The Masses are Revolting

Dr. Dawg is more than a little exercised at the rise of what he sees as a resurgent fascism in Italy. And he means old skool fascism as opposed to the simple trope much enjoyed by the left of calling anyone who disagrees with them “fascist”. He has a point and one which he and his lefty pals (not to mention Liberals) should be taking to heart.

Italians had decades of Center-Right and Center-Left governments. None were very effectual but, then again, there were no existential issues facing Italy. Business got along just fine in a culture of officially winked at corruption and tax evasion. Politics, to a large degree, consisted of doling out public jobs and funds. That began to change in the 1990s when illegal immigrants and rather phony “refugees” began to arrive in Italy to supplement growing communities of other, documented, immigrants. Dawg cites the issues surrounding the Roma in a number of Italian cities, but Muslim migrants have also piled in.

Like most European countries Italy took a relatively liberal line with these new migrants extending welfare, social services, education and medical services. So long as the immigrant communities were relatively small Italians seemed able to adjust. However, as the immigration continued and as Italian birthrates declined, the non-elite mass of Italians began to seriously question the value of that immigration.

What Dawg sees as fascism - and there are certainly more than a few reasons to describe it that way - is also what I would describe as a cultural nationalism. And it is a cultural nationalism which I suspect will become increasingly prevalent in European countries with relatively large Muslim communities.

One of the great conceits of the left and center-left post-war politicians is that culture does not matter and that we are moving towards a multi-cultural, post national, world. The implication of this belief is that the very idea of “Italianness” is little more than a historical relic which will, with in the embrace of the EU, gradually become a quaint folk custom. Which might well have happened had the EU kept its borders shut to non-European immigration. But, of course, the EU positively encouraged Muslim immigration and the bien-pensant are now reaping the whirlwind.

Now, for the political elites, the essential differences between Western/Christian culture and Eastern/Islamic culture were matters to be ignored or studied or accommodated. Those elites rarely had much to do with the day to day reality of the cultural conflicts which arose. However those conflicts were and are real despite the arm waving and denial of the political elites.

Democratic politics has a generally conservative tendency - most politics takes place without there being much chance for actual change because the elite practitioners of such politics generally agree on all but the most trivial points. To a degree, this elite agreement is one of the main reasons why voter turnout has precipitously declined throughout the West in the last few decades.

However, at a certain point, the politics of elite accommodation effectively collapse in the face of focussed public anger. This can happen very quickly - as it has in Italy - and reflects a sea change in an electorate. Elite politicians ride along happy in the belief that their position, secured by effective media collusion, is secure. After all, when was the last time the voters in a democratic nation voted for real change?

The answer to that question is another question: When was the last time that voters in a democratic nation were confronted with an existential challenge to their culture? Mass, non-assimilated, immigration is just such a challenge and the voters of Italy met it by tossing the old coalition politicians out of office and replacing them with politicians who promised to address the real concerns of ordinary Italians.

I would not be at all surprised to see more of this happen in Europe. And in Canada too if dimwits like Dion really think they can do Green Rape with impunity.

Written by jay on July 13th, 2008 with 29 comments.
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29 comments

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JCT
#1. July 13th, 2008, at 11:53 AM.

Or could it just be that Italians are finally waking up to the realization that the Force of Reason or the Pride and the Rage of Oriana Fallaci words ring true? While Fallaci was vilified by the left of centre and many others, I believe the pendulum is swinging the other way now that Italians are seeing what Fallaci so truthfully spoke out against! Viva la Roma!

Now if they’d only get making a babies again, Mark Steyn’s predictions could be reversed as well.

Dr.Dawg
#2. July 13th, 2008, at 12:34 PM.

I’m trying to figure out the “existential threat” posed by 160,000 Sinti and Roma, 70,000 of whom hold Italian citizenship, in a population of more than 58 Million, but for some reason nothing’s coming to mind. It sounds as though Jay thinks they’re Muslim or something.

jay
#3. July 13th, 2008, at 12:52 PM.

I am quite clear on who the Roma are Dawg.

The existential threat is posed more by the 1 million legal Muslims and the largely uncounted number of undocumented - to be neutral - Muslims.

However, as I am surprised you have not pointed out, the perception is about “the other” and it is that perception which has reached a tipping point in Italy.

Dr.Dawg
#4. July 13th, 2008, at 1:15 PM.

So why are they rounding up Roma rather than Muslims, then? Nostalgia?

jay
#5. July 13th, 2008, at 1:45 PM.

