Italy

The **Italian Republic** is a country in Southern Europe founded in 1945 as successor to the Kingdom of Italy, founded in 1861. It is a socialist regime and a member of the ADC.

## HISTORY

### **1945-1994 ("First Republic")**

It is no secret that Italy, during the Cold War, was a place of polarization.

On one side, the strongest Communist Party and Left Wing in a NATO country, one that had written half the constitution, making it the most progressive constitution in the West, powerful trade unions, millions of former partisans. On the other hand, the only neo-fascist party to sit in a European parliament until 1983, the Italian Social Movement. Leaders of this movement included:

Rodolfo Graziani, formerly the governor of Libya, of Italian East Africa, head of the army in the Ethiopia War and several WWII campaigns, Minister of War of the Italian Social Republic, responsible for mass use of chemical warfare against Ethiopian civilians, mass repression of resistance and murder both in all of the colonies and Italy itself, for the deportation of half the population of Cirenaica into camps, killing a fourth of them, probably the worst war criminal in Italian history.

Junio Valerio Borghese, the Black Prince, he has a lot more names, because he was aristocratic, but we don’t give a crap about it. He was the commander of the Tenth MAS, a special unit responsible for some of the few big victories in the war, particularly the Alexandria Endeavor. Loyalist of Mussolini, condemned for repression of partisans, but saved by the Togliatti Amnesty.

Most importantly, Giorgio Almirante, director of La Difesa della Razza in the 1930ies, publisher of the Manifest of Race in 1938, to justify anti-Jewish laws, Minister of Culture of the Italian Social Republic. While not as spectacular as the other two, he was the perfect figure to give the MSI legitimacy by portraying it as a respectable party, while never denying his own fascist ideology, including advocating for military dictatorship in case of threat of bolshevism.

There were at least two planned coups, one in 1964 by the Carabinieri, military police, the Piano Solo, was used to intimidate the Socialist Party away from pushing vast economic reforms, another in 1970, organized by Borghese’s National Front (created to the end of a new dictatorship in 1967) in alliance with terrorist group Avanguardia Nazionale and a network of neo fascists inside the military, police, secret service and political apparatus, the Rosa dei Venti. The Golpe Borghese was however abandoned and discovered.

In these same years, Black Terrorism, particularly by Avanguardia Nazionale and Ordine Nuovo, really took off, most tragically with the Fontana Square Massacre of 1969, which was blamed on leftists.

While all of this went on, the Italian Communist Party faced change:

In 1965 Malenkov called for a summit with Mao, resulting in the Shanghai Conference of 1965 and the signing of the Global Anti-Imperialist Global Anti-Imperialist Proletarian Initiative by all marxist-leninist, baathist, panafrican movements and regimes positive to the two great powers. A big exception was the Indian National Congress, which remained only an observary for Mao’s hostility, while new PCI GS Luigi Longo joined.

Problems only really started in the Years of Lead, during the secretery of Enrico Berlinguer.Proletarian Initiative by all marxist-leninist, baathist and pan african movements and countries linked to the two great powers. The Indian National Congress joined only as observers due to Mao's hostility, while new GS Luigi Longo was present.

Real problems took off in the Years of Lead, under the secretary of Enrico Berlinguer. In 1969, with massacres in Milan, an age of political terrorism had begun  in Italy, and in 1970 the Red Brigades, a far left terrorist group, had appeared on the scene. Unlike the far right terrorists, who had the support of people in the elite and purposefully engaged in massacres of dozens of civilians, the brigatisti focused on kidnapping or murdering powerful figures, belonging to the military, police, judiciary or political establishment, and thus enjoyed much greater popularity and were seen by some as proud warriors, rather than as terrorists. And It wasn't just violent action either, since 1968 there had been thousands of collectives, students' associations, all-encompassing activism, on the Right but especially on the Left. A new party, Democrazia Proletaria, was later established by boomer leftists that stood on the left of the PCI, encompassing mainly maoists, ecosocialists but also a minority of trotskyists.

Mao supported the violent line, while Shelepin had to be more neutral as to not to provoke the West too much, the PCI adopted thus a line of formal condemnation of the violence, while not really acting to oppose it, they argued the Brigades would only stop if the demands of the working class were met.

