Tuesday, April 11, 2006
No, Sei Il Coglione
After having been threatening Rachele - who went home to vote - with the spectre of 1992 for the past month or so, it seems, however close it came to that, Berlusconi has lost. Just, but he has lost. Prodi's Coalition seems likely, unless something spectacular happens in the recounts, to hold both Houses of the Legislature, thanks to a little help from overseas voters. Surely the first thing on their schedule has to be dismantling Berlusconi's corrupt and corrupting media empire, something the left singularly failed to do last time it was in power. Not only would this morally the right thing to do, but it would also be politically expedient, since about the only thing which seriously unites Prodi's Coalition is hatred of Berlusconi, and would thus both help hold the Coalition together, whilst seriously damaging its opponents. Whatever else though, thank f*ck! The end, to mangle Baldwin's attack on Lord Rothermere, of rule by the prerogative of the harlot.
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8 comments:
We might all be coglioni, and have got rid of him for the time being, but it doesn't feel as good as it should...half the country still voted for him, which is quite embarassing.
Rachele - more CdL voters didn't vote for Berlusconi than did (23.7% FI out of 49.7%). That contrasts with the Unione vote (31.3% Ulivo out of 49.8%). I also think the Right is in a worse mess than the Left - Casini and Fini were openly criticising Berlusconi before the election, so it's doubtful that they'll want to fall into line with his single-party project.
Phil,
on the other hand, instead they voted for the reonstructed fascists, some presumably rather dodgy ex-Christian Democrats, and a quasi-racist separatist party (the Lega apparently picked up a seat in Sicily, according to the Repubblica website: WTF?), so it's hardly all roses. Doesn't really look good either way.
I know even less about Italian politics than Britain or America, but in the eyes of all Italians I know (about three) this seems to be the right result, so their travels to vote weren't in vain... Though it was narrow, and I think I heard Berlusconi was going to challenge it.
I take Phil's point and appreciate his efforts to comfort me.
Rob, as I said yesterday, I find the fascist votes less objectionable: I don't think their voters are all actual fascists, there's a lot of people there who just wanted to vote for the right and not for the banana dictator.
Ben, I guess my travels were not in vain but it would have felt better if the margin had been bigger...
I don't see Alleanza Nazionale as fascist any more, although it's difficult to say exactly what they are. Certainly if I were an Italian fascist sympathiser I'd find a lot of what AN now stands for quite hard to swallow - as well as denouncing anti-semitism (which, admittedly, was never a big part of Italian Fascism) Fini has repudiated both Mussolini's regimes, and persistently refused to endorse either Bossi's overt racism or Berlusconi's moments of fasciophilia. The best description I've seen of AN's current programme is that they want to achieve the goals of Fascism within a constitutional framework: democratic fascism, you could say...
It's complicated. To say that the AN aren't fascist - or that they've been a moderating influence on Berlusconi and Bossi, or that these days they're competing primarily with the ex-Christian Democrats - makes it sound as if they're just another political party, and I don't think the anti-fascist alert status should be dropped quite that far: they have some really unpleasant policies, after all. On the other hand, I do think those three statements are true.
As for Sicily, that's the result of a bizarre lash-up between the Lega and Raffaele Lombardo's Sicilian autonomist party. I'm not sure where Lombardo comes from - ex-DC, probably. So the Lega's vote is actually even weaker than it looked.
It's not nearly as good as a result as it should have been - I said before the result came out that it would be deeply embarrassing if Prodi had a working majority thanks to Calderoli's legge truffa, and so it is. But it's a better result than the alternative.
Phil,
as I said to Rachele yesterday, I find it rather difficult to get past a generalised dislike of fascists, even reconstructed mostly ex-fascists. This quite probably isn't the most sophisticated view when applied to AN, and maybe I'd feel differently if I knew anything much about them beyond that they are the ex-fascists. Is Lega-Sicilian autonomist alliance one of pure convenience, or are the Lega getting all an Italy of the Regions?
Rhetorically, yes, but I don't think it goes very deep - they still hate Southerners (but then, they hate just about everybody). At most it's a "you go your way and we'll go ours" mentality.
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