Resisting the Tide: Cultures of Opposition under Berlusconi (2001–06) 9781501300622, 9780826492913

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List of Tables and Figures

Table 1.1:

Median Net Household Wealth by Work Status of the Head of the Household (indices; Italy = 100) Figure 1.1: Organized Criminals Arrested and Organized Crime-Related Murders in Sicily, Calabria and Campania 1992–2003 Figure 2.1: Market Shares, Media Advertising Revenue (%) Figure 2.2: Advertising Investment in Italy (%) Figure 5.1: The Italian Left between 2001 and 2006 Figure 12.1: ‘The irresistible ascent’ by Emilio Giannelli – from Head of Government to King, President and Finally Emperor

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Acknowledgements

The original concept and approach of this book was devised and developed by Daniele Albertazzi, Clodagh Brook and Charlotte Ross over the summer of 2005, as a collaborative project of the Department of Italian studies of the University of Birmingham. Nina Rothenberg joined the editing team in July 2007 and took responsibility for the completion of various chapters. We are indebted to all those who have helped us in the intervening years. First of all, we must thank British Academy for the essential financial support provided (award number: LGR-45471); second, we are grateful to our contributors for their excellent chapters; third, we very much appreciate the work of several anonymous reviewers whose comments on all the contributions included in this volume were extremely useful; finally, we would like to thank Christina Garbutt, David Barker and Marie-Claire Antoine from Continuum for their encouragement and support.

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List of Contributors

Daniele Albertazzi is Senior Lecturer in European Media (Department of Italian Studies, University of Birmingham). He is the editor (with Duncan McDonnell) of Twenty-first Century Populism – The Spectre of Western European Democracy (Palgrave 2008). Daniele is currently editing (with Paul Cobley) The Media, An Introduction – Third Ed. (Pearson 2009) and researching a monograph (with Duncan McDonnell) on Regionalist vs. Nationalist Populists in Power: Actions and Reactions. Monica Boria is Lecturer in Italian (Department of Languages and International Studies, Nottingham Trent University). She is the editor (with Linda Risso) of Laboratorio di nuova ricerca. Investigating Gender, Translation & Culture in Italian Studies (Troubador 2007). Monica’s research interests lie in contemporary Italian humour and culture. She has published essays on Stefano Benni, TV parody and satire and underground comics. Clodagh Brook is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is currently preparing a monograph for publication on the Italian film director Marco Bellocchio (Marco Bellocchio: Individualism and Anarchy (University of Toronto Press 2009), and has written widely on contemporary Italian cinema as well as on twentiethcentury literature (The Expression of the Inexpressible in Eugenio Montale’s Poetry, OUP 2002). She is also the Editor (with R. Bertoni and C. Veronese) of the twentieth-century Italian section of The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies. Donatella Campus is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna. She is the author of Comunicazione Politica: Le nuove frontiere (2008 Laterza) and L’Antipolitica al governo (Il Mulino 2006). She is editor (with G. Pasquino) of Masters of Political Science (English edition forthcoming with ECPR Press). Cristopher Cepernich is Lecturer in Sociology of Communication at the University of Turin. Since 1995 he has carried out research in the field of political communication at the Department of Political Studies. He is author of Le pietre d’inciampo. Lo scandalo come meccanismo sociale (Aracne Editrice 2008); ‘Landscapes of Immorality. Scandals in the Italian Press (1998–2006)’, in Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 9 (1), 2008. Paolo Ceri is Professor of Sociology at the University of Florence (Dipartimento di Studi Sociali). He is co-editor of Quaderni di Sociologia. Among his recent publications are Movimenti globali (Editori Laterza 2002), La società vulnerabile (Editori Laterza 2003), Sociologia – I soggetti, le

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strutture, i contesti (Editori Laterza 2007). He is also the editor of La democrazia dei movimenti (Rubbettino 2003) and (with Giovanna Ceccatelli) of Studying in Florence (Edizioni Polistampa 2007). Roberto Grandi is Vice Rector and Professor of Mass Communication at the University of Bologna, Italy. He is a member of the Board of the Observatory of Magna Charta Universitatum and has published several books and essays on Mass Communication, Cultural Studies, Political Communication and Public Communication. From 1996 to 1999 he held the office of Deputy Mayor on Culture at the Municipality of Bologna. James L. Newell is Professor of Politics, University of Salford. Recent books include Parties and Democracy in Italy (2000), The Italian General Election of 2001 (ed. 2002), Italian Politics: Quo Vadis? (with Carlo Guarnieri 2005), Italian Politics: Adjustment Under Duress (with M. Bull 2005), The Italian General Election of 2006 (ed. 2008). He is co-editor of European Political Science, co-convenor of the UK Political Studies Association’s (PSA’s) Italian Politics Specialist Group, and a member of the PSA Executive Committee. Daragh O’Connell is Lecturer in the Department of Italian, University College Cork. He has mainly published on twentieth-century literature, with a particular focus on Sicilian writers. He has also conducted research on Vico and the Enlightenment and on Dante. He is currently writing a monograph on Vincenzo Consolo and editing two volumes on Dante – Nature and Art in Dante; War and Peace in Dante (Four Courts Press 2008/09). Wendy Pojmann is Assistant Professor of Modern European History at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. She is the author of Immigrant Women and Feminism in Italy (Ashgate 2006; Aracne Editrice 2008) and editor of Migration and Activism in Europe since 1945 (Palgrave Macmillan 2008). Pojmann is the 2008 recipient of the Trinity College Barbieri grant in modern Italian history. She is presently working on a book that examines Italian and international women’s associations during the cold war. Charlotte Ross is Lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies, University of Birmingham. She is co-editor, with Loredana Polezzi, of In Corpore: Bodies in Post-Unification Italy (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 2007), and has published on gender, sexuality, identity and embodiment in Italian culture and cultural texts. She is currently preparing a monograph entitled Primo Levi: Containing the Human. Nina Rothenberg teaches Sociology at the American University of Rome and was Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham from July 2007 to January 2009. She has published articles on Euroscepticism in the British Press and on the women’s press in post-war Italy. Her main research interests lie in the field of media, immigration and gender. She is currently working on a book manuscript on media and gender in post-war Italy. Sconvegno is a feminist collective composed of six women in their thirties, who work and live in Milan. The main focus of their research is precarity at work and in one’s life. Five members of Sconvegno contributed to Chapter 14: Manuela Galetto, PhD in Labour Sciences, is Research Assistant at the Department of Welfare and Labour Studies of the University of Milan; Chiara Lasala, a specialist in critical finance services, is a member of MAG6; Sveva Magaraggia, PhD in Sociology, works at the University of Milan Bicocca; Chiara Martucci, PhD in Political Philosophy, works at the University of Milan; Elisabetta Onori works at the University of Milan Library. Stefania Taviano lectures in English at the University of Messina. She is author of Staging Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Anglo-American Approaches to Political Theatre (Ashgate 2005). She is also a professional translator and has contributed to the translation of Staging Dario Fo’s Johan

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Padan and the Discovery of the Americas. She is currently working on a monograph on English as an International Language and Translation. Cristian Vaccari is Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science at the University of Bologna. He has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University, American University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is author of the books La Comunicazione Politica negli USA (Carocci 2007) and, with Roberto Grandi, Elementi di Comunicazione Politica (Carocci 2007). His research focuses on political communication in an international perspective, with particular reference to the new media.

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Glossary

Ad Personam legislation refers to laws that are suspected of serving the interests of one person rather than the wider community. For instance, during the Berlusconi governments, the partial depenalization of accounting fraud and the ‘Lodo Schifani-Maccanico’ (or ‘Immunity law’) were both labelled as such by some (for allegedly favouring the PM himself or his associates in pending trials). AN, Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance) is a party formed in 1995 by the current secretary Gianfranco Fini, from the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formerly a neo-fascist party. The party has attracted between 10 per cent and 15 per cent support across Italy and has been part of all four centre-right coalition governments led by Silvio Berlusconi (1994; 2001–05, 2005–06; 2008 onwards). In 2008, AN agreed to form a joint electoral list under the banner of the Popolo della Libertà ‘People of Freedom’ (PDL) with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. ARCI (Associazione Ricreativa e Culturale Italiana) (Italian Cultural and Recreational Association) is a network of social circles founded in 1957 that promotes culture, solidarity and participation. It contains organizations such as Arcigay, Unione Circoli Cinematografici ARCI (for the promotion of activities related to cinema), and many others. Attac (The Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens) is an international network of groups and associations which challenge (and propose alternatives to) neoliberalism from a leftist perspective. Centri Sociali (Social Centres) are anti-capitalist, self-managed political and cultural spaces, normally hosted in squatted properties, which started to be occupied in the 1970s. Most Centri Sociali are based on communal decision-making and inspired by radical left-wing values. While some remain in open conflict with the local authorities, others have been legalized and subsequently commercialized. The activism of Social Centres ranges from political agitation, cultural events and food distribution to language, sports classes and rave parties. CGIL, Confederazione generale italiana del lavoro (Italian General Confederation of Labour) is Italy’s biggest trade union. It was created by agreement between the Socialists, the Communists, and the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) in the ‘Pact of Rome’ of June 1944. Later on, CGIL found itself increasingly leaning towards the Partito Comunista Italiano. COBAS, Confederazione dei Comitati di Base (Confederation of Rank and File Committees) is a radical left-wing Italian trade union formed in 1986. COBAS relies on factory councils and