Relations between Berlinguer and Shelepin were difficult, the two didn't see eye to eye, the Italian leader was considered moderate and revisionist, while Berlinguer feared the USSR's covert supply of Red Brigades, as well as other similar groups like the German RAF (this support was unknown, though speculated, to the public, but the leaders of the parties, as well as the CIA and secret services, knew at least partially about them), would cause tensions and risk to destroy the reputation of the PCI if the Brigades did something stupid but the two nonetheless collaborated. Berlinguer had a very different vision from both the hyper-revolutionary Mao and the pragmatic revolutionary Shelepin, he had a vision for what he defined as a Socialist Society Adapted to Italian Conditions (insert meme on dengism, and consequently on Albert Speer and The New Order mod), summed up in his quote "We want to uphold all the liberties established by our constitution, except one: the liberty to exploit the labor of another, for that liberty consumes and destroys all the others.".

A key figure, even more than Berlinguer, in the turning point of Italian politics was Aldo Moro:

Former socialist turned christian democrat, Moro remained nonetheless an exponent of the left part of the party. A staunch anti-fascist and progressive, he had been prime minister first at the head of a center-left government from 1963 to 1968, then again from 1974 to 1976 and as Minister of the Interior in 1973 he had formed the Lodo Moro, a verbal non-aggression pact between the Italian state and the Palestinian People's Liberation Front, and was for this considered a friend of the Palestinian cause. He was a massive critic of Nixon, the Vietnam War and especially the War on Terror, and as premier in the seventies he expressed such disdain, causing a crisis of relationship between the two countries, and risking him the support of his own party in more than a occasion, to the point that a vote of no confidence in 1975 was only defeated thanks to the support of Berlinguer. He also oversaw the banning of Avanguardia Nazionale and Ordine Nuovo, allowing a bit of a lowering in the neo fascist terrorism, which these groups reacted with the Loggia Square Massacre and Italicus Train Massacre of 1974, the latter being an attempt on Moro's life by Ordine Nuovo's successor, Ordine Nero.

Economic strife, the popularity of the new communist leader and the several scandals about the Golpe Borghese and the Rosa dei Venti led to an unprecedented success of the Left:

The PCI got 34.37%, the PSI 9.64%, while the DC 38.71%. It was the first time the two leftist parties combined had more seats than Democrazia Cristiana, making it hard for them to form a stable government. After a couple of failed Andreotti cabinets (Giulio Andreotti was the real leader of the DC and embodiment of the politics of Cold War Italy), Moro came up with an insane proposal:

A coalition between DC and PCI to create a sort of national unity government and put an end to the violence. This so-called "Historic Compromise" was very popular, but not in the USA.

Berlinguer was asked to drop his loyalty to Moscow; he couldn't do that without consulting his party and its allies, but the situation solved itself:

Moro had already been in a fragile place with his own party due to anti-American and anti-zionist flirting, and It was now guaranteed that he was a dangerous pro-Bolshevik that needed to be dealt with. The CIA and Mossad had some significant infiltration in the Red Brigades, and they used them to try and spread the idea of assassinating Moro amongst them, or at least kidnapping him. The psyop might have succeeded, if Alexander Shelepin himself hadn't contacted Mario Moretti, the brigatista leader, and told him about his short-term support for the Compromise, which he hoped would get Italy out of NATO and to open economic relations with the USSR, and also make It easier for a future revolution. Moretti ordered anyone away from trying any action against Moro, but a few members, mostly infiltrators but also a few radicals, decided to attempt it anyway.

On March 16, 1978, when Moro was to go officialize the coalition, the rebel brigatisti should have captured him, but he didn't show up. The brigatisti waited a bit until the police showed up and started arresting them, their plan had been discovered by Moretti thanks to one of the brigatisti having a change of heart and confessing them, and they had given the police a snitch. Thanks to the snitch announcing themselves as the Red Brigades, there was little way of proving this as their fault, especially after all the genuine brigatisti arrested confirmed they were acting against their leaders' wishes. The ones that were infiltrators, instead, kept insisting this was Moretti's will and were soon released, among public discontent and protest.

The DC had failed to make Moro a martyr of anti-communism, the Moro V Cabinet was formed, with an ambitious economic program and an aim towards neutrality in the Cold War.

President Agnew encouraged the DC to drop pretenses, and expel Moro altogether. The Demo Christians were reluctant, the man was at the peak of his popularity, but when the new government issued a motion to withdraw from NATO, pressure became too high, and Moro was expelled. The left minority of the party joined him, creating in 1979 the People's Christian Party.

