Miguel Martinez June 18th, 2001
A couple of years ago, there was an interesting exchange on the French newsgroup, fr.soc.religion. Here is what a certain "Bertrandt" (bertrand@isnhp4.in2p3.fr, il 26.03.1998, wrote under the "subject", reponse à introvigne referring to a discussion involving Massimo Introvigne - director of CESNUR; TFP or "Tradition, Family and Property", founded by the Brazilian, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira; and the movement Alleanza Cattolica, of which Introvigne is one of the national leaders:
One is a little surprised at the way Sodalitium - a Catholic traditionalist publication whose ideas are quite close to those of Alleanza Cattolica - is labelled as a "Nazi cult", especially because Sodalitium of course has no sympathy for national-socialism, seen as a form of "occult and anti-Christian paganism"; also, one would hardly expect such a loose use of the word "cult" by Introvigne.
However, what is far more important is to see whether claiming that Alleanza Cattolica and TFP, or rather Alleanza Cattolica and the ideology of the founder of the TFP, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, have something in common is only "repeating a lie a hundred times."
For this reason, I publish an article here which Introvigne would probably hesitate to label so summarily. The article is an interview on the official organ of TFP, Catolicismo; and the interviewee is Giovanni Cantoni, "National Regent" of Alleanza Cattolica, as well as co-author, together with Massimo Introvigne, of the book 'Sette' e 'diritto di persecuzione'.
In this interview, Introvigne's fellow militant proclaims his total identification with the way of thinking of the founder of TFP; he expresses the hope that moral renewal shall be provided by a "body offering spiritual and intellectual direction", something which he is "profoundly convinced" should be provided by the "Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property and similar organizations, inspired by the apostolic [sic] work of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira." There is even more: Cantoni actually says he is "proud to have materially given origin" to the third section of the basic work of the founder of TFP.
 In the self-laudatory style which is so typical of TFP, the original title of the interview is "In Italy, four prestigious editions of Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Interview with Giovanni Cantoni by Juán Miguel Montes Cousiño". The article came out in Portuguese on Catolicismo, the organ of the TFP, n° 580, Sao Paulo - Brazil, April 1999, Year XLIX, pages 12-15. It later came out, in Italian and with a more modest title, "Revolution and Counter-Revolution Forty Years Later" ("Rivoluzione e Contro-Rivoluzione quarant'anni dopo"), on the official magazine of Alleanza Cattolica, Cristianità, number 289 (May 1999).
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, besides being the founder of TFP, is also the author of the book which inspired TFP, Revolution and Counter-Revolution. This book was published in Italy by Cristianità, the official publishing house of Alleanza Cattolica, and Cantoni - in the Catolicismo interview - explains the background of the Italian edition .
Revolution and Counter-Revolution, available on the Web in English, basically claims that the "natural order of things" is the feudal and hierarchical system of the Middle Ages. Sinful human pride rebels against this system; but to rebel against a political and economic hierarchy means to rebel against God himself:
Since I am writing in Italy and not in Brazil, it might be useful (and is certainly amusing) to concentrate on the "Little Breviary of the Counter-Revolutionary", a summary of Plinio's book by the Alleanza Cattolica militant Paolo De Bei, moderator (or censor) of the newsgroup it.politica.cattolici, a task which he inherited, by the way, from another Alleanza Cattolica militant, David Botti. Proving himself to be already a master of scholastics, young De Bei claims that the Revolution"is a metaphysical, non-ontological, entity" ("it is not ontologically real, since it is objectively evil") and it "consists of a substantia and its accidens". As a "metaphysical entity", therefore, the Revolution must be written strictly with a capital "R" (this is also a knack of Introvigne's).
 The Revolution goes through four stages (quotes are all taken from De Bei):
A rather clear picture of the psychological makeup of people like Giovanni Cantoni, Massimo Introvigne, PierLuigi Zoccatelli, Valter Maccantelli, Andrea Menegotto, Aldo Carletti, David Botti, Andrea Morigi and others we deal with in these pages.
But let us now return to the intimate relationship between Giovanni Cantoni and Revolution and Counter-Revolution (or RCR, for its enthusiasts), as appears in the interview which we are discussing. We can well say that Cantoni has been "a man of one book" for no less than four decades; and that one book has been Revolution and Counter-Revolution.