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xvi GLOSSARY

grass-root activities and is politically close to radical left-wing parties such as Rifondazione Comunista. DE, Democrazia Europea (European Democracy) was a party of the political centre founded in 2001 by the former trade union leader Sergio D’Antoni. It merged with the UDC in 2002. DS, Democratici di Sinistra (Left Democrats), was a political party that derived from the tradition of the PCI, Partito Comunista Italiano. Founded in 1998, with between 15 per cent and 17 per cent of the vote it was the strongest party within the Ulivo (Olive Tree) and later the Unione electoral alliance of centre-left parties. In 2007 it was one of the founding members of the PD, Partito Democratico. Federazione dei Verdi (Greens). Ecological Party founded in 1987. Unlike similar parties in northern Europe, the Italian Greens have always attracted rather low electoral support. The Greens joined the La Sinistra - l’Arcobaleno electoral alliance at the 2008 election. FI, Forza Italia (Come On, Italy!) is a political movement created by Silvio Berlusconi in 1994, only three months before the general election of that year. The party gained 21 per cent of the vote in 1994 and became Italy’s strongest party. It was able to broaden its electoral share to 29 per cent in 2001 but lost 5 per cent of the votes in the 2006 elections. In 2007 Berlusconi announced the dissolution of Forza Italia and the formation of a new political party: the Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom). Fininvest is a Milan-based company founded by Silvio Berlusconi in 1978 that includes his main holdings: the television company Mediaset, the publishing company Mondadori, the football club AC Milan and the bank Mediolanum. The president is Berlusconi’s daughter, Marina. FIOM, Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici (Federation of Metalworkers) is a branch of the trade union CGIL representing workers from the industrial sector. Girasole (Sunflower) was a political alliance of the Federazione dei Verdi (Greens) and the SDI (Italian Socialist Democrats) in the 2001 general elections. Girotondi (Ring a Ring o’ Roses) is a pro-democracy political movement created in 2001. Participants protested against new legislation aimed at reforming the Justice system, pushed through parliament by the second Berlusconi government, as well as against the political rhetoric employed by Berlusconi against magistrates who were investigating him (or his businesses). IdV, Italia dei Valori (Italy of Values), is an anti-corruption party founded in 1998 by the former public prosecutor, Antonio Di Pietro, one of the most prominent members of the Mani pulite (Clean Hands) investigation. The party joined the centre-left coalition, the Unione, led by Romano Prodi in 2005 and struck an electoral alliance with the Partito Democratico in 2008, gaining above 4 per cent of the vote in the elections of that year. LN, Lega Nord (Northern League) was founded in 1991 by Umberto Bossi, allegedly as a federation of several northern, regional parties that drew support mainly from Lombardy and the Veneto region. However, in practice, it is a very centralized party dominated by its leader. It advocates the transformation of Italy into a federal state through fiscal federalism and greater regional autonomy. The LN is known internationally for its extreme populist, anti-elite and anti-immigrant rhetoric and has attracted between 4 per cent and 10 per cent of the national vote since its creation. Lista Pannella (Pannella List) was a left leaning liberal party founded in 1992 and led by the former leader of the Partito Radicale (Radical Party), Marco Pannella. Mani pulite (Clean Hands) was a nationwide judicial investigation into political corruption held in the early 1990s by a team of magistrates of the Milan Tribunal. The enquiry uncovered

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widespread corruption on all levels of the political system and triggered a scandal that contributed to the demise of the so-called ‘First Republic’, resulting in the disappearance of most governing parties in the 1990s, including the largest of all, the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy). The systemic corruption that was uncovered by these investigations is usually referred to as Tangentopoli, or ‘Bribesville’. Margherita, DL-Democrazia e Libertà (Daisy-Democracy and Liberty) is a party of the political centre founded in 1995. It was a member of the centre-left alliances the Ulivo and the Unione. Before merging with the DS into the Partito Democratico in 2007, the party was able to attract over 10 per cent of the vote in the 2006 election (results for the Senate). Mediaset, owned by Silvio Berlusconi, is the biggest private television company in Italy. It comprises three television stations, Canale 5, Rete 4 and Italia 1, the advertisement agency Publitalia, the film production and distribution company Medusa and the television production company Endemol. The president is Fedele Confalonieri. Par Condicio legislation is a Fairness Doctrine introduced in 1993 and modified in 2000 to guarantee the equal representation of all major parties on television and the possibility for parties to gain airtime for free on public television before elections. PCI, Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party) was a party founded in 1921 (initially under the name of Partito Comunista d’Italia) by, among others, Antonio Gramsci. After World War II the PCI became the largest Communist Party in Western Europe, attracting up to one-third of the vote cast (e.g. in 1976). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the party turned to Social Democracy and changed its name into PDS (Partito Democratico della Sinistra) later DS (Democratici di Sinistra). PD, Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) is a political party founded in 2007. It merged various parties of the centre-left (in particular the DS and Margherita) aiming to create a broadbased reformist and moderate centre-left force within a two-party system. With 33.2 per cent of the votes in 2008, the PD has established itself as the main party of opposition to Berlusconi’s fourth government. PdCI, Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (Party of the Italian Communists) was founded in 1998 following a split with Rifondazione Comunista in the wake of a governmental crisis and the subsequent resignation of Prime Minister Romano Prodi. It had gained between 2 per cent and 4 per cent of the vote up until the 2008 election, when the alliance of which the PdCI was a member (La Sinistra, L’Arcobaleno) failed to gain any seats in the Italian Parliament. PdL, Popolo della Libertà (People of Freedom) is a centre-right party founded prior to the general election of 2008 by Silvio Berlusconi, allegedly to unite all conservative forces. It includes Berlusconi’s own Forza Italia and some minor liberal-conservative, centrist and rightwing parties. Alleanza Nazionale, which has created a unitary parliamentary list with the PdL in 2008, should merge with it in 2009. The PdL struck electoral alliances with the Lega Nord and the Movimento per l’autonomia del Sud in 2008: combined they attracted 46.8 per cent of the vote, thus beating their opponents of the centre-left by almost 10 percentage points. PSI, Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party) was a party founded in Genoa in 1882. It achieved great influence within the Italian political system under the leadership of Bettino Craxi, who served as PM in the mid-1980s. In 1987 the PSI attracted almost 15 per cent of the national vote, only to disband in 1994 in the wake of the investigations of Mani pulite (in which high ranking Socialist leaders were implicated) and the subsequent collapse in its support. Several parties have been created since the mid-1990s to try and regroup the former Socialists.

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RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana, founded in 1945 in Rome, is Italy’s public service broadcaster. It includes three networks (RAI 1, RAI 2, RAI 3), various satellite channels as well as radio services. RC, Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation), was founded in 1991 in the wake of the dissolution of the PCI. Before the poor performance of La Sinistra, l’ Arcobaleno in the 2008 election, RC was attracting between 5 per cent and 7 percent of the vote. Rosa Nel Pugno (Rose in the Fist) was a federation between the Socialisti Democratici Italiani (Italian Democratic Socialists) and the Partito Radicale (Radical Party) founded in 2005 and disbanded in 2007. It aimed to unite lay, reformist and socialist forces. La Sinistra, l’Arcobaleno (The Rainbow Left) was an alliance formed in 2007 between Rifondazione Comunista (RC), Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI), the Federazione dei Verdi (Green Party) and Sinistra Democratica (Democratic Left). It was dissolved after a disastrous electoral outcome in the general elections of 2008, when it gained only 3.2 per cent of the vote, therefore failing to gain any seats in parliament. Tangentopoli (Bribesville) is a nickname given to Milan by the press in the 1990s in the wake of a widespread corruption scandal that was revealed by the Milanese Mani pulite investigation. The enquiry subsequently spread to the whole country, leading to the downfall of governmental parties in the 1992 elections and the indictment of one third of the political class. UDC, Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e Democratici di Centro (Union of Christian Democrats and Democrats of the Centre) is a conservative party of Catholic inspiration founded in 2002 which remained a member of the centre-right alliance between 2002 and 2006. Its forebears attracted 3.2 per cent of the vote at the 2001 elections; however, by keeping a distinct profile within the centre-right alliance, the UDC saw its share of the vote rise to 6.8 per cent in 2006. In 2007, the UDC refused to merge with the newly created PdL. Unione (The Union) was a centre-left electoral alliance led by Romano Prodi which narrowly managed to win the 2006 election. World Social Forum (WSF) is an annual conference held by members of the movement for global justice to coordinate political campaigns and initiatives, to exchange organizing strategies and to discuss political developments around the world. In Italy various local suborganizations such as the Florence Social Forum or the Genova Social Forum have also emerged to promote social justice and peace.

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INTRODUCTION

This Tide is not for Turning Daniele Albertazzi and Nina Rothenberg1

Italy is too disillusioned to get turned into a real ‘regime’ in which fundamental freedoms are infringed. Something different is at stake – a new and insidious, but dangerous, form of politicocultural hegemony. It empties and disempowers those places which have enabled the development of oppositional reflections and of a positive perspective of Italy as it is, and as one might wish it were. (Giannini 2008) 2 This volume is concerned with the responses of a selection of individuals, groups and organizations to Silvio Berlusconi and what the media entrepreneur turned politician represented for them. Underpinning our investigation is a concern on how resistance, that truly needed to be everywhere and express itself through any channels it could find (given the pervasiveness of the power it was contesting), was articulated, lived and expressed by a variety of people who perceived their lives, professions and social and cultural environment as being radically affected by Berlusconi’s return to power. Convinced (as we are) that Berlusconi’s persona, ideology and style, in one word Berlusconismo, are now so deeply rooted in Italian society that they may well outlast his departure from the political scene, our book focuses on how Berlusconi’s opponents – particularly intellectuals, artists, media practitioners and grass-root activists – have responded to the challenge that, in their view, this political leader has posed in recent years to progressive sectors of Italian society (and Italy as a whole). While it is clearly too early to attempt a final and comprehensive assessment of the multiple challenges to Berlusconi expressed by civil society and the cultural world, his five-year stint in power between 2001 and 2006 is a long enough period to reward sustained critical reflection, while also having the advantage of being a circumscribed one.3 Our book, therefore, concentrates mainly on those years, although we are very aware that the ‘tide’ of Berlusconismo has clearly not turned as yet, since the former PM was again returned to power by the Italian electorate in 2008.

