2 Responses to ““Ethnic Cleansing” in Italy”  

1. 1 bergamo May 17th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

   This statement is so articulate and thought provoking that one is at a loss to finding anything to comment.
   Just to set things straight though:
   1. I do not see how the govts of France and Spain can be placed alongside Italy. After all, Sarko can even boast of two ministers from the ex-French colonies, and Zapatero is certainly no racist. In Italy’s government we have small time crooks, mafiosi, women who became ministers by merit of their tits, but, so far as I am aware, no “foreigner, no Muslim”, only old men, of impeachable Christian credentials (whatever that means, since a divorce, serial marital betrayal, cheating and stealing are not seen to tarnish these credentials)
   2. In Italy, the government is less racist than the people in the streets. Ask anyone and he will tell you Italy would be a better place if we could get rid of all these meteques. Since Italy is, as everyone knows, a country that has preserved her ethnic purity (every European people and a few from the Arab world have invaded it, but they did not mix with the local population, as everybody knows), and she is a country that never sent her people abroad (so much so that more Italians live abroad than in the peninsula), we have all the reasons to be racist.
   3.But let’s be serious. Italy is in dire trouble. We are losing out to other European and non European countries in sofar as prosperity is concerned. And we have lost hope that this political system will ever be able to pull us out of this decline. Youth know that they will never attain the standards of living of their fathers, unless their father is a professional, industrialist or politicians. Every Italian knows that merit no longer pays. Good people leave Italy in large numbers.
   So you see, in a situation where we know things are going down and we know they will not improve in our lifetimes, the temptation to identify scapegoats is strong. The anger of Italians has been building for decades. It must vent itself. Against whom? Against the “Communists” of which a couple of thousand are left, and this causes the left to lose badly the latest elections. And against “foreigners”, rom, Muslim, Romanian, etc. who are seen to cause this decline instead of helping slow it down, as is the case.
   We Italians are not naturally racist. We are generally inclined to kindness and tolerance. What these recent events prove is that even kind people, if pushed to the extreme, cam become xenophobic and violent. We have to be careful that this is not the first step back to fascism.

2. 2 Simon Columbus May 18th, 2008 at 1:02 am

   Have to say I don’t understand were the Spanish government proved to be extraordinarily racist. Didn’t they pardon hundreds of thousands of “illegal” immigrants, i.e.?

   Think the Russian government definitely had to be on the list, Blocher in Switzerland isn’t far from it, too, and many Eastern European countries are anything but an immigrants paradise.