As the Historic Compromise fell in less than a year, Giulio Andreotti worked to build a new government, but with whom? The Parliament was now composed primarily of center-left to far left parties, some of them, like the Socialdemocrats, Radicals and Republicans, could be accepted in government, but it still wouldn't be enough, and allowing the MSI in would be very dangerous (the last one to try that was Federico Tambroni in 1960, he had faced so much public unrest he was forced to resign and the age of Moro began after that). Fortunately for them, the leader of the Socialist Party at the time was Bettino Craxi, who hoped to pursue a policy of moderation and distancing from the PCI, making him a viable ally for Andreotti. A new centrist government was thus created, which did not meaningfully change anything from the pre-1976 situation.

The new Andreotti cabinet started out with dwindling popularity, but It was immediately plagued by a sequence of disasters one after the other:

In 1979, the Iranian Revolution sparked a second and worse oil crisis after that of 1973, which deepened further with the invasion of the country by the USA and the following sanctions by Arab countries. The invasion, coupled with the still ongoing onslaught in Vietnam, made the USA very unpopular, especially among the youth, even most young fascists (who appealed to a romanticized, revolutionary and anti-capitalist mythical version of fascism) were anti-American.

In 1980, Ordine Nero was successfully put on trial in Bologna. As a reaction, another, newer group, the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, led by young Giuseppe Dimitri (sometimes referred to as "the Italian Micheal Kuhnen", though the oppose is also used) enacted the worst terrorist attack in Italian history: the Bologna Station Massacre. On August 2, at 10:25, the Train Station was blown by a bomb, resulting in the death of 85. For comparison, the three other most important and bloody massacres (Fontana Square, Loggia Square and Italicus Train) had caused 17, 8 and 12 deaths respectively. Italy was horrified, but the horror was soon increased by an even more astonishing event.

In 1981, following an unrelated investigation, the mansion of a powerful businessman known as Licio Gelli was raided by the police. What they found was almost a thousand names of members of the Propaganda 2 Lodge, a masonic lodge believed until that moment to be just an unharmful club. These names included all kinds of politicians from all the parties from PSI to MSI, justices, businessmen but most importantly military and secret service men. The ensuing investigation revealed how the P2, led by "Venerable Master"  had over 2000 members and controlled most of the Italian establishment from behind the shadows. Their ultimate goal was the establishment of a presidential regime to prevent the ascension of communism, with the details laid in the so called "Plan for Democratic Rebirth", including the busting of trade unions, the weakening of the judiciary's independence, making sure that having a graduation from University would not give too much job opportunities (basically making sure that if you're born poor, you can't get a nice career thanks to good public education), abolishing the military service in favor of a professional army (which would be comprised of mostly conservative volunteers), an intricate system of lobbying to control not only politics, but all of the media, and the exclusion of communists from political life by creating a two-party system similar to America's, where the "Left" would not go farther than Craxi, while the Right would be united from center to far, with the exclusion of the most extreme and anti-capitalist wings of the MSI led by Pino Rauti. The P2 had contacts with the Mafia, the Vatican and the CIA, but what the most shocking of all was leaning its role in Black Terrorism:

Licio Gelli, a former fascist, though not an RSI loyalist, had been deeply involved with these groups, especially Ordine Nero, and had direct responsibility in organizing the Bologna Massacre. All of this, however, took years to be extracted, due to the slow and full of obstacles path of the trials. Gelli admitted a whole lot in prison, and he claimed that the real, from-the-shadow leader of the P2 was none other than Giulio Andreotti himself, who used him as a secret straw man so he wouldn’t be involved if the Lodge was discovered. At the time, this claim remained unproven.

Massive public horror and scandals in all ruling parties brought the decision of the Democratic Socialist Party in 1982 to leave the government and instead join the opposition of the PCI-PPC, the government was now on the verge of falling, so Andreotti dropped hesitations and invited the MSI, at the conditions that they condemned unambiguously the violence and moderated their positions a bit. The Republican Party, in reaction, left the coalition altogether, the question fell upon the Radicals, who stuck, and Craxi.

While the man was deciding, the people took to the streets to protest, leftist trade unions threatened a general strike, President of the Republic Sandro Pertini condemned the move and even threatened to ask Andreotti for resignation, famous communist actor Paolo Villaggio described It as the first step towards a second March on Rome.

When Craxi ultimately decided to endorse Andreotti, the trade unions and Pertini stood to their word, paralyzing Italy. Craxi, in little over a week, changed his mind and withdrew support. Pertini declared non-governability and dissolved Parliament, calling new elections. The PCI, Democrazia Proletaria and the PSDI formed the United Front, the Republicans the Christian Populists formed the Constitutional List, the PSI and Radicals formed the Progressive Democratic List, the DC and MSI run independently (to clarify for non italians, parties run by forming coalitions and putting candidates in electoral lists here, not individually, unless they can't find allies).