Not Another Book on Silvio Berlusconi . . . It is difficult to overstate the influence of Silvio Berlusconi on contemporary Italian society, whether one is talking about its politics, culture or media industry. Having allegedly relinquished the leadership of his business activities and having entered politics ‘on loan’ in 1993 to ‘save Italy’ from communist rule following the demise of all major centrist governing parties (Forza Italia 2001), Berlusconi has since become one of the longest serving major political leaders on the continent, while remaining in control (either directly, or through close associates and family members) of a vast media empire. Pictures of a younger Berlusconi standing besides

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the likes of Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl or François Mitterrand while serving as Italian Prime Minister for the first time in 1994 remind one of a radically different political era. Since then, those leaders having left the scene (perhaps only ‘partially’ in Clinton’s case), Berlusconi has become PM three more times (in 2001; in 2005, succeding himself; and again in 2008); moreover, he has repeatedly led the largest political parties in his country, which also happen to be his own creations: first Forza Italia (FI), and now the Popolo della Libertà (PdL). The media entrepreneur is possibly the only political leader in a western democracy who could afford to lose a second general election – and even to the same opponent, Romano Prodi – and still survive at the head of both his party and his coalition to win a third one (Albertazzi, McDonnell 2009). An important aspect of Berlusconi’s political legacy, and one of the reasons why he remains such a divisive figure in the country (like George W. Bush has been in America) is the crucial role he has played in legitimizing and bringing into the mainstream parties that were widely seen as being ‘extreme’: the former fascists of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) (later Alleanza Nazionale [AN]) and the regionalist populists of the Lega Nord (LN). Since Berlusconi ‘took to the pitch’ of politics, as he famously said – employing a metaphor that would remind people of his role as President of the successful football club AC Milan – the MSI-AN and the LN have been on his side, serving in every government he has headed and helping him to defeat his foes of the centre-left in successive elections. Many Italians were deeply shocked that parties such as these could be turned into forces of government almost ‘overnight’ – the post-war Italian Constitution being infused with the values of anti-Fascism. Berlusconi’s decision to bring these parties into government had severe ideological and cultural repercussions on Italian society, as the same slogans on, say, immigration that the LN had shouted in its street demonstrations (many of which would fall foul of legislation against race-hatred in countries such as Great Britain) started to be uttered by none other than government ministers (McDonnell 2006).4 Another reason why Berlusconi has been the object of fierce criticism in recent years is the huge, and still unresolved, conflict of interests between his activities as a politician and PM and his position as media entrepreneur. It could be argued that, at least to some extent, Italy has become archetypical of an unhealthy relationship between politics and the media that is after all well known to other western democracies, too. The media have become the primary means by which the majority of citizens gather political intelligence, monitor the activities of politicians and assess the performance of the political classes in western societies, meaning that the function of politically educating the citizenry has now almost entirely been transferred from the traditional parties to the media. The media now play a fundamental role in setting the political agenda and for parties to gain visibility they are obliged to submit to their expectations and make themselves newsworthy, with all that this entails in terms of the spectacularization of politics. While, as Denis McQuail has observed, ‘the media are rarely likely to be the only necessary or sufficient cause of an effect, and their relative contribution is extremely hard to assess’ (2000: 416), they do play an important role in deciding what we think about, that is, in affecting the political agenda, in a process of dynamic interaction with party activities and public opinion (Kuhn 2007: 237–62). In addition to this, it has been noticed in recent years how media ownership is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of corporations, which have moved away from mono-media ownership and towards cross-media ownership, as well as developing substantial non-media interests, in Europe and elsewhere (Doyle 2002). Arguably, it is not a rare occurrence for media tycoons to intervene directly in the political process: however, ‘while most media moguls wield political influence indirectly by lobbying political elites for favourable legislative changes and/or by influencing the court of public opinion via their media outlets, Berlusconi has chosen to lead from the front’ (Hibberd 2007: 898). What makes the Italian case unique, therefore, is the sheer scale of the concentration of powers enjoyed by FI’s leader (see Chapter 2); Berlusconi does not limit himself to affecting politics

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INTRODUCTION

3

in Italy, in the way that Rupert Murdoch’s papers, for instance, have influenced British public debate on issues such as Europe or immigration.5 Berlusconi simply is the most important political actor in his country, having led the largest political parties Italy has known since the mid-1990s, as well as one of the two main electoral alliances competing for government (i.e. the centre-right). According to some observers, the connection between the cultural conditioning that started in the 1980s with Berlusconi’s television channels promoting a pro-American, individualist, consumerist and escapist culture, and Berlusconi’s own personal political triumph ‘is a fundamental one’ (Ginsborg 2004: 51; also Sartori 2007). While Berlusconi’s political product does respond to the needs of large sections of the Italian electorate, which are deeply opposed to the values of the left, his media provide him with a very effective platform to shape the agenda of national debate before elections and put his vision across. For these reasons, Berlusconi’s eventful career has inevitably attracted much academic scrutiny, not just in Italy but also in the English-speaking world (e.g. in recent years Andrews 2005; Ginsborg 2004; Lane 2005). Surprisingly, however, very little is available (especially to the international reader) on the modalities and projects of resistance that have been put in place against the culture, ideology and initiatives that have come to be associated with Berlusconi’s name.6 This volume is a first attempt to provide analyses of how people have responded to Berlusconi, whether from within those same media and cultural sectors that this leader has to an extent successfully controlled (as no hegemony, no matter how pervasive, can ever be all-embracing) (Williams 1977), or else from parts of society that felt they were being targeted by the neoconservative initiatives, legislation and, more generally, cultural climate that this politician has facilitated – for instance, minorities or marginalized communities. The remaining sections of this introduction will cover Berlusconi’s rise as a political leader, his successful attempts to extend his control of the media while in government, the passing of legislation intended to protect his own interests and the reasons why sections of civil society and some prominent Italian intellectuals felt the need to respond to the challenge posed by the culture Berlusconi has come to embody. Despite the fact that this book is not about Berlusconi’s career, knowledge of these events is essential to appreciate the analyses that constitute the bulk of it.

Spreading His Wings: From Business into Politics Berlusconi’s development as a media magnate and politician has to be contextualized within the frame of the Italian post-war political system which led to a progressive penetration of the economic and the para-state system by political parties and the close interaction of economic and political players (Pasquino 1989). As Berlusconi’s career developed, his power and influence over Italian society have cumulatively increased, to the point where the country is perceived by many to be ‘Berlusconi’s Italy’ (Agnew, Shin 2008). This section briefly traces some significant aspects of his ascent, noting collaborative relationships and political strategies that have contributed to shoring up his status and success. Berlusconi’s professional fortunes are closely connected to his ability to develop close relations with powerful allies within the political system. One figure, who has proved crucial to Berlusconi’s economic success, was Bettino Craxi, former leader of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) and Prime Minister from 1983 to 1987. Craxi, a virulent anti-communist with strong ambitions to transform his party into a reformist, social-democratic mass party and to replace the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) as the main force of opposition, severed all remaining ideological ties with class conflict and revolution and pursued a political strategy that was as pragmatic in its goal orientation as it was unscrupulous in its means. Craxi and

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Berlusconi were both inspired by the hedonistic individualism of the Reagan era and soon engaged in a symbiotic relationship that benefited each other’s political and economic goals. As the leader of the PSI since 1976, Craxi has been alleged to have supported his friend by providing him with cheap credit through some banks that were controlled by his party (Stille 2006). Eventually, Berlusconi was able to outplay his main competitors on the television market and buy them off in 1983 and 1984, when he acquired the two national private networks Italia 1 and Rete 4, giving him together with his channel Canale 5 effectively a monopoly over private television. Berlusconi, in turn, gave Craxi’s party broad and sympathetic visibility on his networks, thereby helping the Socialists to moderately increase their electoral consensus in the 1983 elections and boosting Craxi’s ambitious bid to become Prime Minister. Craxi reciprocated and feared no confrontation to help his friend. In 1986 he appointed Enrico Manca director of the board of Berlusconi’s only competitor, the state broadcaster RAI. Manca subsequently pursued a less competitive strategy, which in just a few years under his leadership led to RAI losing 50 per cent of its market shares to Berlusconi’s Mediaset (Stille 2006: 70). In 1990 it was again Craxi who fended off antitrust legislation and who imposed a law that would perpetuate Berlusconi’s media monopoly over private television, despite a governmental crisis that led to the resignation of a number of ministers of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC).7 It was later reported that Berlusconi in 1991 and 1992 paid twenty-three billion lire into Craxi’s offshore bank accounts from a secret fund of his Fininvest company, known as All Iberian (Economist 2001). Although the DC and the PCI had both been concerned about the anthropological revolution that was triggered by Berlusconi’s television empire, with its spread of lowbrow mass culture and consumerist values (Gundle 2000: 170), the cultural hegemony that was gradually imposed in the country was not counterbalanced by any effective cultural or political opposition. Having shown enormous skills as a lobbyist and salesman and distinguishing himself for a ‘willingness to defy, skirt or to break the law’ (Stille 2006: 62), within only a few years Berlusconi had taken control of over 60 per cent of the television advertisement market, thereby managing huge financial resources that enabled him to further expand his empire. His channels offered more entertainment, telenovelas, quiz shows, popular American soaps such as Dallas and a new, yet heavily anti-feminist representation of sexuality, with pretty showgirls and erotic films shown at night time. Berlusconi later referred to his programming as ‘an act of transgression’ that defied the old-fashioned style of the state broadcaster RAI (Ferrari 1990: 70), and there are scholars who emphasize his role as an innovator of the Italian television market (see Chapter 2). In 1989 Berlusconi bought the country’s biggest publishing company Mondadori, which apart from books also edited a wide range of popular weekly magazines such as Panorama and Sorrisi & Canzoni. In order to outbalance what he referred to as the leftwing domination of the press (Fiore 1996: 47), the entrepreneur also acquired the newspaper Il Giornale, which was then led by the liberal-conservative intellectual Indro Montanelli. After the brusque removal of the irreverent Montanelli prior to the elections in 1994, the paper became a fervent mouthpiece of Berlusconi’s political goals. While Berlusconi’s media empire was a crucial prerequisite of his political ambitions, his success also results from the wider Italian political and social context after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the exacerbation of the country’s longstanding political crisis. The media magnate responded successfully to specific demands within Italian society after the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the political class during the Tangentopoli corruption scandals of the early 1990s that concluded the slow demise of the country’s leading political parties. Not only the Milanese prosecuting magistrates of the Mani pulite investigative pool had revealed widespread corruption at all levels of the political system, which had resulted in serious administrative deficiencies, high public debt and chronic underinvestment in social services, but the

