I know a quite considerable number of clever, balanced Italians, and I also believe that there are millions more out there. Tragically none of them seem to show the slightest inclination to get involved in their country’s political process, which is left to people like Berlusconi, who, while not a new class of José Antonios as semi-literate Guardian hacks would have us believe, are clearly unfit for democratic politics. The trouble is that their public critics are frequently just as bad, if not worse. In L’espresso I occasionally read Giorgio Bocca, who rants (for example) from a “leftish” perspective re the dangers posed to freedom by his bête noire, Berlusconi. Yet this is a man who has never explained if and when he renounced the beliefs of his youth, when he attacked Mussolini from a Hitlerian, which is to say social fascist and anti-Semitic, perspective, before, in the nick of time, joining the communists. In common with other anti-money campaigners, he has rebranded his then Jewish conspiracy as a globalisation conspiracy, but I don’t think many will be convinced. If Rome does not, as his racial interpretation of Italian history implies, expire by her own vices, then it will be little thanks to Bocca and his like.
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I’m victim of a global title field typo conspiracy.
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I’m still not convinced by your dismissal of the Guardianista explanation of ‘Falange’. Nothing Berlusconi said made him sound like he didn’t mean that and, let’s face it, it’s extremely unlikely that he wasn’t aware of the dubious mixed message he would be conjuring by using that word.
At best, he was guilty of sounding like a dick… but I’ll bet he knew exactly how some people would take it: that’s how he thinks.