Silvio’s distractions
Italy is a special place for many different reasons. One that never ceases to amaze me is the Berlusconi government.
I’m not a libertarian. I like rules. I think laws, provided they aren’t stupid, are wonderful things. Italy is well within her rights to keep non-Italians out. When the border patrols fail, as they invariably will, Italy also has the right to send illegal immigrants back to their own countries. But to fine illegal immigrants? And to legislate for vigilantism? Someone really needs to make a film about Berlusconi. It should be titled, ‘Because I can!’, or the Italian equivalent.
I understand how the world works. A global recession has a way of making the people in power seem a lot less attractive than the opposition. People have a way of believing that things couldn’t get any worse, even when it’s clear that they could. If you’re a head of state who has been accused of paying attractive young women (of dubious public standing no less) to attend your parties, on top of a public row with your wife, you’re probably going to feel a little vulnerable. If, just to make matters worse, you crafted a law stating that the head of state (i.e. you) couldn’t be sent to jail, you probably want to remain as head of state, or at least have one of your friends in the job. And what better way to maintain support for yourself and your party than to come up with a completely irrelevant distraction?
Italy has a lot of real problems. An influx of Roma and African ‘illegal’ immigrants, by comparison, isn’t that big a deal. This has happened before. Rather than dealing with law and order, it was recently decided that violence against women, especially in the form of rape, was the result of Roma gypsies. The solution was to throw them out of the country, despite their legal right to remain. Let’s say that happened. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that Italy was completely Roma free. Does anyone really think rape would cease to be a problem? Yet now that a literal ‘witch-hunt’ against illegal immigrants has been signed into law, the country’s problems will be swept away?
For the umpteenth time,
…Bibo’s central hypothesis was that when a community fails to deal with a problem that challenges, if not its existence, then at least its way of being and self-image, it may be tempted to adopt a peculiar defensive ploy. It will substitute a fictional problem, which can be mediated purely through words and symbols, for the real one which it finds insurmountable. In grappling with the former, the community can convince itself that it has successfully confronted the latter. It experiences a sense of relief and thus feels itself able to carry on as before. - Terray, E. 2004, Headscarf Hysteria, New Left Review, 26.
Those fleeing poverty and hunger aren’t the barbarians at the gate. The real danger comes from our propensity to fall for the distraction, unable or unwilling to see things as they really are.








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