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exclusion of Italy from the European Monetary System in 1992 and the risk of not meeting the economic parameters of the Maastricht Treaty for the adoption of the Euro were clear warning signs that the country’s economic future was at risk. The magistrates of Mani pulite, especially the Southern ex-police-officer Antonio Di Pietro, became popular symbols of a revolution that aimed to cleanse Italian society from corruption and sleaze.8 Within a year one-third of Italian MPs were under indictment, including Berlusconi’s benefactor Bettino Craxi whose party was especially hard hit by the scandals. Italy’s model of modernization was being challenged both from within the country, where mounting opposition to organized crime, high taxation and extensive corruption increasingly destabilized the traditional parties, as well as from the European Community, which pressed Italy to control its bursting public debt in order to enter the European Monetary Union (Bull and Rhodes 2007: 659). With legal proceedings taking place against hundreds of politicians and entrepreneurs, a political class, already highly delegitimized by various political scandals and kept alive only by the cold war context, imploded and vanished from the political landscape by 1993. Amongst the established parties of the First Republic only the former PCI, which had been renamed the Partito dei Democratici di Sinistra (PDS) in 1990, remained substantially intact.9 However, the left, which had never governed the country at the national level, was profoundly disorientated by the substantial discrediting of Communism. Its attempts at a redefinition of its political agenda led to a sequence of multiple renaming, splits and programmatical reformations that were predominantly oriented towards the political centre and the middle classes, but which failed to address the growing insecurities and anxieties of the wider population in an era of globalization (Simone 2008). Overall, the Tangentopoli scandals and the public support the enquiry triggered did not modify those customs and behaviours that often prevented the development of a stronger public ethic and loyalty to the state and its institutions in the country. Paul Ginsborg’s characterization of Tangentopoli as a ‘spectator sport’ (Ginsborg 1996: 27), describes the historical distrust many Italians felt towards their political class, fuelling therefore the widespread attitude to shift responsibilities from the personal to the political system. As a matter of fact, through bipartisan agreements, criticism of magistrates and expressions of solidarity with the indicted, the judiciary was increasingly delegitimized and isolated, with figures such as Luciano Violante, one of the leaders of the leftwing party Democratici di Sinistra (DS), accusing them of having gone too far, and of engaging in ‘Justicialism’ – an overzealous interpretation of the law (Barbacetto et al. 2007: 40). This deep political crisis that unfolded prepared the ground for the idealization of the charismatic leader and the further detachment of wide strata of the population from politics, which began to be passively experienced on television rather than being articulated through the traditional channels of political aggregation (Tarchi 2003: 161). The demise of the DC, the party that had dominated politics in the country for almost forty years, opened a political void among the moderate electorate that none of the conservative political forces seemed to be able to fill appropriately. As a successful and popular entrepreneur with three TV channels at his disposal, Berlusconi was the actor who was best equipped to fill this space through the creation of a liberalconservative movement – FI that stood aloof from the discredited, old party system, while offering a political alternative to the left. Polls showed that Berlusconi’s name was recognized by 97 per cent of participants in focus groups, while 78 per cent expressed preferences for a candidate who was not a politician (Stille 2006: 138). The image of the successful self-made man, his populist agenda and the deployment of a television empire, all worked as powerful weapons in a country in which a strong feeling of social fragmentation and growing economic uncertainty were reinforced by the ‘liquidity’ of social relations and the dissolution of traditional support networks that characterize the postmodern era (Bauman 2007). This process forced the main

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political actors to redefine their organizations and strategies. The sociologist Ilvo Diamanti observed that From organized, territorially rooted mass parties, we shifted to parties that are void of a local structure, organized in the centre and fragile at the edges – but above all personalized, influenced by the logic of communication and marketing. This creates a sort of mediatic populism, whose undisputed and unrivalled inventor is Silvio Berlusconi. (Diamanti 2008) Aside from his political aspirations, personal motivations may also have played an important role in Berlusconi’s decision to enter politics in 1993. His Mediaset company was highly indebted, antitrust legislation loomed if the left had won the elections and various legal proceedings threatened Berlusconi’s businesses. In Spain he was being investigated for accounting fraud on behalf of his channel Telecinco; while in Italy it was alleged that, together with the former solicitor of his Fininvest Group, Cesare Previti, he had corrupted judges in order to get favourable sentences in trials that followed his contested acquisition of the public supermarket chain SME and the publishing company Mondadori. These legal troubles filled Berlusconi with profound distrust towards the ‘red’ magistrates, who were accused of being part of a communist conspiracy that aimed to eliminate him politically in order to favour the left. Berlusconi was able to bury his synergic relations with the partitocracy of the ‘First Republic’ by projecting himself as a victim of a rapacious political class, which had forced entrepreneurs to pay up in order to get their businesses going. By focusing on anti-communism, promising to lower the tax burden and proposing himself as the political outsider, who could do for Italy what he had done for his own businesses, Berlusconi united a divided political constituency in the North and the South and even conquered sections of the traditional leftwing electorate in the 2001 elections. By proposing to adopt the ethos of his own businesses in the running of the country – a governance style based on rapid decision-making, a vertical structure of authority and goal orientation to satisfy the needs of the citizen/customer – Berlusconi was able to propose a new solution to Italy’s endemic social and political divisions that broke with some of the country’s long-standing political traditions – lengthy executive and legislative negotiations and a chronically slow bureaucracy. Through his social research agency Publitalia, Berlusconi was able to filter and to absorb concerns and demands from civic society and to use majority patterns within public opinion to construct a popular political programme. Widely regarded as ‘a plastic party’, FI was initially an organization that purely served the leader’s interest (Calise 2000; Mastropaolo 2000), and that relied on his media to propagate values that were conducive to his wider political goals – individualism, entrepreneurship, consumerism and hedonism. FI nevertheless became the country’s most voted party and very quickly established an organizational network with fragmented yet stable territorial representation, which is particularly strong in the industrial triangle of the North, in Sicily and in some provinces of Sardinia, Lazio and Campania (Diamanti 2004: 53–5). The fragmented character of these electoral roots bore the potential for conflict, however (see Chapter 4) and made it necessary to coagulate the different orientations of the party’s constituency through strong, charismatic leadership, relying heavily on television to build consensus by focusing on low-perception-threshold issues, such as taxes, crime and immigration. The result is a public debate that is animated by the rhetoric of permanent campaigning. Television acquired a fundamental role in fostering the direct relationship between leader and people (Ricolfi 1994). In the words of one of his closest advisors, the journalist Giuliano Ferrara, Berlusconi gave ‘form, face and sound’ to people’s aspirations (quoted in Forza Italia 2001: 39). His language – a simple colloquial style of communication that relied heavily on slogans, jokes and commonsense statements, funny anecdotes about his family and a tendency for jovial self-aggrandizement – stood in sharp contrast to the dry political style that

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had characterized the political era of the DC and the PCI. Moreover, it was cheerfully detached from the pessimistic gravitas and intellectualism of the left, which is so frequently mocked by Berlusconi. As a matter of fact, Berlusconi’s electorate, which in the 1994 and 2001 elections was composed of an above-average percentage of housewives, self-employed and unemployed people (ITANES 2001: 63), showed high rates of TV-consumption, low awareness of the potentially manipulative impact of television and a propensity not to see concentration of ownership as a problem for Italian democracy (Diamanti 2004: 59). It is precisely to the media –and more specifically to Berlusconi’s skilful deployment of television for political purposes – that we now need to turn.