Predictably, DC and Pro Dems were absolutely destroyed, as the leftist and center-leftists dominated the run. The Front took in total over 47% (the PCI alone was almost 36%), the Constitutionalists took about 30% (PCP was at 21%), while the DC crumbled at just above 15%, the Pro Dems at less than 3%, the MSI at about 4%. The MSI was further divided by the protests of Rauti's extremist wing, which had threatened refusing to join Andreotti, but their association with terrorism and the defeat brought prominence to the more moderate faction of the Youth Front, led by Gianfranco Fini. For now, however, Almirante remained in charge, as the only unifying figure among them. Craxi was thrown away by the PSI leadership, which ended up merging with the PSDI, but the few deputies and senators they elected were loyal to him and ended up merging with the Radicals to form the Radical-Social Party.

As the Front and Constitutionalists immediately negotiated a coalition, the first completely left wing government in Italian history was on its way, and Berlinguer became the new premier in January 1983. His premiership would, however, be immediately challenged lethally:

Even under the new Democratic presidency, the USA could not tolerate this shift towards communism. For the next year and a half, Italy was martyred by an unprecedented wave of violence by the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, in collusion with the Mafia and other crime syndicates, and sponsored by the CIA and Italian deep state. This included multiple assassination attempts on high ranking figures, multiple massacres in several cities (not as spectacular or deadly as the famous ones, but much more frequent and close to one another) and, most famously, the successful assassination of Aldo Moro on February 2 1984, and that of Luigi Longo on March 3. The NAR were also active abroad, teaching their techniques to the German Covenant of the New Order and Wiking Youth, the English National Front's stalwarts, the American White League's Stormtroopers, the Israeli Kahnists and the Turkish Gray Wolves. For this reason, the NAR have sometimes been referred to as "the rector of the university of modern reactionary terrorism", especially by PUA President Noam Chomsky.

While the NAR grilled meat, the conservative-owned media launched a crusade against the new government, accusing them of being totalitarian, soulless Bolsheviks, and, in collaboration with the police, blamed several attacks on the Red Brigades. The USA isolated them from their own bloc, deepening the crisis, which Berlinguer tried to resolve by establishing stronger ties with the USSR, further fueling criticism. One of the first things he did, anyway, was applying to withdraw from NATO. On June 11 1984, Enrico Berlinguer died from a sudden illness, we know It was genuine, but at the time, speculation that he was assassinated ran rampant, causing mass protests. The NAR set a bomb in Rome during the massive demonstrations in the premier's honor, killing 79. After this horror, the Italian people were just desperate for stability and peace, anything for peace.

And this was exactly what the conjures had hoped for: on June 31, the armed forces and carabinieri occupied Rome and all the places of power, as well as telecommunication stations.

General Luigi Poli announced he'd be taking exceptional powers for a short amount of time, with the goal of stabilizing the country and putting an end to the Years of Lead once and for all.

While all organizations were shortly banned, he showed his good will by organizing elections six months down the line. While there were protests, and the police suppressed them, people just kinda silently supported this, thinking it could be the change they needed. As, a few months later, the British Civil War broke off, the situation became even tenser.

Poli stopped the withdrawal from NATO, restoring relations with the US seemingly instantly. Gianfranco Fini emerged in this context at the head of a new DC-MSI coalition, the National Alliance. They won the 1985 elections and got over 50% of the seats, thanks to a new majority system introduced by Poli to assure more stable governments in the future. The elections were widely accused of being rigged, causing mass demonstrations and strikes.

When Pertini once again refused to give a neo fascist government power, he was indicted, removed from his position and incarcerated. The following riots were met harshly by the police with several deaths, while Fini issued in a few weeks a plan for a vast institutional reform that would make Italy a presidential republic with a first-past-the-post electoral college in the American style, centralize power away from the regions to Rome, introduce corporatism, remove the Scelba Law that criminalizes apology of fascism, replacing it with the criminalization of "apologism of right and left totalitarianism".

At this point, Italy was on the verge of civil war:

In mid 1985, all trade unions, even the UIL and CISL, traditionally moderate and close to the center, declared general strike, with the greatest participation in Italiano history. The prison in Rome where Pertini was held was invaded by protestors who freed him, signaling the beginning of the Italian Revolution in much the same way as the seizure of the Bastille.

