The Dark Heart of Italy

by Tobias Jones

  Throughout the spring of 2002, the stakes between the two halves of the country were exponentially raised. For the first time, commentators started talking about the ‘regime’ and the ‘resistance’. In January, at the opening ceremony for the new judicial year, the Procuratore Generale of Milan and former head of the Clean Hands pool, Francesco Saverio Borrelli, took the microphone. The reduction of protective escorts, the attacks on the magistrature, the new laws which interfered with on-going court cases – all, said Borrelli, carried the stamp of an authoritarian regime. He urged his colleagues and the Italian public in general to ‘resist, resist, resist’ Berlusconi’s government. Having invoked the Resistance, he then also invoked Italians’ brave First World War defiance on the Piave front. His rhetoric was warmly applauded, and magistrates removed their ermine and red robes to mourn in black ones instead. Gerardo D’Ambrosio, the Milanese Procuratore, echoed the sentiments. About Berlusconi’s government, he said ominously: ‘This is the night of Italian democracy.’

  A month later, on the tenth anniversary of the start of the Clean Hands revolution, a huge rally was held by the legal lobby in Milan. 40,000 took part, holding candles for justice, carrying banners demanding that the law be ‘equal for all’. The crowd was mostly middle-aged and middle-class. It was one of a number of spontaneous protests that had emerged across the country. They were called girotondi (ring-a-ring-a-roses); they were simple gatherings of Italian citizens who held hands around buildings whose independence appeared threatened by the new government (mostly courtrooms and television studios).

  The response from the regime was swift. Two days after the Milan rally, a bomb exploded in the middle of the night on one of the streets outside the Home Office in Rome. Mopeds were blown across the road, green plastic skips were torn apart. Berlusconi, linking the attack with the gathering of the legal lobby in Milan and the snowballing opposition movement, said that the left should ‘lower the tones’ of its meetings, because terrorism was the result of incautious criticisms. Other government ministers said that the phrases used by the legal lobby were ‘words of lead’, an obvious suggestion that any criticism of the government would be construed as terrorist talk akin to the anni di piombo. At the same time, the regime began deploying its one, invincible argument to defend the government’s incursions into all corners of the state. Berlusconi was democratically elected, and therefore his actions were the expression of the wishes of the people. He was – like Thatcher before him – a beacon of democracy, audaciously attacking left-wing cartels within the media, the unions and the judiciary. An equally important weakness of the resistance was the fact that, after a decade of exceptionally complicated legal wrangling, most people outside the legal lobby dreaded hearing the word ‘justice’. It was Berlusconi’s good fortune to be involved in court cases so complicated and so boring that most Italians switched off from the debates and switched on their televisions instead.

  Television, in fact, became the next theatre of the encounter between the regime and the resistance. When the conflict of interests bill was finally introduced to parliament, politicians once again screamed abuse at each other. ‘Shame’ or ‘Pinocchio’ chanted the left, standing and shouting like a group of football fans before abandoning the parliament in a walk-out. The tone of the editor of Oggi was more sober: ‘This law on the conflict of interests isn’t honourable. It’s laughable. In fact, it’s disgusting.’ The main cause for complaint, days after Berlusconi had appointed a new ‘advisory commission’ for RAI, was the bill’s second article. It stated that ‘mere ownership’ of a business wasn’t sufficient to preclude taking up governmental office. The conflict of interests existed, effectively, only for those concerned with the day-to-day running of the business. Berlusconi wasn’t even subject to the legislation.

  Days later, Roberto Benigni, the Oscar-winning actor and comedian, made a live appearance on the closing night of the San Remo music festival. Millions of people watched Benigni’s scatty, clever performance. He was part-clown, part-sage as, quoting Dante, he began taunting the government. He ridiculed Berlusconi and his supposed resolution of the conflict of interests. ‘Please Berlusconi,’ urged the actor, ‘please do something that, when we go to bed at night, will make us all proud to be Italians.’ The implication was that Il Presidente had prompted only shame, rather than pride, amongst most citizens.