How to Use the Media and Alienate Magistrates Historically subdued to the political system and vulnerable to interference by political and economic forces (Mancini 2001; Gundle 1997), the Italian media are the main ground on which hegemonic dynamics are enacted. Research has, however, not elaborated clear parameters to assess the effects the media have on individual and on public consciousness (Bartels 1993: 267). Media messages work in complex and sometimes contradictory ways and are balanced out, reinforced and refuted by personal experiences, the social context and political or religious values. While the impact of, specifically, television messages on people’s social and political formation is generally seen as important (Cotteret 1991; Croteau, Hoynes 1997), some scholars go further in their analysis and claim that the media support hegemonic frames to manufacture consensus that serves the interests of the power-holders (Adorno 1991; Chomsky, Herman 2001; Hall 1995; Gramsci 1971; Noelle-Neumann 2002; Signorielli, Morgan 1990). In Italy, the media historian Peppino Ortoleva argues that Berlusconi was able to use his media power to impose a value system that has gradually determined a substantial cultural hegemony over the country that is hard to resist.10 On the contrary, John Fiske has rejected the view that hegemony can be imposed by the media, stressing the power of the subordinate to resist dominant frames through subcultural engagement (Fiske 1987: 19). Although it is impossible to address fully the question of what impact Berlusconi’s media power may have had on Italian society in recent decades, we limit ourselves to outlining its potential political effects. Further empirical research is needed to assess the potential psychological and social repercussions of this level of concentration of media power on audiences. While the launch of a political party that would win the general election within only a few months would have been an impossible endeavour without direct and unlimited media access, Berlusconi was subsequently able to reinforce the dominance of the medium as the main arena of the country’s public discourse and to affect the political agenda within its highly concentrated realm. In a country with a low newspaper readership, Berlusconi’s three networks strongly supported him directly by featuring his policies in a positive light, by omitting the most ominous aspects of his persona and by strongly emphasizing his alleged charisma and abilities. Prior to the 2001 elections, Mediaset dedicated almost twice as much coverage to Berlusconi than to his opponent Francesco Rutelli of the centre-left, while RAI offered a more balanced representation, affording only slightly more space to Berlusconi (Sani, Legnanti 2002: 126–27). Not surprisingly, in this period Berlusconi and his allies attacked the state broadcaster RAI and its president, the left-wing Roberto Zaccaria, for featuring a number of programmes that were highly critical of him and, once in government, enforced the removal of these shows from state television (see Chapter 16). Mediaset had been relatively balanced before Berlusconi’s entry into politics, but it became predominantly aligned to his political goals before the 1994 elections (Mazzoleni 2004: 270–71). Through changes in its personnel structure, Berlusconi was able to

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boost political conformism within his own company prior to the 2001 general elections (see Chapter 2). With the public service broadcaster RAI also being subjected to an internal restructuring in 2002 to curtail the prevailing hostility in some of its popular programmes, Italian television became increasingly streamlined to a political discourse that, besides often backing the government in explicit ways, projected individualistic and consumerist solutions, dramatized the effects of crime and immigration, marginalized minority voices and failed to provide a deeper analysis of the country’s social and political problems. In 2004, the then President of RAI, Lucia Annunziata, repeatedly denounced the constant attempts of the Prime Minister to interfere in the affairs of the state broadcaster RAI (Repubblica 4 May 2004). The Berlusconi government also stood accused by the Venice Commission and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), of having failed to address appropriately the issues of the concentration of media ownership and the lack of pluralism in the television sector (OSCE 2005). Both bodies criticized recently passed legislation on the conflict of interests – the Frattini law – and on the reorganization of the television market – the Gasparri law (OSCE 2005).11 Berlusconi’s influence is based on his power to affect the political agenda, to impose argumentative frames within the public debate and to often force his opponents onto the defensive by juxtaposing the authority of his personal leadership on the right to the fragmented structure of the left. The term Berlusconizzazione, whereby certain values and discourses that are identified with an individual become increasingly naturalized to represent the interests of the entire society, is widely used by oppositional journalists to delineate the effects of the media magnate’s alleged cultural hegemony over the country. This process is reinforced by wider postmodern developments that have further strengthened the role of television as the main instrument of social and political representation and its tendency to ‘cater to surface whims’ at the expense of ‘deeper informational needs’ (Graber 1980: 57) – a process that is a global phenomenon and that finds in Italy a very strong political expression. The Media Freedom Survey by the Association of European Journalists has, in fact, criticized the decreasing quality of press freedom and investigative journalism in many countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland. William Horsley, one of the authors of the report, wrote: The situation is especially troubling with respect to public TV and Radio broadcasting in many countries, where little or no pretence is made to preserve the independence of broadcast news and programmes from political influence or control. (Association of European Journalists 2007: 2) The report, however, gives a diverse picture of the quality of press freedom in specific nations, emphasizing the worrying level of concentration of ownership in Italy and the outstandingly problematic conflict of interests it entails (Ibid.: 39–42). In an era in which access to television has become a necessity for politicians (Mazzoleni, Schulz 1999: 249), media ownership certainly was a determining factor of Berlusconi’s political career and of his surprising endurance. Able to affect public opinion and to condition the information output of the majority of Italians, Berlusconi heavily emphasizes the sovereignty of the ‘will of the people’ and attacks those who want to limit its reach. Berlusconi’s media have been used effectively against prosecuting magistrates, to whom he has been tied through various legal enquiries and trials in which he stood accused of corruption. The ambiguous position of the government on questions of public ethics and legality and the hostile stance it took against prosecuting magistrates soon degenerated into an accusatory campaign against the judiciary, whose relations with the political system had been fraught for some time. Berlusconi’s broadsides against prosecutors met fertile ground on the right as well as among politicians on the left, who felt threatened by a legal system that was in the eyes of many, far too autonomous and aggressive for the good of

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the country. These attacks isolated the judiciary and often weakened its impact (Ginsborg 2004: 91). Ginsborg has also emphasized that the role of the judiciary in opposing Berlusconi’s power concentration has been fluctuating and inconsistent (ibid.: 145). As a matter of fact, in 2001 the Constitutional Court surprisingly excluded the Prime Minister from the trial for corruption of judges during the take-over battle of the publishing company Mondadori because of ‘extenuating circumstances’, namely the prominence of his position as Prime Minister, while his solicitor and closest collaborator, Cesare Previti, was convicted for the same crime in 2005. Berlusconi was able to exploit one of the dominant features of Italian political culture – the clash between prosecuting magistrates and the political system – to his benefit, by radicalizing strategies that had already been adopted to curb the judiciary before him. Under the Minister of Justice Roberto Castelli, the government introduced a number of laws that aimed to curtail the prosecutor’s autonomy and make them more susceptible to political influence. Moreover, in June 2001 a decree gave the minister of justice the right to transfer magistrates without consulting the Superior Council of Magistrates. Parliamentary investigations were also set up to enquire into prosecutors’ presumed abuses of power in the Mani pulite enquiry, while new legislation on rogatories was passed in order to prevent the use of non-original documents, like photocopies in court – a move that alleviated accusatory evidence against Berlusconi in one of the trials against him. In addition to this, legislation was passed to grant legal immunity to the five highest offices of the state – including the Prime Minister12 – and an indictment that accused Berlusconi of accounting fraud was solved through its substantial decriminalization. Most of this legislation stirred strong criticism and was judged to be ad personam – that is, serving the exclusive interests of the Prime Minister – even by the more conservative press. As Chapter 12 discusses, the Corriere della Sera paid a high prize for its critical coverage, as the popular editor, Ferruccio de Bortoli eventually resigned in 2003.

Incredulous Perplexity: Intellectuals and the Reflexive Middle-Classes Berlusconi’s radical stance against the judiciary and some irreverent journalists within the state broadcaster RAI (see Chapter 12), alienated sections of the population and instigated widespread protest against his government by the country’s highest profiled intellectuals and the foreign press (Eco quoted in Jaggi 2002; Sartori 2007). It is however debatable to what extent intellectuals manage to have an impact on the formation of public opinion in Italy. Criticized by Gramsci as a small and narrow-minded caste of ‘disinterested observers’ within a still rural society (Gramsci 1971: 156), the majority of Italian intellectuals have been discredited by their passive support of Fascism and their subsequent lack of political autonomy in post-war Italy (D’Orsi 2001). The deep social and political fragmentation of the country and the lack of political credibility of intellectuals have determined a profound detachment between the wider population and the cultured elites, who would often look at the country and its people with incredulous perplexity. Giovanni Sartori’s testimony gives evidence of the widespread resignation and disillusionment among intellectuals with Italy’s political and cultural foundations that have failed to foster the development of stronger patterns of social solidarity and cohesion. In his book Mala tempora he wrote: Our country has always been, and has remained, a spineless country [. . .] with no backbone, which at the crucial moment does not react to, but undergoes events. Is this the reason why I lose all my battles? I suspect so, at least in part. God, perhaps my battles are not worth very much. But even if we hypothesize that they are well fought, I think I’d lose them all the same.

