Also pictured in a bathing suit is Matteo Salvini, Italy's far-right deputy prime minister and minister of the interior. Salvini's is one of the loudest voices blaming Italy's troubles on an "invasion" of "illegal immigrant" "slaves," and he has openly consorted with neo-fascists, who are not hard to find in Italy. The bare-chested photo was part of Settimanale Nuovo's fawning feature about Salvini's summer vacation, which also included shots of the bearded Bannonite playing pinball in a T-shirt proclaiming "Offence best defence," grinning over a "Pranzo all'italiana" (a lunch of tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella), and taking a selfie "smiling beside a regular [that is, not illegal] immigrant."
I enjoyed the magazine's marital advice column written by a priest (shocker: he advocates staying together no matter what) and the story about two long-in-the-tooth pop stars who've both moved on to much younger partners. Now he wants to annul their long-dead marriage so he can marry his new sweetie in a church, and she's refusing because "I don't want to declare a lie."
But speaking of fascists, a few pages later I came on a gossip piece about Benito Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra, also a far-right politician ("la pasionaria della destra"), also shown in a swimsuit, which makes me grateful that right-wing publications in the U.S. aren't displaying Trump in a Speedo. The article about La Mussolini focused on the fact that her husband, the head of the Italian state rail system, was convicted of buying sex from two underage prostitutes and sentenced to a slap-on-the-wrist year in prison. Photos showed the couple in swimwear on a beach vacation, and in one shot he is kissing her but she doesn't look like she's responding. "Frost on the beach," says the headline. The story reports that she's staying with him only "in nome dell'unita familiare" ("in the name of family unity"). "Forgive my husband?" she said. "What, are we crazy? You live, you don't forgive."
We've all been reminded recently that some supermarket tabloids in the U.S. have a right-wing agenda, and perhaps I inadvertently picked up an Italian tabloid with the same sort of tilt. Or maybe fascism is more mainstream here.
Fidenza is in what used to be called Italy's Red Belt, because of the one-time predominance of the Communist Party and other left parties in the area. In recent years Fidenza, like many Italian cities, has seen major influxes of immigrants from the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent, which as I've written before has turned this little town into a much more cosmopolitan place. I'd hoped that most people here saw this as a plus, and that the area's left-wing past meant that Salvini's Lega and other, similarly nativist right-wing parties didn't have much of a presence.
However, the other day we went to get a key made at a little hardware store near us. It is a funny little place, the kind of store where you can buy one nail (fished out of a bin) or a single scraper blade. While we were waiting for the proprietor to make our key, I noticed the calendar hanging on the wall right next to the counter.
Yes, that's Mussolini scowling in the foreground, and the slogan "Italy to the Italians," and below, in smaller type, a famous quote of Il Duce's: "We dream of a Roman Italy, wise and strong, disciplined and imperial."
We paid for our key and left, and we won't be going back. But I suddenly saw our street through the eyes of someone who might buy a calendar like that, saw all the changes, all the dark-skinned people and their children, the halal stores and the saris. To some the changes may indeed look frightening and unfair, and the fantasy of Italy in the good old days of Mussolini may have appeal, the days when they built the town swimming pool and everyone looked the same and Italy had its own (albeit small) empire of far-off people of color it was entitled to oppress.
And I wonder what we've gotten ourselves into.
1 comment:
If it's true that there is a 25% unemployment rate for young people, and a persistent housing shortage, why would they be ecstatic about welcoming thousands of new, mostly poor people?
We can thank Hillary for pushing the bombing of Libya which has impelled thousands of Libyans trying to get to Italy-and thousands drowning in the Med.
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