by Gaither Stewart

ONLINE JOURNAL

ROME — I feel sick.

She says I’m sick in the head.

Actu­ally I’m sick in the heart, sick in my vis­cera. My head reels, I feel chronic vertigo.

She says it’s only paranoia.

I tell her the old Pol­ish joke pop­u­lar dur­ing the mil­i­tary regime. He con­stantly felt spied on, tailed every­where, his phone tapped, his mail read. His friends said he was nuts. His wife sent him to an ana­lyst. As it turned out, his friends, his wife, his ana­lyst were right: it was only the secret police.

My prob­lem is over-sensitivity, hyper-susceptibily, recur­rent polit­i­cal aller­gies and chicken-hearted alien­ation. For decades now my gen­eral anx­i­ety has been hatch­ing. Some­times I feel it swelling my nos­trils, as when I breathe the pollen-laden Rome spring air. From my vis­cera it creeps into my spleen and leapfrogs across to my liver. It crawls up through tubes to my lungs, ever higher through my esoph­a­gus, lingers in the back of my throat and finally set­tles into my brain, first destroy­ing my amyg­dala before oblit­er­at­ing the whole cam­pus of my hippocampus.

It’s them!

Who? Who is it?

You know who! It’s them! Who else but the Fas­cists, I whis­per, and sing softly a few lines of Red Flag to whip up my courage.

The Fas­cists?

Shhh. Not so loud, they’ll hear you. I mean, the sov­er­eign peo­ple did elect them! They’re already every­where like locusts in grain fields. You hear that ting ting ting tin­kling? It’s their Celtic crosses, tin­kling and tin­gling and clink­ing, clink­ing and tin­gling and tin­kling and, and. . . .

Silly, she says. You’re just hav­ing another attack. It will pass.

Lis­ten to them, the Celtic crosses, tin­kling and tin­gling? No telling what side effects these fits have on my psy­che. There’s no rem­edy, I lament, hum­ming a few bars of the Inter­na­tional. Too late for con­tra­cep­tion, tardy for vac­ci­na­tions or fire­walls. We must be already infected. Para­noia, indeed!

New real­i­ties

On the last day of April, we watched on the telly the new fas­cist Mayor of Rome ascend the Campi­dol­gio, gaze out over the peo­ple and the city’s impe­r­ial past and the remain­ing signs of the Ven­ten­nio, the 20 years of Mus­solin­ian Fas­cism, and the new polit­i­cal paysage decreed by idle elec­tors who should have stayed their sandy beach instead. Stunned, we watched him fin­ger his Celtic cross and pro­nounce that he was mayor of all the Romans. Our mayor too! And down below they salute, their arms stiff in the old Roman way, the old fas­cist salute.

The events this spring in Rome, in Italy, have already res­onated over the west­ern world. A déja vu from those 20 fate­ful years of the dic­ta­tor Ben­ito Mus­solini that got Italy into the jam it’s in today. The restora­tion of the Fas­cists is no minor acci­dent along the way. It crowned the vic­tory of the Right in its New Mil­len­nium Ital­ian cam­paign. And what a Right! A Fas­cist Right led by Sil­vio Berlus­coni (who so recalls Mus­solini), who was heard to utter these words about his vic­tory: “We’re the falange.”

As I write these lines, Berlusconi’s falange is occu­py­ing every nook and cranny it can get its hands on in the coun­try peo­ple of the world so love. First Berlusca swept the elec­tions to become the new leader. Then, on the heels of his blitzkrieg, the Fas­cist heirs of the old Fas­cist Party — who now call them­selves post-Fascists, col­lected the mag­nif­i­cent cap­i­tal city of Rome and ancient cap­i­tal of Europe. Fifty-year-old Mayor Gianni Ale­manno calls his Celtic cross a sym­bol, a sym­bol he removed from the body of a fallen Fas­cist com­pan­ion and that he never takes off! A street war­rior he was dur­ing gli anni di piombo, the so-called “years of lead” because of the bul­lets zip­ping through the air as Left and Right bat­tled on the streets of Italy in the 1970s and 80s.