Large sectors of the army and carabinieri were defeated to the side of the protestors when the order came to shoot, taking control of most of the North and center. It seemed that the situation in Britain was going to repeat in Italy.

But, alas, nobody really wanted any more violence. Fini was thrown away by the military, Poli returned, and he asked to negotiate a peace agreement and reunification with the revolutionaries. A ceasefire was immediately signed, in November the two sides relinquished their power, Pertini was restored President, Aldo Moro was made prime minister with emergency powers, all laws passed by Fini were declared null, and a new Parliament was set to be elected three months later, with the majority system being instead kept, though it was soon modified to a majority-proportional hybrid. The 1986 saw the previous left wing coalition becoming even more dominant, but this time Moro, a moderate, was kept as premier to appease the military side. Fini was sentenced to life in prison for high treason and crimes against the people, with him a few other scapegoats, but most others were spared, for now.

President Reagan was unable to do much against this new leftist government, as the USA by now were just starting to fall apart themselves. They were forced to watch as they withdrew, alas, from NATO, nationalized key industries,  institutionalized trade unions and student collectives by giving them a role in electing town, province and region representatives, getting accused of modeling this on East Germany and, in 1988, started buying OGAS technology to implement digital economic planning. The Italian Social Movement was tried for violation of the Constitution (“The reorganization, in any shape, of the disbanded fascist party is banned.”), Giorgio Almirante was convicted in 1987 and imprisoned. Poli oversaw the creation of a new right wing opposition from the ashes of MSI and DC, the National-Conservative Party, nominally led by businessman Silvio Berlusconi (who wasn’t involved in politics up to this point, although he had been a member of P2).

Poli had hoped to save Italian capitalism without further violence through this compromise, instead he simply paved the way for its peaceful dissolution:

With the downfall of the USA, the unification of Germany and the Triple Revolution, it was clear the conservatives were on the losing side. The PCI and Democrazia Proletaria were both extremely attracted by so-called “democratic communism” and campaigned on it in 1991. For now, however, the compromise was kept as christian populist Romano Prodi replaced retired Moro as premier, while Nilde Iotti, longtime Communist feminist and lover of Togliatti, was made President of the Republic the year before, upon the death of beloved Sandro Pertini, the first woman head of state. The old regime was finally rooted out by a final scandal:

In Sicily, in the last years, two justices, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, had done what few had ever dared to do: challenge the Mafia, moreover, the most powerful mob of all, Cosa Nostra. From 1987 to 1992, Falcone organized the “maxiprocesso”, the single biggest  trial in recorded history, condemning 460 mafiosi. Just a couple of months later, Falcone and Borsellino were murdered with dynamite on order of Cosa Nostra’s boss, Totò Riina, the most infamous among many acts of terrorism and assassination they did in the same months all around the country. This marked the beginning of the Mafia Wars of the nineties, as public opinion realized organized crime could not be ignored any longer. Investigations took place to identify the intricate web of allies the Mafia had in the Italian state, the PNC was under attack. While dozens of them were tried, the most impressive one was Andreotti, who was discovered to be the main connection between organized crime and the state. The most powerful man of Italy, seven times premier, was now under trial.

The investigation on him went much further than just on the Mafia, the justices were determined to use this chance to make light on the thousand plots and schemes he had been protagonist of in all these years. It was in this occasion, that Andreotti spilled the beans:

While the idea that he was the leader of the P2 wasn’t technically correct, he was much worse than that. He was the leader of the Italian branch of an organization that united the P2, parts of the Mafia, contacts in all upper spheres of Italian and Vatican state, the neo fascists and the CIA to combat the common enemy of communism. It was called:  Gladius.

This was the organization behind the Years of Lead, behind the coup d’etàt and the previous plans for coup d’etàt, behind the P2’s plot to remodel the Republic in their image, the far right terror groups’ massacres, the collaboration with the Mafia. And not only in Italy, the Gladius Organization had been behind the Regime of the Colonels of Greece, and a long list of far right terrorism, unrest, state terrorism and coup d’etàt in Turkey, with the Counter-Guerrilla as their branch and the Gray Wolves as their allies (Reagan even forced kemalist dictator Kenan Evren to collaborate with them, threatening to withdraw support).

Gladius had been behind tens of thousands of victims, it was easily the biggest international secret conspiracy in recorded history.

