I changed my mind about Italy
Article Company culture and religion, published Thursday, December 24, 2009 in Great Britain.
[The Guardian]
My love affair with Italy is over. The romance is gone. Now I see the country for what it really is: a racist, right-wing and corrupt.
I have long wondered how to start this article that explains why I changed my mind about Italy, why in the last decade, my anger has grown more and more towards a country and a culture that delighted me so much, and why now I do not care for next to nothing if one day I will return to set foot on that land. But I should not worry, an article published by the Guardian has given me the inspiration.
's reportage on Coccaglio John Hooper, a town near Brescia, collects most of what is wrong in modern Christmas in a box, packed with very special gift card and closed with a beautiful bow as only the Italians know how to do . Hooper tells us how the Christmas Coccaglio is marked by a survey conducted house to house to flush out illegal immigrants (ie blacks). The roundup, sponsored by the local council controlled by the Northern League, was officially dubbed Operation White Christmas and ends, oh oh oh, December 25. An adviser to Coccaglio said that Christmas is a celebration of the Christian, not a celebration of hospitality. The whole operation was welcomed and supported by the government of Silvio Berlusconi.
Being a northern European, I grew up with the northern European propensity to fall in love with Italy, a country where there is warm instead of cold, light instead of darkness, extraversion rather than introversion, passion instead of repression. Visiting Italy, as I did for a while 'years of my life meant to enter the world of the senses, in a place where the heart gets the better of the brain, where beauty takes the place of ugliness, and where the naturally loose and tolerant buttoned replaces the severity of the Protestant world. Over the years I became interested in language, art, history, and of course work and women. I was fascinated by politics. The Italian left seemed to have his own way, learned and insightful at the same time, to see the world and your country. It was an appealing combination of socialism and style. It seemed to me to have invented the modern city Bologna perfect combination of intellectual dynamism, local administration and some extraordinary examples of the best cuisine in Europe. Like many others of my generation, I drank all that and wondered why we English might not look like a little 'more to the Italians.
But that was long ago. Now I see things differently. It would be easy to throw all the blame on Berlusconi, on his grotesque personality, its corruption, its lack of shame and its racism, and to a certain point, of course, I do. What George W. Bush has done for the worldwide reputation of the United States, Berlusconi has done to the reputation of Italy. However, there is a big difference: the rise of Bush has made possible the rise of Barack Obama's final remedy. So opposite, the rise of Berlusconi seems self-sustaining and Italy seems to bring more and more towards a controlled and dominated by the media. Sometimes I fear that this is our future in the United Kingdom if we are not careful. My Christmas quiz for readers is this: Who would be the British Berlusconi?
Back in Italy. When the English observers watched the United States a decade ago and wondered how they had made to elect someone like Bush, there was at least psefologica a clear answer to their question (which was not simply the obvious answer that in 2000 they had elected). The Americans chose Bush twice because American voters, especially white males, tend to be both culturally and politically to the right of voters and white males in most of Europe.
We have to ask a similar question about Italians. How could they elect Berlusconi, do it a second time and then a third? They did, I suspect, for the same reasons psefologiche of Americans who chose Bush. The past 150 years of Italian history, we see long periods of right-wing government, followed by a short period of disasters and, subsequently, a reaffirmation of the right. Italy has never been liberal in that paradise sometimes delude themselves progressives in Europe. In reality it is a country where there is a right-wing majority. It is much more corrupt, depraved, racist and anarchist as tourists, middle-class, full of fantasies inspired by EM Forster and see only what they want to see, they can imagine. Coccaglio is not merely a corrective to all this. Italy is well. Forget Dante's Italy. Forget the Italy of Verdi. Forget your fantasies of Italy. Welcome to down a raid in the Italian immigrants 'Operation White Christmas', in Italy stating that the U.S. President has a nice tan, then the same Italy that also puts a giggle about these things.
[Original article "I've changed my mind about Italy "by Martin Kettle]