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Above all, I lose them because I am not one of the herd. And in a country without antibodies, the ‘black sheep’ is alone: a voice outside the choir, with no choir, with no support. (Sartori 2004: 2) The historian Alberto Asor Rosa, one of the most outspoken critics of the Prime Minister, sees Berlusconi as an expression of a longstanding historical deviation of the country’s political culture: ‘Rather than being the cause of corruption, Berlusconi, [. . .] was born out of a long, sustained and successful practice of corruption: he represents perfectly the growing decadence of planet Italy; of course he only knows how to govern through corruption’ (Asor Rosa 2008). For many intellectuals, Berlusconismo is an endemic expression of the country’s democratic immaturity, the irresponsibility of its political elites and the indifference and powerlessness of the wider population (Sylos Labini 2003). Indeed, it must be stressed that even the most radical expressions of Berlusconi’s political vernacular against magistrates and journalists have so far not triggered continuing disapproval among the wider population. His often excessive and overtly impulsive rhetoric is seen by many as part of his ‘bewitching charm’ and spontaneity (Mazzoleni 2004: 259). Audiences may have become exasperated at times by his ubiquitous media presence (paired with failed electoral promises), and Italians did vote him out of office in the 2006 general elections (albeit by a very small margin), however the opposition to Berlusconi’s political and cultural hegemony has come mainly from minoritarian sections of the population, generally from groups the historian Paul Ginsborg referred to as the ‘reflexive middle classes’ (Ginsborg 2004: 171). Ironically, within the context of the fragmented left, these minority movements have often proved beneficial to Berlusconi by allowing him to sharpen his political profile, to close ranks among his supporters and to further divide the opposition. Power, defined by Foucault as a ‘complex strategical situation’ and a ‘multiplicity of force relations’ depends for its existence on points of resistance (Foucault 1979: 92–7), and Berlusconi was able to use the divisions within the opposition in his favour by delegitimizing his most fervent opponents and by making them appear as radical and isolated minority voices that stood aloof from the country and its people. MicroMega, the monthly publication that best represents the least moderate factions of opposition to Berlusconi with its think tank of critical intellectuals, magistrates and journalists, was often accused of being ‘Justicialist’, or ‘manettari’,13 of wanting to expropriate the Prime Minister of his life achievements, and to put him in prison in order to impede his political project (Januzzi 2008; Zanetto 2002). The debate about what political strategy to pursue in dealing with the ‘Berlusconi phenomenon’ has divided the opposition for the past 15 years. On the one hand there are the more radical extra-parliamentary groups and on the other the generally more prudent forces represented in Parliament that have rejected the ‘demonization’ of the Cavaliere and have sought a dialogue with him on crucial issues such as constitutional reform, estranging sections of their own electorate in the process. The parliamentary opposition’s ‘soft’ approach to the media magnate is probably an expression of the fear that curtailing his media empire by introducing effective antitrust legislation – in place in most western democracies – would further aggravate the political climate and possibly alienate the more moderate sections of the electorate. The most active opponents of Berlusconi were therefore often marginalized from mainstream politics, many of them joining the growing chorus of ‘antipolitica’ with its vivid expressions of contempt for the whole political class. Although public mobilization against Berlusconi has been at times very strong and hostility towards his persona and political project is widespread in Italian society, especially among the better educated, resistance against him is increasingly weakened by general postmodern processes of depoliticization and mediatization (Mazzoleni, Schulz 1999), which modify the mechanisms of the legitimation process in contemporary western democracies. This determines a

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further decline of the ‘shared practice of decision-making’ (Habermas 2006: 9) and shrinking levels of institutional trust and of continuous forms of active political participation. Scholars have emphasized that resistance to Berlusconi finds an increasingly less receptive cultural and political arena (Ginsborg 2008). The sociologist Giorgio Agamben pointed at the condition of ‘reassuring frustration’ as the dominant cultural trait of contemporary Italian society: ‘It is the feeling experienced by those whose capacity for expression has been expropriated, it is the impulse of those who have no way of dragging themselves out of a situation, and so fall silent when faced with the unbearable’ (quoted in D’Avanzo 2008). Besides this more pessimistic macro-analysis of oppositional resistances in Italy, a more specific evaluation reveals the cultural strength, strong mobilization and creativity of opposition to Berlusconi, which is the central focus of this volume. Cultural analyses have advanced the position that actors are strategic in their relationship to cultural practices and that their creative engagement can produce anti-hegemonic messages that challenge the status quo (Bakhtin 1981; Bourdieu 1989; de Certeau 1984; Fiske 1989; Hall 1980). Oppositional cultures within Italian society have developed out of an apparent cultural hegemony, triggering dynamics of direct and indirect repression, isolation, censorship and mobilization and have subsequently developed in parabolic interaction with these hegemonic forces. It is now time to turn to the struggles of intellectuals, journalists and media practitioners that are covered in this book by briefly introducing to our readers the analyses and case-studies that constitute the bulk of the discussion.

The Structure of the Book Our volume is divided into four parts. The aim of the first part is to set the scene for the rest of the book, explaining how Italian society, and particularly its media environment, have developed in recent years. James L. Newell (Chapter 1) assesses what was distinctive about the economy and society in Italy under the second and third Berlusconi governments, giving us a sense of what life was like for Italians right at the beginning of the new century. Focusing on a wider period which embraces the last 20 years, in Chapter 2 Cristopher Cepernich reflects on how the Italian media system has been changed by Berlusconi. His analysis assesses the ‘incomplete modernization’ of the Italian media system Berlusconi has brought about, as well as discussing in detail the already mentioned conflict of interests between Berlusconi’s position in the business world and his public responsibilities as PM. Chapter 3 concentrates on electoral campaigning, an area in which Berlusconi has introduced crucial innovations, and where those opposing him have found it difficult to keep up. Here Roberto Grandi and Cristian Vaccari conclude that Berlusconi’s top-down, television-centred model of communication, despite showing signs of diminished effectiveness, has been challenged only partially and half-heartedly by a more ‘dialogic’, personalized and participatory model championed by the centre-left (what the authors call the ‘postmodern’ model of electoral campaigning). The second part of the book discusses the main challenges to the centre-right leader between 2001 and 2006 in the political realm. It focuses on the threat to Berlusconi’s authority posed by some within his own coalition, the official opposition provided by the left and the resistance of grass-root movements. Chapter 4, by Daniele Albertazzi, examines the weakening of Berlusconi’s authority and leadership by the former Christian Democrats of the UDC, who have been reluctant members of the centre-right alliance until, in more recent years, leaving it altogether. Chapter 5 looks at the inability of the institutional centre-left opposition to regroup after the crashing electoral defeat of 2001; here Donatella Campus demonstrates that divisions within the centre-left and the fears of opposition leaders that they were going to be

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sidelined by grass-root movements, as well as the popular Union leader Sergio Cofferati, meant that anti-Berlusconi forces represented in Parliament were unable to exploit the contradictions of the centre-right government and offer a credible alternative. The bottom-up, and at times savagely repressed, opposition offered by the so-called No Global movement against neo-liberal policies and, soon afterwards, by the anti-war movement, is the subject of Chapter 6 by Paolo Ceri, which also covers the pro-democracy and pro-legality initiatives of so-called ‘civil society’. The latter took the form of the girotondi movement, which organized a campaign focusing on Berlusconi’s unique challenge to the liberal principles of the division of powers and the autonomy of the judiciary. Parts 3 and 4 of the book cover topics that, so far, have received very little attention in the Italian and English-speaking academia, that is, the cultural and social opposition to Berlusconi and Berlusconismo by a variety of artists, media practitioners and activists. Part 3 deals with ‘resistant texts’, exploring examples of opposition as it was articulated at the cultural level. Spanning several media and cultural forms, such as television (Chapter 7, by Monica Boria), cinema (Chapter 8 by Clodagh Brook), theatre (Chapter 9 by Stefania Taviano), the world wide web (Chapter 10 by Cristian Vaccari), literature (Chapter 11 by Daragh O’Connell) and the press (Chapter 12 by Nina Rothenberg), these contributions address the following questions: how did the artists, cultural mediators, intellectuals and journalists included in the volume approach and understand what Berlusconi (and/or Berlusconismo) represented in this period? What were the strategies of resistance employed by their texts and what was the impact of their work on contemporary Italian cultural and political life? In the final part of the book (Part 4) the focus shifts from the products of opposition (i.e. the messages) to the lived experiences of personalities and groups who felt they were under attack, whether in the sense that they lost their jobs as a consequence of their criticism of the Prime Minister (Chapter 16) or because they saw the actions of the government and/or the general cultural climate Berlusconi had facilitated as deeply affecting them in a variety of ways, both practical and cultural (Chapters 13, 14 and 15). Chapters in this part of the book address similar questions to the previous section: what initiatives of the Berlusconi’s governments or aspects of Berlusconismo did these people/ groups oppose and why? What strategies of resistance did they employ to make their voices heard? How did they experience their oppositional stance and how would they characterize their impact and influence on society at large? All based on participant observation and/or original interviews, these chapters cover such topics as volunteers from immigrant associations, not only resisting new immigration legislation, but also facilitating the integration of migrant women into Italian society (Chapter 13 by Wendy Pojmann); feminist groups responding to ‘assaults on the dignity and autonomy of all women’ (Chapter 14 by members of the Sconvegno Group and Charlotte Ross); members of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual/transgender (LGTB) communities addressing the repercussions of the socio-cultural impact of Berlusconismo on the lives of their population (Chapter 15 by Charlotte Ross); the professional experiences of two of the country’s main television journalists, Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, in their confrontation with the Prime Minister (Chapter 16 by Nina Rothenberg). Taken together, these analyses provide an initial attempt to map and to differentially evaluate a range of cultural resistances to Berlusconi between 2001 and 2006. It would be impossible in a single volume such as this to provide a comprehensive account of the multiple and shifting oppositional activities undertaken and stances assumed by those resistant to the Premier’s influence; the chapters that follow offer a tentative and inevitably incomplete account of such practices, yet we hope that by gathering together critical insights and analyses on a diverse spectrum of resistances within Italian life and culture, the overlaps, continuities and discontinuities will begin to fall into relief in productive ways.