  By April, it was becoming obvious that criticisms of that sort would no longer be allowed. When on an official visit to Bulgaria, Berlusconi began listing the journalists who he wanted to see sacked from RAI. He mentioned three in particular who had been ‘criminal’ in their use of the state channels. All three – Daniele Luttazzi, Michele Santoro and Enzo Biagi – had cast doubt upon his integrity in the previous year’s election. ‘The precise duty of the new management,’ said Berlusconi, ‘is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.’ It’s difficult to exaggerate the impact of those comments: from Sofia, the man who doubled as both Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, someone who owned three TV channels and had just appointed the management committee for the other three, was publicly listing inconvenient journalists who should be sacked. The mention of Enzo Biagi was particularly odd. A hugely popular, owlish man in his mid-80s, Biagi presents a ten-minute evening slot on RAI 1 debating the issues of the day. His only crime had been to interview Roberto Benigni on the eve of the 2001 election, allowing the comic to make a few jokes at Berlusconi’s expense.

  In an article on the Sunday after Berlusconi’s outburst, the normally measured Biagi made a comparison with Hitler on Corriere della Sera’s front page. Even Il Foglio, a bizarre newspaper which is in part funded by Berlusconi’s wife, called the Prime Minister’s comments ‘a political error and an abuse of power’, and conceded that Berlusconi ‘seriously risks compromising his political career’. Another of the threatened journalists, Michele Santoro, opened his weekly programme on RAI 2 by singing Bella Ciao, an old song from the Resistance.

  By the end of April all the new directors of the RAI channels had been appointed. Only RAI 3 remained in the hands of the left-wing opposition. RAI 1 was headed by Fabrizio Del Noce, a Forza Italia stalwart; RAI 2 went to Antonio Marano (Northern League). The news programmes on those channels were to be headed by Clemente Mimun (Forza Italia) and Mauro Mazza (National Alliance). The sister of the leader of one of the Catholic parties in the Pole of Liberties coalition was given responsibility for all local news. Even the most pessimistic hadn’t expected Italy’s notorious spoils system to be used so ruthlessly. Umberto Eco, days later, wrote about the only type of resistance left: ‘To a new form of government,’ he wrote in the pages of La Repubblica, ‘a new form of political reply. This really would be an opposition …’ It was the kind of proposal that, from the outside, seems surreal: Eco was proposing a veto of all the products advertised on Mediaset channels:

  One doesn’t reply to a government-business with flags and ideas but by aiming at its weakest point: money. If the government-business then shows itself sensitive to this protest, even its electors will realise that it’s nothing more than a government-business which survives only as long as its leader continues to make money.2

  But by far the most serious and sad conflict was over Article 18. It was, in some ways, Article 18 that had started Italy’s cycle of violence more than three decades ago. Guaranteeing various work-place rights, Article 18 was written and passed in 1969. That legislation was perhaps one of the reasons for reactionaries to plot the brutal bombing at Piazza Fontana. Now, years later, a sinister symmetry emerged: the attempt to repeal the legislation caused more terrorism, and further loss of life.

  Marco Biagi, a university professor who had written the government’s White Book of proposed changes to employment law, was shot and killed at point-blank range as he returned to his house in Bologna. The scene under the arches outside his house presented a familiar picture: puddles of blood, the Red Brigade’s five-pointed star etched onto the wall, numbered cards propped up on the asphalt
where the bullets had been found. It was the one side of the resistance that everyone, especially those in the peaceful opposition, had dreaded. The killing was claimed, in a 26-page manifesto sent to an internet news agency, by the BR-PCC, the ‘Red Brigades–Combatant Communist Party’.

  ‘After such a terrible event,’ said the speaker of parliament’s lower house, ‘we need to rediscover a spirit of concord.’ Instead, the murder brought all the poison of Italian politics to the surface. Berlusconi has said that the killing was the result of ‘the chain of hate and lies’ aimed at himself and his government. ‘I won’t yield to the pistol and the piazza,’ he later said. ‘Democracy is being blackmailed,’ replied an editorial in the left-wing La Repubblica.

