You write a post about the lingering fascination of Nazism and what happens? The nice-but-dim third-in-line to the British throne is snapped wearing a swastika armband. Considering the Windsors are about as British as bratwurst, such antics were likely to prod the broadsheets into dredging up the Royal Family’s (and particularly King Edward VIII’s) rather dodgy relationship with Hitler’s gang. Meanwhile in Italy, as The View from Bologna reported, Lazio striker Paolo di Canio found himself in hot (or perhaps only lukewarm) water after allegedly delivering a fascist salute after scoring against bitter rivals Roma. As our Bologna correspondent notes, admitting to Fascist sympathies is, alas, no big deal in contemporary Italy.This queasy mixture of Afrika Korps aristos and Mussolini-supporting footballers made me come up with the following non sequitur: Is Ireland the only country in Europe that is both a republic and is free of an ugly fascist past? Whenever I fumble for reasons to be proud of this country, this is a fact that I return to. I think any country that retains a monarchy, regardless of whether they’re immured in wedding-cake palaces or bicycling among the populace, is suffering from a democratic deficit. Moreover, I’d go as far to say that Fascism and Monarchism are grounded in the same weakness, rooted as they are in the need for some paternalistic figure who is “above politics”. (In cases such as Spain this relationship was made explicit in the 1970s when the dictator Franco essentially designated King Juan Carlos as his successor. The fall of Benito Mussolini’s regime, which was quickly followed by the end of the Italian monarchy, is also instructive.)Some of Ireland’s previous leaders may provoke little in the way of admiration but at least they avoided the totalitarian option*. And today we are free from the parasitic royals unlike, say, Scotland. In fact, you could argue that the Republic of Ireland has a history of being the most democratic nation in Europe. Which is, I think, a lot more commendable that the sort of hype that appears almost daily about how rich we’re meant to be. (See here for today’s specimen.)*De Valera saw the potential threat of Eoin O’Duffy’s somewhat ludicrous Blueshirts and prevented a potential coup d’etat. So his overlong tenure did, actually, have some positive aspects.