After this, heads fell down one by one, nobody trusted the elite of the military or any other armed branch, not even the vast majority of soldiers and low officials, a coup was now impossible. As the scandals devastated the PNC and left dozens of seats empty in Parliament, new elections were called in 1994. This time, the Communist alliance of PCI and DP (called “Marxist Unity”) ran alone, while PSDI, PCP and PR formed the only opposition (“People of Peace”), as no right wing party really existed anymore. Fausto Bertinotti, a democratic communist, was made prime minister. A new motion was voted in Parliament to reform the Italian state once and for all, ending the so called “First Republic” in favor of a Second one, the Italian Democratic People’s Republic, completing the transition to a multiparty socialist state where workers councils and all kinds of collective organizations would be integrated into a decentralized, democratic state. Private property was distinguished from personal property and considered a violation of it, all businesses and places of living should be owned and run democratically by those working with or living in them. This motion was voted both by Marxist Unity and most of People of Peace, when asked why, Romano Prodi answered: “In the light of the outcome of the Cold War, it is clear that capitalism is a system that has historically failed, we are not cultists and will not fight to uphold the good of the few before the need of the many. The Christian message of social assistance, generosity, sharing and equality is far from incompatible with socialism and the immortal marxist science and we have always stated this.”

### **Reform Assembly of 1994**

In 1994, the establishment of the Italian Democratic People's Republic is declared by the newly elected Reform Assembly. It should be noted how it was called Reform and not Constituent Assembly, a peculiarity stressed by them immediately in their declaration:

"For the new people's state shall be a direct continuation of the Italian Republic, not only lethally and geographically, but spiritually too, the documents voted by the Constituent Fathers of the Republic from 1946 to 1948 shall, for the greater part, remain unchanged. The goal of the Reform Assembly is not to write a new constitution, so much as to perfect and modify the current one."

In effect, this materialized into three new Articles, comprising the so-called Charter of Reform:

Article 140 "For Italy is a democratic and socialist republic, based on the fundamental principle of the equality of all human beings, regardless of place of origin, nationality, physical or psychological condition, economic status and ethno-cultural, religious or sexual identity, the formation of any organization whose principles or aims, whether expressed through open declaration or through actions, that contradict such principle is strictly forbid, and so is the occupation by any individual that expresses opposition to such principle of authority positions, be It in law enforcement, judiciary, bureaucracy, education system or in the democratic procedure. Capitalism, for its inherent social darwinism, veneration of greed and hierarchical structures, stands in contradiction with the values of democracy and equality and shall thus be banned."

Article 141 "For Italy is a democratic republic founded on labour, it shall recognize the right of the individual to the property of his own labour, of the product of his labour, to the place of living and to all the instruments of his living and labour. When the product comes of the labour of one or multiple individuals, the means of production shall be owned personally or collectively as they are operated by their worker or workers. When a person lives in a house or apartment, the house or apartment, and adjacent pot of land, shall be his property. When workers perform tasks, even if different and unrelated, in the same workplace, the workplace shall be run democratically by the workers. When a group of people live in a house or apartment, the house or apartment shall be the collective property of the group, whereas blocs of different apartments or houses, built in such a way as to form a community, shall be run democratically by the people living in them. When one or more individual works the land, the land worked shall be the personal property of the individual or the collective property of the group. Wether manifestations of democracy shall come into the form of direct management, election of a manager or any other form shall be decided by the people involved, at the condition that It be certified as democratic by the auhorities.

The capitalist system, which puts unjust power and property in the hands of the bourgoise, by giving them control of the means of production, service or the place to operate them, and the phenomenon of landlordism, by which land owners rent to other people, are contradictory to democracy and the respect of labour and thus banned."

(Note: in Italian, his would be suo, which is gender neutral)

Article 142 "For Italy is a democratic republic, the Italian state is anti-fascist, as the values of fascism contradict the values of democracy, equality and respect of labour. The Italian state defines fascism in two possible ways:

1 The phenomenon of an overt, reactionary, terroristic dictatorship of capital, often characterized by extreme chauvinism, imperialism and social darwinism, that emerges from the inevitable saturation and decline of capitalism and imperialism and the emergence of the labour and/or national liberation movement.

2 The ideology of palingenetic, identitarian authoritarianism or totalitarianism, by which the use of terroristic violence against a section of the population and the centralization of power away from the people is seen as necessary to achieve the rebirth of the national, racial, ethno-cultural or religious identity from a state of supposed decline. It is often characterized by obsession for a plot against the identity group, usually blaming the political Left and minorities which lies out of the identity group, by the glorification of violence as a mechanism of rebirth, and by the obsession for the preservation of traditional values and hierarchies.

