Jun 15 2009
Italian fascists are pushing back and they are not too far
Sorry to have such a eye-catching title, but that’s not cool, way not cool.
After coming back from a nice business week in Italy, once again appreciating the good weather, people and food of my city, Rome, I sadly had once again to see how my beloved home country, Italy, is going in a direction I really was fearing.
Recently, Berlusconi’s Italian government has started the legalization process for a best practice of Italian of Fascism: during those 20 years, self organized fascist citizen patrols were referred as “squadre” for a phenomenon called “squadrismo”, meaning having a sort of non military vigilantes all around the Italian territory. Those phenomenon shortly lead to the diffusion of Blackshirts which performed politic cleaning, opening the road for the state Fascism and the march on Rome.
The government, constantly leveraging old racist fears, was almost forced by Lega Nord (the secessionist north Italy party) to legalize local “Ronde” (patrols) by the so called “Camicie Verdi” (green shirts), which are mainly northern Lega Nord followers who desire to promote some old fashioned self social security model.
But what has convinced me it was the time to post about what was just a dangerous and annoying thought until now, is the fact that the Italian National Guard (very similar to Mussolini’s Italian National Republic Guard), a neo-fascist NPO managed by ex-convicted characters and ex-army figures is claiming to have at least 2k people ready to be sent in the street in complete legality when the new security law will complete its approval process going back to the Senate.
It does not take a genious to see where this is going: Berlusconi already had a 5 years bullet-proof legislation in which he consolidated media control and economic power, now it’s time wants to complete his masterpiece, Italy under his complete power, before the end of this one. Not that I was not expecting it, maybe I was just not expecting it to happen so fast.
I don’t think I’m an alarmist here saying that we need to do something for our country, Italy, and especially if you live abroad like me, this can be very difficult if we approach it in the classical italian way: each one on his own, and let’s hope in a better future. We need to create a critical communication mass to tell the world what’s actually going on in Italy, have international attention on the topic so that this and the many other neo-con and neo-fascist activities of this government are stopped.
I really see not that much difference from what’s going on in Italy and what happened so many times in the past and all over the world: Berlusconi might be a bit more charmy and wearing italian clothes, but, world, don’t let yourself fooled. He’s just a very smart guy, doing his own interest and driving
I’m sure Mr. Obama won’t , in the day of Berlusconi’s visit to the White House, he should ask him something like :
How come, Mr.Berlusconi, you’re trying to legalize and re-create that fascist movement my country has spent so many lives for helping you in eradicating it?
In general, everyone Italian and foreigner, should ask himself:
what is the big difference between what’s going on in Italy and the pattern we have learned from history on how most dictatorships have begun?
Sorry but I can’t see any: here we have media control, fear based politics (communists or immigrates or you tell me the next one), army deployed all over italy (for security reasons), now we also have legal Fascist “squadre” that in a short time are going to give you a warm welcome when you go to Italy.
A refreshing touch of history, back to the latest dark age of our country. A blog post is the least anyone should do (still searching for something more effective) to spread this message, raise critics and move public opinion towards a modern view of society, instead of digging in too-recent-to-be-forgotten extreme political measures.
I’m seriously worried.
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