Likely due to a particularly nasty murder of an Italian woman allegedly by a Roma man back in 2007. Partially because 64% of Italians surveyed want the Roma expelled. And, partially, because the Italians are none to please at having Roma “camps” in or near many of their major cities. Finally, because the relaxation of border rules within the EU has meant there has been a significant migration of Roma to Italy in the last decade.

The Muslim problem, particularly the largely unchecked illegal immigration from various points in North Africa, is likely more serious and, as such, will likely take a good deal more thought.

Dr.Dawg
#6. July 13th, 2008, at 2:07 PM.

So, let me get this straight, then: Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner? Why not use the same arguments to defend the Nazi treatment of Jews?

And don’t bother invoking Godwin. We are, after all, talking about an Arturo Ui wannabe: the bitch is in heat again.

jay
#7. July 13th, 2008, at 2:34 PM.

No need to invoke Godwin, it is an automatic.

My point is that when the mainstream politicians go for decades ignoring real concerns of real people those people will begin to look for politicians who are willing to address their concerns.

While the bien-pensant draft strong resolutions and invoke Nazis and fascists, they have, in fact created the circumstances which lead directly to the election of parties and people who are reflective of the population as a whole.

Now Dawg, my point is not that this is a good or bad thing; rather it is that one can hardly be surprised that a couple of decades of politically correct but ineffectual government which attempted to pretend that mass Muslim immigration and significant Roma immigration was no big deal will, eventually, have consequences. We are seeing those consequences in Italy and I suspect we will see them in other European nations.

Dr.Dawg
#8. July 13th, 2008, at 2:40 PM.

“Significant Roma immigration?”

10,000 people? Out of a population of 58million+ ?

Come on. You’re excuse-making.

John V.
#9. July 13th, 2008, at 2:55 PM.

Re what Jay said:
“While the bien-pensant draft strong resolutions and invoke Nazis and fascists, they have, in fact created the circumstances which lead directly to the election of parties and people who are reflective of the population as a whole.”

Could there be a parallel with the Weimar Republic in Germany in the 1920’s?
There too, it would appear that the electorate, frustrated by political turmoil, opted for a party that promised “Law and Order”?
And so they voted…and got Nuremberg Laws and and a whole “New Order”…

Dr.Dawg
#10. July 13th, 2008, at 3:07 PM.

Ah. Hitler was the Left’s fault, for pissing people off.

You know, this is getting simply fascinating.

DDT
#11. July 13th, 2008, at 4:06 PM.

Hitler was the left.

jay
#12. July 13th, 2008, at 4:08 PM.

There are quite a few respectable historians who argue that the rise of Hitler was the Weimar center-left’s fault for being startlingly incompetent and wiping out the German middle class with the hyper-inflation.

And, again to drive back to the point I am actually making rather than discussing the interesting collapse of Weimar: if political elites ignore and discredit the real concerns of real people long enough those people will reject the elites.

In my view that is exactly what has happened with the election of Berlusconi with the support of the Northern League. The center-left Italian political elites simply ceased to have anything relevant to say to people who were seeing what they perceived to be multiple threats to their Italian way of life. So those elites were rejected.

stephen.reeves
#13. July 13th, 2008, at 4:41 PM.

The same reason that the extreme right gets votes in some of the urban areas of Britain, the Left has always treated the white working class as buffoons and racists and has always ignored their concerns. It is not so much percentage of population as a whole, but the concentration of immigrants in certain areas and the transformation of these areas and the isolation some whites feel as being strangers in their own land.

bobonthebellbuoy
#14. July 13th, 2008, at 6:10 PM.

So the majority of Italians are not happy with how their country is evolving, (which to the progressives, equates to “how could you be so insensitive. Don’t you know that all cultures are valuable and intrinsic to our new culture. Don’t you dare be judgemental !)
Funny how that becomes Fascist, though I have to agree that the rhetoric is indicative. Then again I haven’t had my pocket picked by the upstanding Roma at the international airport with the resultant negative press. I suppose what the Dawg isn`t happy about is the Italian`s lack of appreciation to the benefits of multiculturalism.

EBD
#15. July 13th, 2008, at 7:50 PM.

“One of the great conceits of the left and center-left post-war politicians is that culture does not matter…”

Exactly. In England, for one example, those voters who are commonly written off as racist proles are the ones who, often due to economic circumstance, live among the imports who, in certain tribal cases, despise these original residents. These folks are a lot more likely than the elites not only to understand that culture does indeed matter, but that it’s borderline bizarre, a self-imposed cognitive dissonance bordering on an ontological wet slap, to find it necessary to even say that or defend the position.