  Many, in fact, claimed the government was partly to blame for the murder: in reducing protective escorts, it had left one of its most controversial figures dangerously exposed. Nor was the danger unexpected. Only one week before, Berlusconi’s magazine, Panorama, had cited an intelligence leak which suggested that Biagi was high on the terrorists’ hit-list. ‘My husband was terrified,’ Biagi’s widow said. ‘He knew he was a target.’ She bitterly refused the offer of a state funeral in protest at the way her husband had been abandoned to his fate.

  To many, then, the death seemed almost foretold. The Employment Secretary Roberto Maroni, Biagi’s boss, said wistfully after the murder: ‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’ ‘It’s an endless chain of blood,’ said Romano Prodi, one of Biagi’s closest friends. ‘It’s a long obscure line which has been with us for many years.’ In fact, in 1999, another governmental advisor on labour reform, Massimo D’Antona, was also killed (by, it now emerges, the same pistol which killed Biagi). As always, conspiracy theorists went to work, especially when the man investigating that previous murder was himself found dead days after Biagi was killed. It looked like suicide, but many had their suspicions.

  One of the biggest unions, CGIL, duly organised a protest – against both the repeal of Article 18 and against terrorism – in Rome. Two million turned out. Red flags made the Circo Massimo, site of the Roman chariot races, look like an ocean full of masts and sails. The flags bobbed up and down in the sun, billowing and then going slack. The city even sounded like a marina: that sound of cloth twisting and clapping in the wind. ‘We are here to join the fight against terrorism and to defend our rights,’ said Sergio Cofferati, leader of the union.

  I spent the afternoon wandering across the capital. Every hilly street was crammed with flags and banners against Berlusconi. Small bands played music on street corners. Kids kicked footballs from pavement to pavement. People were passing round flasks of wine. Everyone had their own theory of what was going on. ‘Italy,’ one wizened old man told me, ‘has always been like this: one third ruled by the Vatican, one third by foreign powers, and one third by our home-bred tyrants. But the reason we have tyrants is the reason we survive them: we’re completely lawless.’

  One shop-owner told me how he hated these protesters: ‘I’m from the National Alliance and I’ve got absolutely nothing in common with those idiots,’ he said. ‘I think Article 18 should be repealed. Of course it should. Here it’s impossible to sack anyone. It’s like having marriage without a divorce. A lot of what the government wants to change is for the better: it wants an elected president, chosen by the people not by parliament. It wants to reform the judiciary and RAI. All that is fine. It’s just that,’ he began rocking his hands in the imploring praying position, ‘it’s just that if there was one man in the entire country you wouldn’t trust to reform all those things, the one man you shouldn’t let near the whole project, it’s Berlusconi!’

  On the train back to Parma I read Shelley. Writing about the long history of Italian tyranny, he spoke about the ‘viper’s paralysing venom’ (the snake was the symbol of the Visconti family). ‘Lawless slaveries’ and ‘savage lust,’ he wrote, trample ‘our columned cities into dust.’ It’s much the same language that the country’s left wing is now using: apocalyptic and pessimistic, convinced that democracy is in peril. Is it a hyperbole to say Berlusconi is a dictator? Is ‘Forzism’ really a twenty-first century, televisual version of Fascism?

  It’s certainly true that the authority of the boss is unquestionable. He is above the law and criticism of him will be punished. Protest marchers will be dispersed by bullet and baton. Magistrates who rock the boat are themselves threatened with prosecution. Six out of seven channels of communication are dominated by the government. What passes for programming is really propaganda or else cheap pornography. The outcome of elections, at least in certain regions, seems certain to be levered in the government’s favour. Any diversity in Italy, any criticism of Il Presidente, is now identified with terrorism. It is seen as an incitement to violence and will be duly quashed by the authority of the state. It reminds me of Primo Levi’s definition of democracy: ‘Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed,’ he wrote; ‘Fascism does not want them, forbids them.’ The trouble is that there’s something slightly absurd about accusing Berlusconi of being a Fascist. It’s ridiculous to say that Italy isn’t a democracy. Then again, it seems equally ridiculous to say that it is.