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Notes 1. In compliance with Italian academic conventions, the authors acknowledge that Nina Rothenberg wrote the following sections: ‘Spreading his Wings: From Business into Politics’; ‘How to Use the Media and Alienate Magistrates’; ‘Incredulous Perplexity: Intellectuals and the Reflexive Middle-Classes’. Daniele Albertazzi wrote the remaining sections. 2. All translations from Italian are by the editors of this volume, unless otherwise indicated. 3. The head of government is referred to in Italy as the Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri (President of the Council of Ministers), whose powers do not fully correspond to those of the British Prime Minister. In recent years, however, the academic literature available in English on Italian politics has made good use of the term ‘Prime Minister’, also to avoid confusion with the role of the head of state, the Presidente della Repubblica (President of the Republic). In this book, we will use Prime Minister and Premier interchangeably. 4. Alleanza Nazionale’s ‘post-fascist’ credentials are also very much under scrutiny, despite its leader Gianfranco Fini having reiterated his commitment to democracy on several occasions and having worked hard to steer the party towards moderate conservatism. Recent research has provided new proof of AN’s reticence to come to terms with its past, as well as the violent actions of neofascist militants who positioned themselves on the right of the MSI during the cold war (Cento Bull 2007: 158–63). 5. For an authoritative, if now dated, discussion of the British case, see Tunstall (1983); also Tunstall and Palmer (1991); on Bernard Tapie, a French businessman whose experiences have been to some extent similar to those of Berlusconi, see Bouchet (1994); Ginsborg (2004: 34–5 and 53–4). 6. Tuccari (2004), for instance, focuses on political and social opposition, however does not cover the cultural and media sectors, while Ginsborg’s (2004) chapter on ‘Resistances’ says very little about civil society and nothing about the cultural industry. 7. This so-called ‘Mammì law’ (named after Oscar Mammì, the Minister of Communication) said that no single group could own more than three out of the twelve networks. It also substantially raised the threshold for advertisement that broadcasters were allowed to feature on their channels. In effect, this law entrenched the status quo and has ever since caused controversy. 8. Together with his colleagues from the Milanese Pool of prosecuting magistrates Francesco Saverio Borrelli, Ilda Boccassini, Gherardo Colombo and Piercamillo Davigo, Antonio Di Pietro indicted a large number of prominent politicians. After he declined an invitation by the newly elected Berlusconi to join the government in the vest of the Interior Minister in 1994, relations between the magistrate and the Prime Minister deteriorated after an investigation against Berlusconi for corruption was presented in 1994. In the same year, at the time Defence Minister and close collaborator of Berlusconi, Cesare Previti, sent a report with accusations against Di Pietro to the Tribunal of Brescia, which initiated an enquiry for abuse of office, prompting Di Pietro to resign from his position. The investigation against the ex-magistrate was closed soon after. Di Pietro accused Berlusconi of having directed the plot against him also by using the secret service SISDE. In 1996 Di Pietro started a political career as Minister in the centre-left government of Romano Prodi and founded the political party Italia dei Valori (IDV) in 1998. The party gained 4.4 per cent at the general election in 2008 and has become the most radical political force in Parliament against the Berlusconi government. 9. The neo-fascist party MSI, which had been marginalized from mainstream politics during the First Republic, was also able to survive Tangentopoli. The party was renamed Alleanza Nazionale in 1993 and entered an electoral alliance with Berlusconi in 1994.

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10. Interview with Nina Rothenberg, Rome, 16 February 2008. 11. This disequilibrium has been further increased after the 2008 general elections. The Parliamentary Television Watchdog, Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni (AGCOM), criticized the over-proportional representation of the government, the PdL and the Prime Minister in all news programmes of private and public television. While the television news of Mediaset dedicated up to 50 per cent of its broadcasting to the government, only 16.8 per cent of the coverage concerned the opposition. Almost all news programmes on Italian television (except the TG 3) were admonished for having neglected oppositional forces (Fontanarosa 2008). 12. The Immunity law was later rejected by the Constitutional Court. In 2008, the newly elected Berlusconi government issued a similar law (the Alfano law) that grants immunity to the four highest offices: the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the two presidents of both parliamentary chambers. 13. ‘Manettaro’ refers to someone who is only too willing to see people being locked up, that is, someone who is ‘handcuff happy’.

References Adorno, T. W. (1991), The Cultural Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge. Agnew, A. J. and Shin, E. M. (2008), Berlusconi’s Italy: Mapping Contemporary Italian Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D. (2009), ‘The parties of the centre right: Many oppositions, one leader’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian Election 2008. London: Palgrave. Andrews, G. (2005), Not a Normal Country: Italy after Berlusconi. London: Pluto. Asor Rosa, A. (2008), ‘Più del fascismo’, Il Manifesto, 6 August. Association of European Journalists (2007), ‘Goodbye to freedom? A survey of media freedom across Europe’, November, available at: www.aej-uk.org/AEJ-mediasurvey.doc. Accessed 12 November 2008. Bakhtin, M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. London: New Left Books. Barbacetto, G., Gomez, P. and Travaglio, M. (2007), Mani sporche. Milan: Chiarelettere. Bartels, J. M. (1993), ‘Message received: The political impact of media exposure’, American Political Science Review, 87, (2), pp. 267–85. Bauman, Z. (2007), Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty. London: Polity. Bouchet, C. (1994), Tapie, l’homme d’affaires. Paris: Editions Seuil. Bourdieu, P. (1989), Outline of a Theory of Practise. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bull, M. and Rhodes, M. (2007), ‘Introduction – Italy: A contested polity’, West European Politics, 30, (4), pp. 657–69. Calise, M. (2000), Il partito personale. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Cento Bull, A. (2007), Italian Neofascism. The Strategy of Tension and the Politics of Nonreconciliation. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Chomsky, N. and Herman, S. E. (2001), Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon. Cotteret, J. M. (1991), Gouverner c’est paraître. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Croteau, D. and Hoynes, W. (1997), Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences. London: Sage. D’Avanzo, G. (2008), ‘La riduzione del silenzio’, Repubblica, 18 June. de Certeau, M. (1984), The Practise of Everyday Life. Berkeley: California University Press. Diamanti, I. (2004), ‘Dal partito di plastica alla Repubblica fondata sui media’, Comunicazione Politica, 1, (V), pp. 51–64. — (2008), ‘Il regime mediocratico’, Repubblica, 13 July. D’Orsi, A. (2001), Intellettuali nel novecento italiano. Turin: Einaudi. Doyle, G. (2002), Media Ownership. London: Sage. Economist (2001), ‘An Italian story’, 26 April.

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Ferrari, G. (1990), Il padrone del diavolo: Storia di Silvio Berlusconi. Milan: Camunia. Fiore, G. (1996), Il venditore. Milan: Garzanti. Fiske, J (1987), Television Culture. New York: Vintage. — (1989), Understanding Popular Culture. London: Unwin Hyman. Fontanarosa, A. (2008), ‘Authority ai telegiornali: Troppo spazio al governo’, Repubblica, 18 October. Forza Italia (2001), Una storia italiana. Milan: Mondadori. Foucault, M. (1979), The History of Sexuality. London: Penguin Press. Giannini, M. (2008), ‘Il ventennio del Cavaliere’, Repubblica, 15 November. Ginsborg, P. (1996), ‘Explaining Italy’s crisis’, in S. Gundle and S. Parker (eds), The New Italian Republic. London: Routledge. — (2004), Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony. London: Verso. — (2008), ‘Affondo di Ginsborg: Quanti errori dai leader’, Manifesto, 29 June. Graber, D. (1980), Mass Media and American Politics. Washington: Congressional Quarterly Press. Gramsci, A. (1971), Quaderni del carcere. Rome: Edizioni Riuniti. Gundle, S. (1997), ‘Television in Italy’, in J. A. Coleman and B. Rollet (eds), Television in Europe. Bristol: Intellect Books. — (2000), Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communist Party and the Challenge of Mass Culture. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Habermas, J. (2006), ‘Political communication in media society: Does democracy still enjoy an epistemic dimension? The impact of normative theory on empirical research’, Communication Theory, 4, (16), pp. 411–26. Hall, S. (1980), ‘Encoding/Decoding’, in S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe and P. Willis (eds), Culture, Media, Language. London: Hutchinson. — (1995), ‘The rediscovery of ideology’, in O. Boyd-Barrett and C. Newbold (eds), Approaches to Media: A Reader. London: Arnold. Hibberd, M. (2007), ‘Conflicts of interest and media pluralism in Italian broadcasting’, West European Politics, 30, (4), pp. 881–902. ITANES (2001), Perché ha vinto il centro-destra? Bologna: Il Mulino. Jaggi, M. (2002), ‘Signs of the times’, Guardian, 12 October. Januzzi, L. (2008), ‘Sicilia: La sconfitta dei giustizialisti’, Giornale, 11 Marzo. Kuhn, R. (2007), Politics and the Media in Britain. London: Palgrave. Lane, D. (2005), Berlusconi’s Shadow: Crime, Justice and the Pursuit of Power. London: Penguin. Mastropaolo, A. (2000), La Mucca Pazza della Democrazia. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. Mancini, P. (2001), Il sistema fragile. Rome: Carocci. Mazzoleni, G. (2004), ‘With the media, without the media: Reasons and implications of the electoral success of Silvio Berlusconi’, in I. Bondebjerg and P. Golding (eds), European Culture and the Media. Bristol: Intellect Books. Mazzoleni, G. and Schulz, W. (1999), ‘Mediatization of politics: A challenge for democracy, Political Communication, 16, (3), pp. 247–61. McDonnell, D. (2006), ‘A weekend in Padania: Regionalist populism and the Lega Nord’, Politics, 26, (2), pp. 126–32. McQuail, D. (2000), McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage. Noelle-Neumann, E. (2002), La spirale del silenzio. Rome: Meltemi. OSCE (2005), Visit to Italy: The Gasparri Law. Observations and Recommendations, 7 June 2006, available at: www.osce.org/item/15459.html. Accessed 8 July 2007. Pasquino, G. (1989), ‘Unregulated regulators: Parties and party government’, in P. Lange, M. Regini and P. M. Lange (eds), State Market and Social Regulation – New Perspectives on Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Repubblica (2004), ‘Annunziata si dimette’, 4 May. Ricolfi, L. (1994), ‘Elezioni e mass media. Quanti voti ha spostato la tv’, Il Mulino, 6 novembre–dicembre, pp. 1031–46. Sani, G. and Legnanti, G. (2002), ‘Quanto ha contato la comunicazione politica?’, in G. Pasquino (ed.), Dall’Ulivo al Governo Berlusconi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Sartori, G. (2004), Mala tempora. Bari: Laterza.