ON the other side, the progs’ recalcitrance is so great that you almost have to spell it out in the most basic terms and to state the double-obvious, just to get the ball rolling, by pointing out that if you removed current residents from this country and replaced them with people from Country X, this geographical space we call Canada would be Pakistani/Chinese/Spanish — whatever the new population was. Our founding culture, which increasingly is treated by the elites as a parochial or irrelevant or passe’ concern is in fact the basis of our judicial system, our police, our parliamentary traditions, our attitudes about corruption and the equality of women, etc., etc. To pretend these institutions are not based on our culture is to engage in a fatally dumb soft-headedness that will cost us in the long run.

Finally, hey DAwg, it’s instructive to compare Berlusconi with Hugo Chavez: both are strutting egotists who have interfered with the judiciary and its independence in order to benefit themselves, and both continue to take actions to hobble the editorial independence of the media. But you’re fine with Chavez because Chavez is a communist. Berlusconi, by virtue of being on the right, is evil incarnate. A fascist. A proto-Hitler getting ready to implement the full program.

Ah well, at least we know where you stand, which will make it easier for us vicious fascists to come get ‘ya, to buy you a beer. You can’t really goose-step when you’ve got an armload of beer.

/:>)>

Sholto Douglas
#16. July 13th, 2008, at 8:11 PM.

Dawg (“Hitler was the Left’s fault…”), well they certainly helped him on his way. From the Molotov pact, to the British Labour Party in 1938 voting at their conference to disband the RAF (mercifully they were in opposition at the time), the left were initially pretty acquiescent in the face of the threat, thus encouraging further aggression. It was that well-known leftie Churchill who first snarled back.
The ready injection of “Nazis and Jews” into a debate has become, like Dr Johnson’s patriotism, the resort of any leftist scoundrel who wants to shut down a discussion. The situation in Italy has absolutely no parallel with Nazism – who, pray, is being gassed? Berlusconi is a nationalist, populist buffoon. Not pretty, but no mass-murderer either. Like it or not, his politics are closer to yours, Dawg, than to Hitler’s.

Rod Blaine
#17. July 13th, 2008, at 10:50 PM.

What I would like to see is a respectable Universalist Conservative response to these sort of problems.

Universalist Conservatism (aka Blainism) is the belief that the state should make and enforce rules as impartially as possible, to prevent some inhabitants from attacking, stealing from or otherwise exploiting other inhabitants.

Citizenship should be open to anyone, regardless of religion or ethnicity, who is prepared to give their allegiance to these rules.

On the other hand, religion or ethnicity would not be any excuse for violating these rules.

A good dose of Blainism would help Italy avoid the Scylla of Dawgism (”if you complain because your neighbourhood is a no-go area after dark because of gangs of youths, you’re a racist”) and the Charybdis of fascism or extreme-particularist conservatism (”Italy for the Italians! You can never belong here!”).

Donations and write-in votes eagerly accepted…

Dr.Dawg
#18. July 14th, 2008, at 2:31 AM.

The situation in Italy has absolutely no parallel with Nazism – who, pray, is being gassed?

Hitler was in power for many years before gas chambers were built. And now we have conservative Pat Buchanan blaming the Holocaust on the Allies, with arguments that hold about as much water as those expressed here.

It seems to me that you’re mostly trying to explain the new Fascism away. You’ve got three strands here, in fact: Fascism doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s because the Left provoked it, or even, the Left is Fascist.

But I do notice–and this is salutary–that no one is exactly jumping indignantly to the defence of Berlusconi: at best he’s a symptom, it seems, of a Leftist unconcern about culture, whatever that is. Progress, one centimetre at a time.

Chavez may be a bit of a preener, by the way, but to compare him and his regime to that of Berlusconi is fatuous. Most of the media in Venezuela are opposition media; one even collaborated in an abortive putsch. No minorities are being rounded up, gays are permitted to drive automobiles, and Chavez has passed no law giving him immunity from the country’s laws. Nor is his party’s programme remotely like Berlusconi’s.

Finally, the problem with beer is that you can’t hold it with a clenched fist in the air. : )

el Ricardo the smooth man
#19. July 14th, 2008, at 3:59 AM.

