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Fascism is back

I really like Italy and Italian people in general and have visited the country on many occasions both for work and holidays. That doesn't make me an expert on all things Italian, and I guess my views are anecdotal at best, but in conversation with Italians over the years it seemed to me that many have what could best be described as fairly ambivalent view of Mussolini and the Fascist era. I find it interesting asking local people when such-and-such a piece of architecture, road or other civil engineering marvel was conceived and constructed - knowing full well what the answer was - and then gauging the different reactions and responses.
 
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From here in Italy, following the brief election campaign, it seemed that the Democratic Party was convinced they would lose, could not be bothered to do much about it. They completely lack the ideas and the personalities to capture the imagination of the voters. You got the feeling that winning or losing was all the same to them. On the other hand Meloni has intelligence, energy and "balls," knows how to talk to a crowd and make an impression. She is also "new" and a woman. The great problem will be the clowns she will have to put into her government, a few fascist nostalgics, certainly, but also the incompetent and the corrupt.
So the problem is not Meloni, but the others who should have been there and were not.
That is a recurring problem, seen in the US Democrats and the British Labour. "The center cannot hold; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity." Apparently center parties, in a period of normalcy, promote and encourage uncharismatic wonks, who are then ill-equipped to battle a corrupt fascist movement.
 
Are you taking the piss or do you really not know it is “hear, hear”?

Bravo. If you're a follower of the Fab Four or indeed Mutt & Jeff, it's 'Hear (!) There and Everywhere'.

Italian politics has been all over the place since the war. I don't think she'll advocate pasta pogroms and will turn out to be more to the right (whatever that means) than left. Even centrist is a bit right-wing for Italy. After Putin invading to oust the 'fascists', I think the term has lost its early/mid twentieth century connotations.

Anyway, small beer in the proliferation of global, climatic and economic situations changing the comparatively benign previous decades.
 
I’m not sure what’s happening any more, I cannot understand why there is such support for these parties and their polices given what history has taught us :(, are we doomed to repeat previous failures every few generations?.
History is slowly and surreptitiously revised to suit the purpose of the fanatic fringes. Think BrExit or Trump. And educate people as little as possible so that they can be more easily manipulated…
 
Italy seem to have an election every year so at least the current situation can change.

As always, you cannot really understand a country until you live there. Holidays & work visits never give the full picture.
 
Nice exchange on the OU tutor forum today:
In 1930 Hitler and the Nazis got 18% of the vote.

In 2022 in Sweden the Sweden Democrats got 20.5% and in Skane 30%

In 2022 in Italy (if exit polls are accurate) the Brothers of Italy party got 27%

Seriously scary times
To which another tutor replied:
Well I am delighted that Europe is starting to grow up and stand up against left wing liberalism and looking to protect some of its heritage.

This is nothing to do with imperialism, or expansionism just simply providing security for its children
Have to say that being part of that tutors forum has completely disabused me of the idea that the OU is overrun with radical lefties, but that post is as blatant a defence of the far-right as I have seen.

And it comes from a comfortably off, well-educated man, who faces precisely zero threat to his way of life.

Scary times indeed.
 
Nice exchange on the OU tutor forum today:

To which another tutor replied:

Have to say that being part of that tutors forum has completely disabused me of the idea that the OU is overrun with radical lefties, but that post is as blatant a defence of the far-right as I have seen.

And it comes from a comfortably off, well-educated man, who faces precisely zero threat to his way of life.

Scary times indeed.

Then they came for OU tutors
And there was no one left
To speak out for them
 
It's at times like these that I find myself re-reading Dorothy Thompson's 1941 essay, Who Goes Nazi? She was expelled from Germany in 1934, having written unfavourably about Hitler.

She suggests that we can expect born Nazis to act out their nature, but once the Nazis achieve power, others seem to join them. The essay speculates about which characters at a fictional soirée would 'go Nazi'. According to her theory, we all fit into one or other of "the types:

the born Nazis,
the Nazis whom democracy itself has created,
the certain-to-be fellow-travelers.
And [...] those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis."


When I first read it, I thought it was mostly a waspish bit of fun. But now I read it as deeply serious - a warning. It chills me. I know some of these people.
 
Nice exchange on the OU tutor forum today:

To which another tutor replied:

Have to say that being part of that tutors forum has completely disabused me of the idea that the OU is overrun with radical lefties, but that post is as blatant a defence of the far-right as I have seen.

And it comes from a comfortably off, well-educated man, who faces precisely zero threat to his way of life.

Scary times indeed.

Eaten by the CHAOS.
 
Meloni isn't the problem? I've seen her screaming demagoguery and it terrifies me. I have no doubt she's the real deal. I am deeply sad for Italy, a country I love. Then I think of Dario Fo and the old man in Milan circa 1990 who accused me of being a fascist because I was wearing a black shirt (I used to wear a lot of black, it was a fashion thing) and the people I used to party with and I still find a vestige of hope. But this is very, very ugly.
 
Italy seem to have an election every year so at least the current situation can change.

As always, you cannot really understand a country until you live there. Holidays & work visits never give the full picture.

I lived and worked in Milan for about six month. The server room had an espresso machine and the cafe we went to for lunch had Tenants Super on tap. My colleagues in the IT dept all came to work in Armani suits.

It was a wonderful place to live for a while. Being able to catch the train to Como at the weekend was a joy. I breakfasted every day on espresso and brioche next to the Duomo before strolling past La Scala to the office.

I still don't really understand Italy though : )
 


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