Gianni Ale­manno, the for­mer youth leader of the neo-Fascist Ital­ian Social Move­ment, the heir of Mussolini’s Fas­cist state, is the first proto– or ex– or neo– or (as Fas­cists pre­fer) post-Fascist Mayor of Rome. Installed on the Campi­doglio on the last day of April, Ale­manno announced matter-of-factly that his first two mea­sures would be to remove the 20,000 Roma gyp­sies encamped in the city and many along the Tiber River. Roma, go home! As if gyp­sies had a home. Then, he will demol­ish Amer­i­can archi­tect Richard Meier’s brand new mon­u­men­tal museum that houses the shrine of Ara Pacis — the Emperor Augus­tus’ Altar of Peace dat­ing back to Jan­u­ary 30, 9 BCE — which the Right dis­liked from the start while the for­mer Left mayor was build­ing it, even though it has become a top tourist attrac­tion in the city cen­ter. And then . . . and then, he set about nam­ing a string of Fas­cist cronies into his city administration.

Italy has not just shifted right­wards, out front of the rest as often in its past, a test tube for West Europe, but, in fear of the arti­fi­cially cre­ated fears of immi­grants and ter­ror­ists, it has lit­er­ally hur­tled to the right. First, swarms of Ital­ians shoed in Berlus­coni and his Fas­cists and his alliance of the autonomist-federalist-separatist North­ern League and another auton­o­mist party in the south. Then, Romans came out for Mayor Ale­manno and his band of proto– neo– ex– post-Fascists.

This new Italy of the Right — already called the Third Repub­lic — intends negat­ing not just the out­go­ing Cen­ter Left gov­ern­ment and its actions. Berlus­coni has already made his voice heard in East and West and espe­cially at the Euro­pean Union in Brus­sels: he per­son­ally will arrange for gas for Italy from the Rus­sia of his friend Putin, he will nation­al­ize Ali­talia Air­lines against all rules to the con­trary, he will, he will, he will . . . do what he likes.

Rome is not only the cap­i­tal city, mod­ern­ized by 15 years of left­wing may­ors. Tra­di­tion­ally it is also a strong­hoold of the Left, the pride of the Left, with its effi­cient may­ors speak­ing a mod­ern cul­tural lan­gauge, open to exper­i­ments and devel­op­ment, pointed toward the future. Italy’s cap­i­tal in the hands of the National Alliance (Aleanza Nazionale), Fascism’s direct heir, is an anom­aly, as is the country’s new polit­i­cal geog­ra­phy: the North with its cap­i­tal of Milan belongs to the auton­o­mist North­ern League, the South includ­ing Cal­abria and Sicily to the South­ern Automist Move­ment, Rome to the Fas­cists, and Italy to Berlusconi.

The trans­for­ma­tion of Italy’s map couldn’t be more rad­i­cal. This event is not a nor­mal alter­na­tion in power between two sim­i­lar par­ties. This is an elec­toral earth­quake. Even Ale­manno was the last to expect his vic­tory in Rome. It was taken for granted the Left would win again. The post-Fascist vic­tory changes the face also of Ital­ian pol­i­tics. The Cen­ter Left — the reformist Demo­c­ra­tic Party headed by Rome’s ex-Mayor and ex-Communist Wal­ter Ven­troni who dared run alone — lost its bet. In the elec­tions, it lost also the “rad­i­cal Left” — the Com­mu­nists, Social­ists and other small Left-leaning par­ties with which it refused to run.

The sad real­ity is that the resur­gence of the right-wing vote would have any­way swept away any com­bi­na­tion of the Left. The out­come tes­ti­fies to a major­ity of a real Right in the nation. Italy’s munic­i­pal and national elec­tions were not about pro­grams which were sim­i­lar. Nei­ther Berlus­coni nor the new mayor of Rome were elected for their pro­grams. Peo­ple wanted dis­con­ti­nu­ity. A new direc­tion, even if it smacked of the old. As non­sen­si­cal as the alter­na­tive choice of Sil­vio Berlus­coni and Rome’s post-Fascists seems, peo­ple voted against the polit­i­cal caste. Rome elec­tors of both Right and Left leapt onto Berlusconi’s bandwagon.