As he also says in the Catolicismo interview, Cantoni, in the early '60s, belonged to the "Centre for Civil Order" (associated with the right-wing Catholic intellectuals Augusto Del Noce and Baget Bozzo). At the same time, he worked with the "Edizioni dell'Albero" publishing house, together with such important right-wing figures as Alfredo Cattabiani, Pietro Femore and Piero Capello, journalist for Il Borghese.
In the publishing house, Giovanni Cantoni took care of a series which published works by authors such as Attilio Mordini (a volunteer in the SS and in Mussolini's "Social Republic", later creator of an unusual form of Catholic esotericism which still has several followers); Primo Siena of the neo-falangista "Alleanza Cattolica Tradizionalista"; Thomas Molnar; Father Calmel; Francisco Elias de Tejeda, an effusive Spanish traditionalist who upheld the singular notion that the Bourbon dynasty of Naples were progressive usurpers (along with the Cantoni interview in Catolicismo, an important source on these matters is La cultura politica della Destra cattolica, Coines Edizioni, Rome, 1976, by Giovanni Tassani).
Cantoni and Cattabiani continued to work together for many years, and their joint activities culminated in 1970 when the Rusconi publishing house launched a large scale operation to spread right-wing culture: the books that came out ecumenically included both counter-revolutionary texts and the "metaphysical" writings of René Guénon. A few years later, Cantoni established "Alleanza Cattolica" together with Mauro Ronco, of the authoritarian Christian Democrat movement Europa Settanta, the baron Roberto de Mattei of the Monarchist Youth Front (who also worked with the neo-Facist Edizioni Volpe publishing house) and the charismatic figure of Agostino Sanfratello.
One of the texts published by Cantoni at the time he was with the Edizioni dell'Albero (as he tells us in the interview) was an essay against the Italian "Risorgimento" which attracted the attention of TFP; this led to the publication in Italian of the book Problemi dell'apostolato moderno ("Problems of Modern Apostolate") (Ed. dell'Albero, Torino, 1963) written by the then friend of TFP, Bishop Antonio De Castro Mayer (1904-1991); and especially the publication of Revolution and Counter-Revolution. Cantoni, in the Catolicismo interview, says: "I realized that that book was the answer to my personal political and religious problems, and to those of the political and cultural milieu I was living in"; struck by enthusiasm, Cantoni started to study Portuguese just to be able to make a better Italian translation. Should anyone think this was merely a juvenile infatuation, Cantoni adds that now - forty years later - he is preparing a new edition.
Cantoni then wrote an introduction to the Italian edition of 1972, which he comments on in the Catolicismo interview as follows:
Cantoni even persuaded Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira to write a third part of his book, twenty years after the first edition. This is confirmed, in Revolution and Counter-Revolution, by Plinio himself.
There is a slight difference here between the English language and the Italian language edition of RCR; in the English version we read:
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However, the Italian version clearly says that the request came from "our worthy friends of Alleanza Cattolica."
In the interview with Catolicismo Cantoni mentions among Plinio's forerunners "Mons. Henri Delassus who lived between the 19th and 20th Centuries, and who was the author of Le problème de l'heure prèsente: antagonisme de deux civilisations" (Delassus, by the way, received a significant mention by Massimo Introvigne). Actually, Delassus' work has been published and is still distributed by Cantoni's publishing house (Enrico Delassus, Il problema dell'ora presente, Cristianità, Piacenza, 1977). However, no need to spend the money to buy it. A helpful counter-revolutionary has made it available to everybody on Internet in a virtual library significantly called "the arsenal".
Delassus' book belongs to the thrilling genre of apocalyptic pseudo-history, with intrigues of every kind, spiritualist seances, Masonic lodges, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, clippings from Russian newspapers and the prophecies of Saint Hildegard of Bingen. But here is a short extract, from Chapter XXVI ("Various Kinds of Agents"):
After this aside, we are ready to go back to the question this article started with.
Who is right?
Introvigne when he says that the idea that there is any kind of relationship between TFP and Alleanza Cattolica is "a lie repeated a hundred times"?
Or Cantoni when he claims, in this interview, that a relationship was established with TFP in 1960 "which still lasts today"?
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