More of the same

There is a coalition that has governed a country for 7 of the last 9 years, dominated the political agenda for the other 2, presided over a stagnating economy and a massive arrival of immigrants, its leader facing countless trials and sex allegations, substantiated by audio tapes that clearly link him to dodgy situations. There is a xenophobic party – playing second fiddle in this coalition - managed as a fiefdom by its rabble-rousing founder, flirting periodically with the idea of taking the country out of the euro, and repeatedly showing that general culture is not among the criteria to select its members.

In a moment when the economical crisis is still biting hard, immigrants are blamed for everything that goes wrong and taxes don't decrease as promised, what did the voters choose, in the regional elections held this week? More of the same, of course. The country being Italy, this translates in an electoral victory for PM Silvio Berlusconi, and even more for the second pillar in his coalition, Northern League's Umberto Bossi. Whose son, 21-year-old Renzo, has just won a seat – with the highest number of votes in his town – in Lombardy's regional council. Despite having failed twice – and scraped through on the third time – high school's final exam.

Italians happy with the present economic situation of the country are hard to find, unless you believe the government propaganda. I believe that even if you ask the average Berlusconi or Bossi voter if they are optimistic about the future, most of them will say they're not. Yet, they keep voting for the duo that has shaped Italy's politics for the last 10 years. The Northern League is stronger than ever, since its foundation over 20 years ago. Berlusconi is holding on thanks to his ally; but he can still claim over a quarter of the national vote, and be cheered by supporters when he utters nonsense slogans like “we are the Party of love, the other are only envious and hateful”. Somebody should tell that to Renzo Bossi, who last year developed a Facebook apps called “Bounce the illegal immigrant back” (to the sea).

There are plenty of reasons for this situation, all of them are valid – and I will discuss them in future posts. The opposition, after being battered time after time, still just doesn't get it. Apathy is spreading among centre-left voters. Berlusconi censors opposing voices in the media. But what this bizarre correlation – the country goes to the dogs, hail to the chief! - makes more evident, in my opinion, is the increasing disconnection of Italians from reality/rest of Europe/the world. And it's all part of the plan.

A provincial, uneducated, scoffing-on-culture, egoistic, scared-of-immigrants population wants a strong man to rule. Policies are too complicated: He knows how to do it for you. Those who disturb Him – judges, do-good leftists - are defeatists, enemy of the country. Foreign media criticizing Him – even conservative ones! - are only envious because your food is better than theirs. Immigrants take your jobs. Chinese are shifty and never die. Communists are always around, but until He's around they are luckily unable to harm you.

Not that in the past we were all Nobel laureates. But values were different. You would control yourself in public, instead of spewing racing insults and laugh about it. You would be uncomfortable about your lack of culture. You would work hard to reach a better position. But day after day, in the last 20 years, the importance of all this has been eroded by the media of you-know-who.

After decades of a stolid, self-censored Catholic cultural industry, the audience was receptive. The collapse of the old political order gave space to a tycoon-turned-politician who “says things as they are”. And still owns the media system, giving you light programmes, where fame and money are the key values, and sensible reasoning is impossible to formulate – someone will shout over you anyway, “saying things as they are”. Your leader speaks to the guts, not to your head. You don't need the latter: He thinks for you. And if you vote with the guts, when the world is a scary place, you vote for who promises to protect you from the dangers.

A call to sycophants

Every Italian living abroad, sooner or later, has to face the question “how come Berlusconi is still in power?”. The usual answers (control of TV channels, charisma, populistic appeal to the masses, his it's-ok-not-to-pay-taxes attitude, his macho allure, the use of his multi-billionaire wealth in electoral campaigns... and there's more) are well documented.

Plenty of books have been written on all this. Still, usually those who asked the question remain perplexed. Ever more so when you tell them that the country is sinking economically and morally, but if Italy was to vote tomorrow, Berlusconi would be likely to win again.

Among expats, the lack of hope in the future is palpable. The best and brightest leave. Many, among whose who stay, adapt by following the mother of all Italian justifications against whistle-blowing: “Tengo famiglia” - I have a family, therefore I'm not such a fool to go against the flow.

The last example came yesterday. Writing the final word on David Mills, a British lawyer convicted of corruption for his services in trials involving Berlusconi's dodgy financial holdings, the Corte di Cassazione ruled a sentence of "prescription": that means Mills committed the crime, but as it was too long ago, it is no longer punishable. Berlusconi, it goes without saying, didn't waste a second before attacking the magistrates who had worked on the case.

And how was the news reported? Mostly correctly. But the TG1, the 30-minutes news program on the main state channel, said twice that Mills had been “acquitted”. Innocent, then. Didn't do anything wrong. Berlusconi had been again smeared for political reasons. Now, normally these judicial cases don't move a single vote – those who follow them are already rabid anti-Berlusconites, the “silent majority” doesn't bother. But the silenty majority follows the TG1 as a dinner-time tradition. And Italy, remember, is a country where 70 percent of the population get their news primarily from TV.