  Il Presidente is such a unique political model, he’s so sui generis, that it’s impossible to compare him with anyone else. Perhaps only a fictional creation captures the idea. Shortly after all the TV channels fell into Berlusconi’s hands, there was a satirical email doing the rounds. It succinctly expressed the way in which Berlusconi has become the Orwellian Big Brother:

  Hi, my name’s Mario Rossi and I live in Milan in a building built by the Prime Minister. I work in a company who’s main share-holder is the Prime Minister. My car insurance is provided by the Prime Minister. I stop off every day to buy a newspaper owned by the Prime Minister. In the afternoon I go shopping in a supermarket owned by the Prime Minister. In the evening I watch the Prime Minister’s TV, where the films (often produced by the Prime Minister) are continuously interrupted by adverts made by the advertising company of the Prime Minister. Then I get bored and go surfing on the internet using the Prime Minister’s service provider. Often I look at the football results, because I’m a fan of the Prime Minister’s football team. On Sunday I stay at home and read a book from the Prime Minister’s publishing house… obviously, he’s governing exclusively in my interests, not his own…

  The only other useful comparison for the bizarre political model is a religious one. It’s a comparison which Berlusconi himself has often made, comparing himself to either Moses or Jesus. That’s exactly what watching him feels like: he can be caring, gentle, smiling. Then suddenly he will become stern, strict and critical of all around him. He seems to think he has a monopoly on moral guidance; he’s followed by millions of the faithful, some because they believe him, others because they might need him. He appears to own the land we walk on, and to watch our every waking move. Shortly after the Euro arrived, I received a currency-converter in the post with a letter from Il Presidente saying ‘Dear friend, our dear old Lira is to be substituted…’ It had been sent to everyone in Italy, ‘with the most cordial good wishes’. Everywhere you look, you realise that Berlusconi is involved. It reminds me of those hymns about how ‘The Good Lord Made It All’. You can’t escape, anywhere on the peninsula, his presence and his produce. Everyone is agreed that he’s a prophet, only as yet no one knows if he’s a false one or not.

  Late that spring, I was back watching football. It was an international match and the tinny trumpets were rasping out the national anthem, the Inno di Mameli. For some reason I found it intensely moving. I sang the melodramatic words with the rest of the stadium. They seemed to express the immense suffering and bravery in the country: ‘We’re ready for death! We’re ready for death! Italy has called!’

  I realise I have become something I never thought possible: patriotic and proud about being an adopted Italian. In more honest moments, I realise that I might never quite be able to leave the country. That longing to leave,
and the inability to pull yourself away from the bel casino, the ‘fine mess’, has been written about for centuries. Using the usual prostitution metaphor, one of the country’s most important patriots, Massimo D’Azeglio, wrote: ‘I can’t live outside Italy, which is strange because I continually get angry with Italian ineptitude, envies, ignorance and laziness. I’m like one of the people who falls in love with a prostitute.’ That, in fact, is precisely the feeling of living here: it is infuriating and endlessly irritating, but in the end it is almost impossible to pull yourself away. It’s not just that everything is troppo bello, ‘too beautiful’, or that food and conversation are so good. It’s that life seems less exciting outside Italy, the emotions seem muted. Stendhal wrote that the feeling one gets from living in Italy is ‘akin to that of being in love’, and it’s easy to understand what he meant. There’s the same kind of enchantment and serenity, occasionally insecurity and sadness. And writing about the country’s sharp pangs of jealousy and paranoia, Stendhal knew that they exist precisely because the country’s ‘joys are far more intense and more lasting’. You can’t have the one without the other.

  I feel even more tied to Parma than to Italy. The city is one of the capitals of Italian culture, from cuisine to classical music. It is a place of such aggressive political opinions, coupled with incredible generosity, that I can’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else. Giovanni Guareschi, the writer of the ‘Don Camillo’ stories, proudly wrote about his fellow Parmigiani: