Berlusconi sends 3000 troops to Rome
Italy isn’t a pleasant place at present; Berlusconi recently put 3000 troops on the streets of Rome. This, he claims, is part of an attempt to crush an alleged wave of crime by Roma gypsies.
But who really believes that from a government that placed gypsies on an ethnic register? The move smacks of a barely closeted racism; it assumes a moral panic sparked by the single murder in November is fully justified, and that gypsies are solely to blame for all Italian crime. Pandering, in short, to prejudice.
And that prejudice certainly exists:
On the streets of northern Rome such reservations are hard to find. “All our problems come from foreigners getting drunk, smashing windows and stealing,” said Anna Maria Mercure, who at 80 is old enough to remember an earlier era of Italian discipline. “Mussolini had his positive side. The streets were safe in his day.”
Fascism is fine so long as they don’t arrest me, she means. I direct readers to a rather famous poem, the sentiment of which is entirely sound.
Others want their xenophobic authoritarianism laid out in simple steps, though:
“I would kill them all,” said Virginia Cristell, a mother in her 40s. “Send them to the country – or send them somewhere. They are dirty and there are lots of problems with burglary and thieving. They make toxic smoke.”
Deport them, and then exterminate them - sound familiar to anyone?
The gypsies certainly feel victimised:
That, however, is not the view of Goffredo Bezzecchi, 69, an Italian gipsy who came close to death after Italian Fascists tried to send his family to the death camps. They escaped before they could be deported. Mr Bezzecchi, who was fingerprinted at his home near Milan last month, feels history is at risk of repeating itself. “These things were done in the Fascist days when gipsies were killed or sent to concentration camps,” he said. “The politicians should remember that we are human, not garbage.”
To summarise; ethnic profiling, ethnically targetted policing enacted by the army, and plans to move people around the country on the grounds they belong to an ethnic group. Berlusconi’s government has, in effect, denied that the Roma can be defined by anything but their ethnicity, and so their individual humanity. Very 1930s.
Posted in: Europe, Fascism, Fear and Loathing, Lead Story
Yes, he does rather have a bit of the Mussolini about him…