The Right vote in Rome and Italy bears an indeli­ble “anti-establishment” stamp, the same as
in most of Europe dur­ing the last two years. It is both a nation­al­is­tic and some­times an anti-European Union voice, xeno­pho­bic, anti-immigration and anti-globalization, the voice of the pop­ulist spirit sweep­ing across the Con­ti­nent. For many, the Cen­ter Left, the Left in gen­eral, is per­ceived as an extra­ne­ous, for­eign body. At the same time, pop­ulist Berlus­con­ism in Italy and the anti-Europeanism in Sarkozy’s France and in Tory Great Britain, avoid old rules and com­mit­ments. The Euro­pean Right is instead marked by a Janus-like dual­ity: it is both estab­lish­ment and out­sider, rebel­lious­ness and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, anti-politics and polit­i­cal caste, ide­o­log­i­cal and anti-ideological.

And the decep­tion works.

Here’s a look at this new “post-Fascist” Italy: on a national level, Gian­franco Fini, pres­i­dent of the neo-Fascist National Alliance, has become the new pres­i­dent of the Cham­ber of Deputies, the third in rank in the Ital­ian state. Fas­cists will occupy two of 12 major min­istries, backed up by a horde of Fas­cist deputy min­is­ters and under sec­re­taries. In Rome, as in other cities, provinces and regions through­out the coun­try, ex-Fascists are step­ping into posi­tions of power.

And it has an ide­ol­ogy, and how! — the Chris­t­ian roots of Europe, con­dem­na­tion of rel­a­tivism, moral or oth­er­wise, low tol­er­ance level for oth­ers, pro­tec­tion and secu­rity for cit­i­zens, all the com­po­nents of mod­ern pop­ulism. Old social blocks have col­lapsed, the class role weak­ened, inter­est groups intertwined.

Mean­while, as the bour­geois Right marches in tri­umph over the Con­ti­nent, the Left stag­gers, teeters and tot­ters in dis­ar­ray, suf­fer­ing from its minor­ity syn­drome, an elec­toral infe­ri­or­ity com­plex. Unity on the Left remains a chimera. In Italy, one says there is much too lit­tle Social Democ­racy and too lit­tle Left in the Cen­ter Left, which avoids the word “Left,” and too lit­tle polit­i­cal ini­tia­tive in the rad­i­cal Left which detests the word “Cen­ter.” Incom­pat­i­ble or not, the two have thus far proven to be a los­ing com­bi­na­tion. The alliance was inef­fec­tive in the out­go­ing gov­ern­ment, a loser in the eyes of the elec­torate and espe­cially in the eyes of the Left com­po­nents them­selves, today polit­i­cal orphans, for the first time with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the new Par­lia­ment. Yet nei­ther the Cen­ter Left nor the Left can hope to gov­ern the nation alone. Too many of the Left, it seems, accept the role of per­ma­nent opposition.

Nonethe­less, though no longer in Par­lia­ment, Italy’s rad­i­cal Left, as most of the Euro­pean Left — and unlike the US Left — has its polit­i­cal par­ties, its national press, a net­work of soci­eties and cir­cles and social forums for gras­roots activ­i­ties and the train­ing of new polit­i­cal lead­ers. It thus nur­tures hopes of a return to par­lia­ment in the next elec­tions which in turn makes future par­tic­i­pa­tion in polit­cal power the­o­ret­i­cally possible.