While the two definitions usually coexist, falling in either of the two shall be considered enough to categorize an individual or organization as fascist and act accordingly, following the instructions of Article 140 on discriminatory ideology"

The Reform Assembly also replaced the Rocco Code, the legal code in act since the fascist era, with the new Bersani Code, called in honor of Minister of Justice Pier Luigi Bersani, which adapted to the changes of the constitutionFinally, aside from the Charter of Reform, the Assembly radically modified the Articles that describe the electoral system of Italy. More details on that later.

### **1994-Present ("Second Republic")**

Much like in Germany, what was left of the neo fascists and capitalists allied with organized crime in the Mafia Wars. The most notable far right terrorists were Giuseppe Dimitri, still leader of the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, and Roberto Fiore, who organized hooligans in death squads and armed them via the mafia and the LFN’s support. As bloody as all of this was, it wasn’t as bad as the Years of Lead, nor as the Werewolves’ Wars in Germany. BFollowing Giuseppe Dimitri’s arrest in 2003, the violence ended for good, in part thanks to support by France, after Italy joined the Assembly of Democratic Communists in 1996. Italy sided with the PUA in the Great American War, sending military aid.

In 2014, following the 2010 crash and the American Spring, the PCP elected its first Premier, Giuseppe Conte, but didn't get a majority in the Senate and the Presidency remained with the communists. Conte abandoned several socially conservative party points, such as opposition to gay marriage or adoption, but retained opposition to assisted suicide, surrogate motherhood, prostitution and reversed the School Secularism Law of 2000 which banned religious symbol from being put in public schools. Economically, Conte pushed for green transition and orderly degrowth, increased support for agricolture and farmers, aiming to both develop rural regions without further industrialization and increase food production and exportations. He pushed for increased local authonomy but not on a fiscal level, and supported the establishment in 2016 of the Commission for the Preservation of Regional Peculiarities, which tries to preserve dialects, traditions and folklore. He has been labeled a "meridionalista", a sponsor of Southern interests, and hasn't rejected the label, although he has preferred to describe himself as a "Neo-Humanist". Another cultural effort was the creation of the Institute of Italian Revolutionary History, established in 2015 in agreement with the Communist Party, which tries to rebrand or rediscover socialistic, proto socialist or otherwise revolutionary aspects of historic Italian intellectuals such as Niccolò Machiavelli (strongly praised by Conte as "the first modern Italian revolutionary thinker"), Giacomo Leopardi, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Thomas Aquinus and Spartacus.

Conte's foreign policy has been ADC-skeptic, describing the organisation as weak and "lacking a real purpose or prospect for the future", which was praised by both Soviet sympathisers and capitalists of the LIberal-Popular Party. He has not initially expressed strong opinions regarding immigration, which remains considerably more limited than other European countries. In 2022, Italy became the second European country most hit by the Nipah pandemic, after Britain, due to a relatively higher number of Indian refugees and many of them using Italy as a point to enter the ADC before moving to other countries in it like Britain and Germany. Conte has acted very quickly against it with strict lockdown measures and tighter border control which was criticised by many as authoritarian and even xenophobic, but got him the consensus of over 70% of the Italian public.

## **ORGANISATION**

Italy is a so called diarchical or consular republic and a people's democracy. The executive power is divided among two figures: the President of the Republic, head of state, and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, head of government. Elections are held every five years and are divided into several elections:

The President is elected by popular vote with a two rounds system, if he wins an absolute majority in the 1st round, there will not be a second one. The President is the cerimonial leader of the nation and has the power to veto both the Chairman and any minister he desires from taking office, as well as refuse to sign a law approved by the Parliament and force a discussion around it. However, if both chambers of the Parliament give a vote of confidence to the Chairman or minister, the President is expected to accept it and nominate them. In case of emergency, the President of the Republic shall be granted by a majority in Parliament full executive power, with the possibility of chosing ministers and pass decrees. However, for such a situation to manifest, two thirds of Parliament, with a majority in both chambers, shall declare the situation an emergency.

The Parliament is divided into the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Associations. The Chamber is directly elected by a mostly proportional system, with 630 deputies. The candidates for this chambers are put forward by the political parties in electoral lists, each citizens votes for the candidates of his locality, which may be more or less depending on the population density. This very localized electoral college prevents it from being a completely proportional system.

The CoA was the most radical change from the First Republic. The 315 Delegates are elected not by party lists, but lists put forward by so called "mass organizations".