There's no shortage of sycophants in Italy, and the TG1 editor-in-chief Augusto Minzolini has proved again and again he's determined to lead the pack. And I suspect Paolo Di Giannantonio, the TG1 speaker who read the news, is more of a “tengo famiglia” type, then a die-hard Berlusconiano. I like to think that he's ashamed of himself, now.

So, I have a dream. That next time, Di Giannatonio or another lackey-type journalist in his position stops reading the news, stares at the camera, says that he's tired of having to lie in order to work, rips up his notes, tell the audience to wake up, and walks away in disgust. Showing some backbone would probably cost him his salary, but he would become a national hero for millions. I suspect some colleagues could follow. And then things would turn interesting.

The racism emergency

In less than one month, the following episodes happened in Italy:
- a 19-year-old Italian of Burkinian origin (he had lived in Italy since he was three) was clubbed to death in Milan by two shopkeepers, for allegedly stealing a packet of biscuits. While they were chasing and beating him, the killers repeatedly shouted negro di merda, “shitty nigger”
- a 22-year-old Ghanese was insulted and beaten by local police agents in Parma, who mistakenly exchanged him for a drug dealer out of the school where he attended evening courses. They also wrote “nigger” after his name on the envelope that notified his arrest.
- a 36-year-old Chinese man was assaulted and beaten by a group of five Italian teenagers in Rome, while he was waiting for a bus. The boys insulted him calling “cinese di merda”.

You would expect the government and local authorities to condemn these acts convincingly. They did (sort of), but always adding that those weren't hate crimes. The Berlusconi government, today with Internal Affairs minister Roberto Maroni, played down the “racism emergency”, as it's called by the media and the opposition. Hardly surprising, as the parties in goverment have played the “security” - aka “fear of immigrants” - card in the elections, and they are still portraying Italy as a country invaded by foreigners.
You don't have to be a one-world leftist to see a cause-effect relationship here. Can anybody in their right mind honestly believe that a white guy would have been clubbed to death, had he stolen some biscuits? Security has been the top issue in the media for the last eight months. Centre-right politicians – from the overtly xenophobic Northern League to the Neo-Fascists - are more popular than ever for their tough anti-immigration stance. When you feed the people with all this invasion/immigration claptrap, you foment their worst instincts. And when you deny that racism plays a role here, you condone these violent acts.
“Italians are not racist, they are brava gente, good people” is a too-often-heard sentence that has no meaning anymore. Maybe it used to be so, when immigrants were seldom to be found in a country with almost no colonial past. But in the last twenty years, Italy has seen its immigrant population soar. And in a country in economic and cultural decline, strangers are enemies. It'd take responsible political leadership to put together a national response, a “new Italian identity” for the 21st Century. But that's nowhere to be seen, at the moment.

Hardtalk journalism. But never in Italy

I watched with gusto yesterday's BBC Hardtalk, an interview with Franco Frattini. Italian politicians able to talk publicly in English are rare to be found. And Italy's Foreign Minister, despite some grammar mistakes and often-repeated sentences (such as "frankly speaking", "oh yesss", and a Roman accent quite evident when he went out of his script), talked his way through Stephen Sackur's usual grilling, managing (hardly) to keep his cool.

As I always do when I watch Hardtalk, I instinctively pick a winner, and this time it was the journalist, big time. Frattini's answers sounded shallow especially on immigration and Roma discrimination, too official, sometimes out of the context; and in some moments you would expect the minister to take off his smiling mask and start ranting at Sackur. But he didn't.

Anyway, while I was watching Hardtalk, I couldn't help but think that you don't see interviews like this in Italy. Political journalism here doesn't go further than putting a microphone under the politician's chin, while he looks at the camera and talks to the viewer (you can't blame them, actually: the journalist is useless, and his questions could be written by the politician's press office). Reporters who dare ask uncomfortable questions are treated by politicians like partisan, unprofessional journalists with a political agenda.

Two years ago, when he was the opposition leader, Silvio Berlusconi walked out of Lucia Annunziata's "Mezz'ora", a one-to-one interview clearly inspired by Hardtalk. Annunziata's questions were soft, by Sackur's standards, but that was more than enough for Berlusconi, who accused her of being biased. The saddest thing about that episode was the reaction of the people. While you could expect fellow politicians would defend Berlusconi, many Italians - even progressive-leaning ones - admitted they were uneasy with Annunziata's aggressive style. And the fact that Annunziata is actually more centre-left than centre-right (although radical leftists consider her too pro-American and conservative), in the eyes of many, prevented her from being "fair" to her guest. Therefore, whatever perfectly legitimate question she posed to Berlusconi, it was because she was biased. Following this way of thinking, it is the journalist who has to prove his guest he's fit to the role, not the other way round.

That's why they should broadcast yesterday's Hardtalk on Italian tv, with subtitles. Because you will never see Frattini grilled for half an hour by an Italian journalist. He simply wouldn't accept the invitation. And if he did, he would know he can call the journalist biased, when he's facing tough questions. Try do that with Stephen Sackur.