They were gypsies when I knew them, and as far as I could tell, the Germans I lived among considered them an unsettling but temporary phenomenon. Personally, I never liked being around them or knowing they were in the neighbourhood. Never physically threatening, they just seemed relentlessly predatory, seeing other people mostly as sources of, or customers for, used cars and parts. Yes, their children would go out begging. No, I never heard their children did a lot of stealing. As long as they only came around every year or so and only stayed a few weeks, most people could live with it. I would not want a permanent gypsy camp near my home - annoying to the eye and ear, and another little bite in the tax bill to provide social services to antisocial people. If they are becoming more visibly numerous and stationary, they will probably be at increasing odds with citizens of host states. It is just a little sad to see them in the media, giving interviews, claiming rights and experimenting with politics, (’we are Italians, those Bulgarian gypsies give us a bad name’) instead of scattering the cooking fires, hitching up the horses and wandering away.

jwl
#20. July 14th, 2008, at 5:37 AM.

I think the Roma get singled out because of how they operate: I lived in England a few years ago and the Roma were numerous in the area where I was. They are hard to deal with because they just arrive, out of the blue, in their caravans, take over a uninhabited green patch of land and than expect municipal services. Muslims try to assimilate in a tiny way by living in homes and working normal jobs.

Something that does not get mentioned much is how much law the EU is responsible for. Something like 80% of all new laws in UK, and I assume all EU members, are due to directives from Brussels. So you have third-rate bureaucrats in Belgium setting immigration law for Italians and they are finally starting to get fed up with the system.

Whig
#21. July 14th, 2008, at 5:57 AM.

hit ‘em out of the park, Jay.

Dr. Dawg’s / John Baglow’s neighbourhood in Ottawa, btw, doesn’t have any non-whites at all, so who’s fascist?

Dr.Dawg
#22. July 14th, 2008, at 9:55 AM.

I see I have a stalker. But not a very effective one. My immediate neighbourhood has Native people and Chinese, to name two “non-white” groups.

What that has to do with “fascism,” though, is apparent only to a very disturbed individual, which, come to think of it, sums up most stalkers, cyber or (in this case) RL.

Just Me
#23. July 14th, 2008, at 12:12 PM.

Maybe Baglow should offer to head up the Roma’s Workers Union? Could be a high paying position?

Unfortunately, the Itialian movement does seem to have strong nationalist and fascist elements. Such as are also being seen in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Perhaps mass immigration and cultural relativity is not quite the panacea originally imagined by our governmental elites.

Fred01
#24. July 14th, 2008, at 1:10 PM.

Is this the same canine who freaked out about Boris Johnson’s election as
mayor of London as the second coming of Mussolini or was it Franco? Finally,
he came to his senses and figured that Johnson was the second coming of Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien. Fascists everywhere, I guess. Must look under my bed tonight.

http://drdawgsblawg.blogspot.com/search?q=%22Boris+Johnson

and

http://www.damianpenny.com/comments/display/11256

Dr.Dawg
#25. July 14th, 2008, at 1:58 PM.

I don’t recall calling Johnson a Fascist. Maybe another link?

His politics are, frankly, public record. And it was not I who mentioned the march on Rome, but one of his jubilant supporters. Take up your argument with him, moron.

Currie, you surely do attract the barrel-scrapings, no offence to you.

jay
#26. July 14th, 2008, at 2:09 PM.

Well Dawg, you were a bit over the top, as Fred’s link shows, about our Boris.

And, unlike your perpetual commentor Ti-guy, my guy at least has, well, evidence, rather than snotty nosed invective and an apparent fixation on my alleged pot smoking.

Dr.Dawg
#27. July 14th, 2008, at 2:17 PM.

Well Dawg, you were a bit over the top, as Fred’s link shows, about our Boris.

How so?

Just Me
#28. July 15th, 2008, at 11:22 AM.

Currie, you surely do attract the barrel-scrapings, no offence to you.

Nothing like a backhanded insult from a man whose entire career was parasitically borne out of others’ labour.

As for ‘over the top’, maybe if you didn’t ban everyone who disagrees with you, there would be some actual debate at your place, Baglow.

Hannibal Lectern
#29. July 16th, 2008, at 7:03 PM.

“Currie, you surely do attract the barrel-scrapings, no offence to you.”

Dr. Clog’s comment reminds me of an old George Carlin routine on funerals, where he satirized people’s ability to speak well of even those they despise:

“He was an a**hole. But a well-meaning a**hole, of course.”

What are the 7 words you can’t say on CBC Television without attaching scare quotes or an epithet?

Conservative Majority,
Ronald Reagan,
Margaret Thatcher,
Pope

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