## **POLITICS**

### **Political Parties**

The **Christian-Popular Party** (Partito Cristiano-Popolare, PCP) is the biggest party in the Chamber of Representatives since the 2014 general elections and its leader Giuseppe Conte is Chairman of the Council of Ministers since then. It is a left-catholic, christian socialist and meridionalista party focused on the interests of Italy's Southern, rural and religious population. The party is completely favorable to the socialist planned economy but opposes excessive focus on industrial and urban labor by the Communists. It is moderately socially conservative, opposing surrogate motherhood (called by them dispregiatively as "uterus rent"), prostitution, favoring restrictions on light drugs usage and opposing the lowering of the minimum age to undergo gender transition from 16 to 13 brought forward by the LGBT Movement's Parliamentary wing. The PCP considers a primary mission the preservation of the culture, history and environment not only of Italy as a whole but regional identities as well, it's been described as "left nationalist", "regionalist" and "eco-socialist". Under PCP administrations, multiple regions and provinces have introduced dialects and local history as subjects in education, and multiple cultural foundations have been funded, while the "Green Marshall Plan", modeled after the Soviet Green 5 Year Plan, was adopted in 2016 towards a controlled de-growth and environment preservation. The PCP was initially skeptical of the ADC, then supported it as an alternative to the Soviets, but under Conte's leadership it moved to mildly assembloskeptic positions. It has 240 Deputies and is led by Giuseppe Conte.

The **Italian Communist Party** (Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) is the second party in the Chamber of of Deputies, and one of its members is President of the Republic with cerimonial power. It follows socialism Italian-style, dedicated to socialist democracy in the boundaries of a modified version of the 1946 Italian Constitution. It is a traditionally strongly pro-ADC party, tho with skeptic factions, and finds it's strongest support between the lower North and upper Center of the peninsula, in the industrial working class. The PCI favors planned economy by mean of digital planning similar to OGAS, which has led it to be nicknamed "the sovietest anti-Soviet party in Europe", despite the party rescinding hostility to Moscow following Gorbachev's reforms in 2005, but it also supports more direct control of the means of production such as workplace democracy. The PCI is the most "mass line" party in the country, with it's mass organizations spanning virtually every aspect of public life and including, between party members, youth and trade unions, almost a seventh of the whole Italian population, or about 8,5 milion people, which has granted them undisputed control over the Chamber of Associations. It has 231 Deputies and is lead by Tomaso Montanari.

**Proletarian Democracy** (Democrazia Proletaria, DP) is the third party in the Chamber of Deputies. It is a far left communist party, keeping together various currents that consider the PCI to be revisionist, such as Maoists and Trotskyites. The party is very popular in universities, in the mines of Sicily and part of the countryside. It is heavily environmentally and strongly anti-Soviet. It is Assembloskeptic, considering the ADC to be ineffective and useless, but it used to be a major supporter of it as an alternative to the Soviets. It turned against it due to revisionism in the PUA, England and others as well as the economic crisis of the 2010s, under the leadership of Beppe Grillo. It considers the Plains to be it's primary model. It has 75 Deputies and is led by Giuseppe "Beppe" Grillo

The **Italian Socialist Democratic Party** (Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano, PSDI) is the fourth party in the Chamber of Deputies, it holds democratic and market socialist values, desiring to loosen up economic planning in favor of a market system of democratically run cooperative enterprises. It is supportive of the ADC and condemns the Soviet Union as authoritarian and militaristic. It is in favor of environmentalism and social progressivism, and supports the idea of breaking boundaries with France, England, New England and the PUA orming a unified federal state called Euro-Atlantic Federation, tho It considers this a very long term goal and aims for a common currency called "Globo" in the meanwhile. It is supported among students and the employees of major industries. It has 52 Deputies and is led by Nicola Fratoianni.

The **National-Popular Party** (Partito Nazional-Popolare, PNP) is the fifth party in the Chamber of Deputies and the most right wing formation in it. It is a center right liberal conservative and liberal nationalist party, it favors changing the Constitution to reallow capitalism and exiting the ADC, otherwise it is a big tent party full of different factions, such as catholic traditionalists and third position corporatist nationalists, represented in the "Destra Sociale" faction of Gianni Alemanno, or socially progressive neoliberals in "Azione!" of Carlo Calenda. It has 17 Deputies and is led by Antonio Tajani.

The **Republican Party** (Partito Repubblicano, PR) is the sixth party in the Chamber of Deputies, it is a social democratic formation mainly rooted among students and personal business owners, it favors limited private property and wage labor, at the condition of mantaining workplace democracy, as well as loosening economic planning in favor of market forces. It has 15 Deputies and is led by Elly Schlein.