Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Abbiamo esaurito il credito all'estero

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/24/goodbye-noughties-italy-rightwing-racist
I've changed my mind about ItalyMy love affair with Italy is over.
The romance is dead. Now I see the country for what it is: rightwing,
racist and corrupt
Martin Kettle 
guardian.co.uk
, Thursday 24 December 2009 15.00 GMT
I had been wondering how to begin this piece explaining why I have
changed my mind about Italy, why over the last decade I have become
increasingly indignant about a country and culture that used to
delight me so much, and why I now almost do not care if I ever set
foot in the place again. But I need not have worried, a Guardian story
gave me my cue.
John Hooper's report from Coccaglio near Brescia brought together much
of what is wrong with modern Italy in one seasonal package, all
perfectly presented in extravagant wrapping paper and tied up with a
great bow in the way that only Italians can manage. Christmas in
Coccaglio, Hooper reports, is being marked by a house-to-house search
for illegal (ie black) immigrants. The search, which is sponsored by
the local Northern League-controlled council, has officially been
dubbed Operation White Christmas and finishes, ho ho ho, on 25
December. One Coccaglio councillor has said Christmas is a feast of
Christian identity, not a celebration of hospitality. The whole
crackdown has been complimented and backed by Silvio Berlusconi's
government.
As a northern European, I grew up with a northern European's readiness
to have a love affair with Italy. It had warmth instead of cold,
brightness instead of dark, extroversion instead of introversion,
passion instead of repression. To go to Italy, as I did most years for
a large part of my life, was somehow to be released into a world of
the senses, where the heart ruled the head, where beauty replaced
ugliness and where easygoing moral naturalness replaced all the
buttoned-up severity of the protestant world. As I got older I became
more interested in the language, the art, the history and of course
the opera and the women. I became fascinated by the politics too. The
Italian left seemed to possess a uniquely learned and subtle way of
looking at its country and the world. It offered a beguiling
combination of socialism and style. In Bologna they seemed to have
invented the perfect modern city, combining intellectual dynamism,
excellent local government and some of the best cooking in Europe.
Like others of my generation, I lapped it all up and wondered why we
in Britain could not be more like Italians.
That was a long time ago. I see things differently now. The easy thing
to say would be to blame it all on Berlusconi, on his grotesquery, his
corruption, his shamelessness and his racism – and of course to some
extent I do. As George W Bush did to the global standing of the US, so
Berlusconi has done to that of Italy. But with this big difference: at
least the rise of Bush made possible the eventual corrective rise of
Barack Obama. On the contrary, the rise of Berlusconi seems only to
feed itself and to propel Italy ever faster down the track of media-
dominated, media-controlled politics. I sometimes fear this may be our
future in Britain too, if we do not watch out. My Christmas quiz to
readers is this. Who would be the British Berlusconi?
Back to Italy. When British observers looked at the US a decade ago
and asked how could they elect someone like Bush, there was at least a
fairly clear psephological answer to their question (and it was not
simply the obvious retort in 2000 that they didn't elect him).
Americans elected Bush twice because American voters, especially white
male American voters, tend to be culturally and politically more
rightwing than white male voters in most of Europe.
We must ask a similar question about Italians. How could they elect
someone like Berlusconi, and then do it again, and then do it a third
time? They do so, I suspect, for much the same psephological reasons
as Americans chose someone like Bush. Look back over 150 years of
Italian history and you have long periods of rightwing rule, each
followed by a short period of catastrophe and then by a reassertion of
the right. Italy has never been the liberal Eden that progressive
Europeans sometimes delude themselves into imagining it to be. It is
actually a majority rightwing country. It is a much more corrupt, smut-
driven, racist and lawless country than the middle-class tourists,
armed with their EM Forster fantasies and seeing only what they want
to see, imagine. Coccaglio is not merely a corrective to this. It is
the way Italy is. Forget the Italy of Dante. Forget the Italy of
Verdi. Forget the Italy of your fantasies. Welcome to the Italy that
calls a raid on migrants Operation White Christmas, to the Italy that
says the American president has a good sun tan – and to the Italy that
then sniggers about it.

 I've changed my mind about Italy
mi capita di stare in un posto in cui il 90% dei presenti sono inglesi
e il 90% degli inglesi presenti legge il Guardian. Ho parlato di
politica italiana con un sacco di gente. Nessuno ha prestato molta
attenzione a questo articolo, che a quanto pare non ha cambiato un
granche' l'opinione che i lettori del Guardian hanno di Berlusconi e
dell'Italia. Che comunque era bassa (anche se non bassa quanto quella
che ne ho io). In breve, nel patetico tentativo di apparire uomo di
mondo, Cr"cetta ha perso un' altra occasione per tacere.

racist and corrupt
dedicato a Zaccaria:
Italy has never been the liberal Eden that progressive Europeans sometimes 
delude themselves into imagining it to be. It is actually a majority 
rightwing country. It is a much more corrupt, smut-driven, racist and 


 Am.
anche in questo caso starei ben vigile....parola d'ordine "stella rossa" 
:-)) 

 profonda.
ahim�
tuttavia farei notare che trattasi dell'opinione, appunto, della Francia 
*profonda*.
Invece in Italia � quella dell'italiano medio.

 Perche', esiste un italiano profondo?
profondissimo
se guardi dentro ti ci perdi

 mondo, Cr"cetta ha perso un' altra occasione per tacere.
con questa sbroccata Nahum ha dimostrato oltre ogni ragionevole dubbio
chi è il malato tra lui e quello a cui risponde.