Winds of the Right blow­ing across Europe

Actu­ally it didn’t hap­pen from one day to the next. In ret­ro­spect, howeve,r it seems to have come about sud­denly while Italy was busy watch­ing the exper­i­ment with its first real Cen­ter Left gov­ern­ment, a coali­tion of the Cen­ter and the Rad­i­cal Left, includ­ing Com­mu­nists. For 20 months or so the exper­i­ment limped along, stum­bled, and then col­lapsed over a bagatelle. New elec­tions brought Italy back to the main body of Europe in which the Right is either a major­ity or at the helm of state of the four biggest coun­tries with a com­bined pop­u­la­tion of nearly 300 mil­lion — besides Italy, Ger­many, France and Great Britain, the lat­ter still for­mally gov­erned by a Labour Party lean­ing right­wards and today in a minor­ity in the Tory-dominated nation.

Despite its broad national roots, the British Labour Party lost heav­ily in local elec­tions this past week­end, includ­ing the loss of the may­or­ship of Lon­don to the Con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date, in sub­stance resem­bling the simul­ta­ne­ous rout of the Left in Italy — the painful price the UK Left must now pay for the dis­as­trous alliance of Tony Blair with Bushian Amer­ica. In Ger­many, the Chris­t­ian Democ­rats gov­ern in a coali­tion with the Social Demo­c­ra­tic Party that chose an alliance with the Right rather than with the Left of Social­ists and Com­mu­nists of the Linke, the same choice the Cen­ter Left Demo­c­ra­tic Party of Italy had made. In France, Nico­las Sarkozy last year rode roughshod over the Cen­ter Left Social­ists and at the same time crushed both the extreme Right of the National Front and the French Com­mu­nist Party on the Left, cer­ti­fied by the bour­geoisie for his crush­ing of the imper­ti­nent upris­ings in the Paris ban­lieues when he called the sons of immi­grants the “scum of the nation.”

In 2007 elec­tions in Greece, the Cen­ter Right New Democ­racy Party won in close elec­tions, while The Nether­lands and Bel­gium are both gov­erned by a coali­tion of center-oriented Chris­t­ian Democ­rats and Social Democ­rats. In Por­tu­gal in 2006, the Cen­ter Right Social Demo­c­ra­tic Party won pres­i­den­tial elec­tions over the Cen­ter Left Social­ist Party. Also in 2006, Swe­den, which had been dom­i­nated by the Social Demo­c­ra­tic Party since 1932 — account­ing for Sweden’s broad social sys­tem — fell to the Cen­ter Right Alliance for Swe­den. A sim­i­lar right-leaning model rules in most of East Europe, today still search­ing for an accept­able social-political model. Emblem­atic of the times in the East: Ukraine is dis­play­ing its con­fu­sion by renam­ing its streets, Tol­stoy Street becomes John Lennon, and Maxim Gorky cedes to Abra­ham Lincoln.

Is it any won­der then that I am sick, malato, malade, enfermo, krank? That I am a lonely para­noic stag­ger­ing under the onslaught of legions of con­ti­nen­tal Chichikovs?

Only in Spain, tough Ger­manic Spain, stand­ing like a proud and lonely Don Quixote, only in Spain does a Social­ist Party gov­ern, today the most pro­gres­sive land in Europe. But it, too, is under neo-liberalist fire. Lonely but in neo-liberal eyes an intol­er­a­ble Spain! A Social­ist who dares to keep his word on with­draw­ing troops from Iraq! Lonely and crit­i­cized also by the Left for dar­ing to lean on con­ser­v­a­tives to push through his pro­gram! Oh God! How to do the right thing? But not to worry, the Right says. Zapatero’s new four-year term will pass quickly, after which Spain’s Fas­cist Right can leap back onto cen­ter stage.

In the wake of the spread of uni­for­mity and the gospel of order and secu­rity, one might won­der if all these Cen­ter Right gov­ern­ments are in cahoots? It would seem so. Is this the real face of the Euro­pean Union? It seems so. Is this part of the World-Government-New-World-Order process? Looks like it.

