorism—anti-state mass violence that I regard as sponsored by Israel—as though it were merely another political option. The analyses published by prominent Iranian scholars, many of them academics, demonstrate, subject to the validity of the ongoing judicial proceedings, that the MEK is an instrument of Israeli imperialism.
By Stefano Zecchinelli