Postcards from my mind

Silvio Berlusconi enjoyed a comprehensive victory in the Italian elections held on April 14 and 15, as Italians voted en masse for his Partito della Libertà or Popolo della Libertà – they don’t seem to be able to make their minds up over which name to use – made up of Berlusconi’s own baby Forza Italia, the ex-neofascists of Alleanza Nazionale and the anti-immigrant party the Lega Nord.

The success of the Lega Nord was the real surprise of the Italian elections winning 8.3% of the national vote to become the country’s third biggest party. The Lega Nord per l’Indipendenza della Padania is a relatively young political party – it was founded in 1989. Its raison d’être is to secure fiscal independence from Rome and ultimately the secession of the northern regions of Italy from the rest of the country.

The Lega’s unprecedented electoral success can be largely attributed to its anti-immigrant stance. Up until twenty years ago Italy was a country whose contemporary history was punctuated by emigration rather than immigration. However, today Italy has an ever increasing immigrant population of approximately 4.9 million.

The Italian media cultivates a culture of fear and the majority of crimes reported are those carried out by or attributed to members of the growing immigrant community. Two years ago it was Albanians who were the primary targets of media scapegoating but since the signing of the Schengen accords they have scaled the immigration ladder with attention firmly focused on the rapidly growing Romanian community.

The Lega’s election campaign was characterized by base anti-immigrant rhetoric, e.g. one poster depicted a Native American chief with the slogan: ‘He let immigrants in, and now he lives on a reserve.’ While the Lega has long claimed that it isn’t a racist party its leader, Umberto Bossi, has called Africans ‘Bingo-bongos’ and suggested firing on boats carrying illegal immigrants to Italy while a Lega councillor called for separate train carriages for foreigners.

Rolling headlines leading up to the election such as ‘ROME: SECURITY ALERT’, only helped to increase the level of tension in a country that is suffering not only its worst economic crisis in fifty years but also a general malaise at the state it’s in. And while there have been a number of high profile rape cases perpetrated by Romanian nationals in the last year, according to the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, 69.7% of rape cases in Italy are carried out by the victim’s partner while 17.4% of rapists are someone the victim already knew. But the Italian media primarily seems concerned with the foreign nationals who form part of the 6.2% of rapists who didn’t know their victim.

The Lega’s tactics worked a treat as the election results testify. Ironically Italy has the second lowest birth rate in the Western World (1.23 children per woman) and if this trend continues the steadily growing influx of foreign workers (primarily Romanians and Albanians) will become the backbone not only of the Italian economy but of the Italian community. Already migrant workers provide cheap manual labour especially in the building industry and as home care workers providing support to the elderly. Often illegal and exploited, migrant workers provide the work force for many of the small businesses which make the Lega Nord’s strongholds of Veneto and Lombardia so wealthy.

Following the elections I was really pissed off. It’s difficult for me to understand how the Lega Nord is an acceptable part of political life for many Italians. Although I have an EU passport and can’t claim to understand what it’s like to be what is referred to here as extracomunitaro - this is the name that Italians give to anyone from outside the EU, well anyone who is not white, rich and English speaking like the Americans, Australians etc. – but as a foreigner living in Italy the victory of the Lega and its potential bargaining power in the new Italian government was weighing heavily on my soul. So I did what any normal citizen would do and searched out some solace in the chewing gum for the brain that is Facebook.

Having previously vented my spleen about having to write the ‘What are doing right now’ bit in Facebook in the third person, I decided to put this function to good use by adding ‘Pat wishes that the Lega Nord would go and fuck themselves’ before logging out. A succinct and to the point summation of my feelings at the time.

Coming back from a lunch spent failing miserably trying to cheer up my Italian workmates who were all deeply depressed following Berlusconi’s election victory, the numb anger that has sporadically filled my veins since I was a child whenever I feel accosted by injustice began pumping through me. Again I succumbed to drowning my sorrows in the leech on life otherwise known as Facebook.

To my surprise, when I logged there were adverts at the bottom of the page for the Lega Nord’s Facebook group. Curiosity got the better of me and after resisting the temptation to join the group and tell them to andare a quell paese, I decided to have a look around. Unsurprisingly the group was littered with goodwill messages and the occasional racist remark from the Lega’s Web 2.0 population. A large number of these young Padanians (hardcore Lega supporters don’t see themselves as Italian but as padani ) had left their beloved homeland to search their fortune elsewhere. Sadly studying and living overseas didn’t seem to have helped open their minds to the fact that the history of mankind has always been based on patterns of migration.

From the Lega Nord’s Facebook group I followed a link to the official website of the giovani padani or young padanians. The first thing that struck me as odd was the picture of Mel Gibson in Braveheart in the top corner. What the hell does William Wallace have to do with northern Italy I thought to myself? I tried a logical appraoch:  I remembered that the Lega Nord claims that northern Italians are not a Latin but a Celtic people, with Senator Roberto Calderoli even getting married in a pagan ceremony. But what really struck me was finding that the giovani padani have taken two of my fellow Irishmen to their bosom: Michael Collins and Bobby Sands.

No matter what anyone’s personal view of these two figures may be either historically or politically, what the hell have they got to do with the Lega Nord I asked myself. An attempt to create links between two so-called ‘Celtic’ peoples? Nostalgia for that trip they made to Ireland with school when they were fifteen? A soft spot for a pint of the black stuff?

My brain was bombarding me with too many ideas at once creating a cerebral experience akin to the Star Gate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Gathering my thoughts I decided that I couldn’t give a fuck if the Lega wanted to hijack the complete annals of Irish history for their own aims, they wouldn’t be the first, or even if they all claim Irish passports. The only thing that was clear to me was that the everything the Lega stands for was anathema to me.