But how did it hap­pen that the Left which for over a cen­tury fash­ioned social Europe has now lost out to the neo-liberal Cen­ter Right? And what about the Euro­pean Social Idea? One answer is the sad real­ity that human beings are con­ser­v­a­tive. Peo­ple want to be led, led well and hon­estly, but led by the hand. In gen­eral, peo­ple just want to be “happy.” As a rule the Right is adept at mak­ing illog­i­cal impos­si­ble promises of hap­pi­ness and cre­at­ing the sense of false con­scious­ness of hap­pi­ness. Peo­ple need and want to hear those promises, as unlikely as they may be, of good times to come.

Europe is again rich. And as a result daily life is more and more “bour­geois.” For the con­ser­v­a­tive major­ity, red flags and the ham­mer and sickle mean blood­shed, uncer­tainty and dis­or­der. Some mem­bers of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment recently went so far as to pro­pose a ban on the ham­mer and sickle sym­bol. Bour­geois val­ues have never left much space for left­ist ideas.

Once cre­ative and inno­v­a­tive, the maker of rev­o­lu­tions, the Euro­pean bour­geoisie is today largely Right. Espe­cially in Italy and France. We for­get that the Euro­pean bour­geoisie per­mit­ted Fas­cism and Nazism, cre­ated it in fact, in order to pre­serve its social rule, pri­vate prop­erty and the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem threat­ened by the Rev­o­lu­tion that West­ern Social­ists
were never able to pull off. To many, Fas­cism was merely an annoy­ance that saved the bour­geois sys­tem. In fact, Fas­cism tempted the bour­geoisie in all of Europe. In that sense, the Euro­pean bour­geoisie con­tin­ues to believe — in its over­whelm­ing false con­scious­ness — that the gov­ern­ment exists for it and for its inter­ests. In today’s Euro­pean show­case, bour­geois Lib­er­als, who across Europe as a rule vote Right, are Power’s ally and stand in the way of gen­uine social progress and effec­tive redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth.

Though in that sense Euro­peans have opted for false hap­pi­ness, I still don’t believe the ques­tion of Socialism-Communism has been defin­i­tively set­tled. On one hand, the inex­plic­a­ble mys­tery for neo-liberals is that tra­di­tion­ally Social Demo­c­ra­tic coun­tries in Scan­di­navia enjoy the world’s high­est stan­dard of liv­ing, and that those mixed economies, part social, part cap­i­tal­ist, work. Though Com­mu­nism, crushed by its Soviet past, is no longer con­sid­ered a viable alter­na­tive to neo-liberal democ­racy, its mem­ory is alive. Marx wrote that the ghost of Com­mu­nism haunted Europe. Today, in the minds of many, the mem­ory of that ghost per­sists, a ghost so pow­er­ful that the Right reg­u­larly dan­gles its threat before the eyes of vot­ers each time they go to the polls.

Emi­gra­tion on my mind

The sit­u­a­tion is bleak, I’m bleak, and I don’t feel bet­ter about it. Not at all. While Right Europe wor­ries about immi­gra­tion to Europe, I have emi­gra­tion on my mind. But to where? Spain per­haps? But in less than four years Zapatero’s time will be up. The Fas­cist falange will prob­a­bly return. And then where would a prospec­tive emi­grant go? Across the strait to Morocco, maybe. Tang­ier has a cer­tain appeal. Latin Amer­ica, too, is appeal­ing, albeit risky. It could only be Venezuela or Bolivia or Cuba. But even Cuba! First tourism, then Fidel’s retire­ment, now cel­lu­lar phones and com­put­ers. Who knows where revi­sion­ism there will end? So I come back to Europe. For some rea­son I rule out Ice­land. But Fin­land might be nice. After all, 12 of 20 gov­ern­ment min­is­ters are women! A world record. Still, Finnish con­ser­v­a­tives won last year’s elec­tions while Social Democ­rats, Social­ists and even Com­mu­nists all con­verge around the Cen­ter. I must con­fess that I’m per­plexed by the sta­bil­ity up there in rich Finland.

Mean­while, sick and lonely, I’m again study­ing the Ultima Thule idea, which has long fas­ci­nated me. It is in reserve as a final emi­gra­tion destination.