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Sartori, G. (2007), Homo videns. Bari: Laterza. Signorielli, N. and Morgan, M. (1990), Cultivation Analysis: New Directions in Media Effect Research. Newbury Park: Sage. Simone, R. (2008), Il mostro mite. Milan: Garzanti. Stille, A. (2006), The Sack of Rome. London: Penguin Press. Sylos Labini, P. (2003), Berlusconi e gli anticorpi. Bari: Laterza. Tarchi, M. (2003), Italia populista. Dal qualunquismo ai girotondi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Tuccari, F. (ed.) (2004), L’opposizione al governo Berlusconi. Rome: Laterza. Tunstall, J. (1983), The Media in Britain. New York: Columbia University Press. Tunstall, J. and Palmer, J. (1991), Media Moguls. London: Routledge. Williams, R. (1977), Marxism and Literature. London and New York: Oxford University Press. Zanetto, P. (2002), ‘Palavobis: Il gala decadente della sinistra sconfitta’, Ideazione, marzo, available at: www.ideazione.com/settimanale/1.politica/60_01-03-2002/zanetto.htm. Accessed 26 April 2008.

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CHAPTER ONE

Italy during the Berlusconi Years: The Economy and Society James L. Newell

Introduction Assessing what was especially distinctive about the period between 2001 and 2006 is made difficult, first, by the fact that changes in economic and social trends rarely coincide with changes of administration, and second, by the short amount of time that has elapsed since the centre-right government left office. What does seem possible to say is that when Berlusconi lost the general election in April of 2006, the three things that most stood out about his period in office were the continuing economic difficulties, the persistence of deep strains of populism and anti-political sentiments in the political culture and a novel set of constraints on government policy making. These three features of the period are discussed in the section that follows. The section discusses the economic and social context from a general perspective, starting from the assumption that the task requires both understanding and explanation: an understanding of what, from the point of view of those who lived during the period, life was like in economic and social terms; an explanation of the changes and trends that were responsible for these conditions. The final section considers the government’s responses to the social and economic circumstances in which it found itself.

The Most Salient Features of the Berlusconi Years The economic difficulties of 2001–06 stand out less because they were especially severe than because of their political consequences. True, in the first five years of the new millennium the Italian economy suffered a severe setback with average GDP growth of 1.1 per cent between 2000 and 2005 – however, declining growth rates were not new. Whereas the average rate of growth for the 1970s was 3.9 per cent and for the 1980s 2.4 per cent, in the 1990s it went down to 1.4 per cent (Bull, Newell 2005: chapter 2). And, while rates of growth in the new millennium were below those of the other large European countries and the United States, this had also been true of the period since 1990. The real reason why these and other data attracted attention was because Berlusconi had won the 2001 election by selling himself as a charismatic leader who would do for Italy what he had done for himself. Of course, the idea that voters’ economic perceptions affect the electoral fortunes of incumbent governments is a very old, if not unchallenged, political assumption. But in the peculiar circumstances of Italian politics of the time, they left the government, and especially Forza Italia and Berlusconi himself, more than usually vulnerable. First, by

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so heavily relying, as it had in 2001, on unrealistic assumptions about growth to square the circle of public expenditure promises and promises of tax cuts, the centre-right almost set itself up to fail. Second, by so massively insisting, as it had in 2001, on the entrepreneur’s supposedly extraordinary personal qualities (rather than, for example, on an ideology that might have helped ‘encapsulate’ supporters), Berlusconi’s party found it had few alternative means of retaining voter loyalty when economic difficulties began tarnishing the leader’s image. Third, by so considerably heightening, as he did in 2001, expectations of what he would be able to achieve, Berlusconi fed, despite himself, perceptions of the state of the economy and standards of living that were so pessimistic as at times to be much worse than official data warranted (Guarnieri, Newell 2005). That the electoral consequences in 2006 were apparently not that untoward, with the centreright only just failing to secure re-election, must be attributed to the last-minute change of electoral law, in December 2005, and to the fedeltà leggera (weak partisanship) of Italian voters (Natale 2002) – evenly divided between the two coalitions and unwilling to switch between them, but increasingly willing to shift among the parties within the coalition with which they identified.1 In fact, Forza Italia suffered record losses in 2006. But because these were compensated for by corresponding increases among the party’s allies, they were largely overlooked by commentators more impressed by the seeming narrowness of the defeat of the centre-right collectively. Intimately linked with, and partially driving the fedeltà leggera of Italian voters, was a growing level of disenchantment with the world of politics that had been apparent from the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the corresponding virtual disintegration, in Italy, of the socalled ‘red’ (i.e. Communist) and ‘white’ (i.e. Catholic) subcultures. The disenchantment could be seen in the results of opinion polls asking citizens how much trust they had in organizations, associations, social groups and institutions and showing, in 2005, that the four bottom places were occupied by Parliament, the government, the stock exchange and the parties (Bordignon 2005a). This provided the terrain on which anti-political sentiments – for many years after the war held in check by the legitimacy of the traditional mass parties and by the force of the cold war ideological divisions they represented – could be exploited by the centre-right, and especially by the Lega Nord leader, Umberto Bossi, and by Berlusconi himself. From the beginning, both stressed their outright rejection of the traditional political establishment, Bossi developing the theme of Roma ladrona (thieving Rome), Berlusconi his image as a successful entrepreneur whose sense of duty drove him to use his talents to save the country from a government of the left and the disasters provoked by professional politicians unable to agree on anything (Tarchi 2003: 164). While Bossi sought to use linguistic codes that would mark an unbridgeable fracture with the language of the traditional political parties and allow the ordinary person to feel that ‘when Bossi speaks it is as if I am speaking’, Berlusconi adopted a similar strategy. Notwithstanding his accumulated wealth, so the message ran, he retained all the qualities of ‘the man next door’. It is in this light that the gaffes and mockery for which he became famous must be interpreted (Tarchi 2003: 173–4). Again, none of this was new. What, then, was distinctive about the period from 2001 to 2006 was that it reached a sort of culmination. On the one hand, with Berlusconi in office drawing sustenance from such sentiments in the pursuit of a range of ad personam measures (see Introduction), and in the process finding the very legitimacy of his incumbency questioned by the centre-left, expression of the sentiments themselves could not but acquire increasing salience in political debate. On the other hand, with each coalition refusing the other recognition as a legitimate potential government, a debate on constitutional reform that had begun in the 1980s now became increasingly entangled with, and ‘entrapped’ by, substantive political

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conflicts and the search for partisan advantage – with the result that, shortly after the end of the legislature, successful completion of any transition process seemed less, rather than more likely than it had at the beginning. What had become ‘anomalous’ about Italian democracy was the way in which a lack of agreement on the rules had become a predominant element in the country’s political culture (Bull and Pasquino 2007: 690). But it would be wrong to overlook contrasting cultural features. If trust in political institutions was low, then it actually went up somewhat over the period (Bordignon 2005a) suggesting that the President of the Republic’s efforts at national integration through promotion of a new ‘constitutional patriotism’ may perhaps have met with some success (Nevola 2003: 156–60). Indeed, trust in President Ciampi himself, who had always enjoyed the confidence of large majorities anyway, showed especially striking advances – pointing to a significant unifying role for the president of a politically deeply divided country. Nor were the implications of anti-political sentiments unidirectional, always working in favour of Berlusconi and against institutional limitations on his use of power. On the contrary, in the hands of ‘the educated middle classes’ they could, as the experience of the girotondi showed, take the form of an ‘antipolitics of the left’, hostile to Berlusconi (see Chapter 6). This was precisely because his conflict of interests and intolerance of institutional restrictions implicitly threatened those norms of impartiality so essential to the practices of social closure through which, as Frank Parkin (1979) has explained, these classes are successful in laying claim to shares of resources larger than those accruing to lower social classes. These lower social classes had made a significant contribution to the centre-right’s 2001 victory (Itanes 2001: table 4.2); and in attempting, through its legislative programme, to keep them on side, the government had to work within a set of economic policy constraints that were radically new as compared to those that had faced its predecessors. The advent of the Euro in 1999 meant that governments could no longer seek to maintain the competitive advantage of industry by having recourse, as from 1970 they frequently had done, to devaluation of the currency. It meant that Italy was subject to interest-rate decisions made by the European Central Bank in the light of inflationary pressures in the Euro zone as a whole. It meant that the country was subject to tight controls on budget deficits (which could not exceed more than 3 per cent of GDP in any one year) and an obligation to bring its public debt to within 60 per cent. It is in this light that we must interpret the apparent ‘Eurosceptical turn’ in many centre-right pronouncements after 2001. The restrictions would have been less of a problem for the government, had it not been for the fact that Italy’s industrial structure left the country unusually exposed to the coincidental growth of competition from the newly industrializing countries (with China causing particular alarm) – while also making it difficult for firms to engage in the research and development required to diversify into new, less exposed areas: specializing in the transformation of raw materials into finished products in ‘traditional’ sectors requiring relatively small quantities of capital, technology and highly qualified labour, Italy has a larger proportion of small firms, of a smaller average size, than other industrialized countries. The Euro restrictions would have been less of a problem too had it not been for the fact that adoption of the currency coincided with the downturn in the world economy that took place in the wake of the Twin Towers attack. Then, the budget deficit, at 2.6 per cent, was already close to the 3-per cent ceiling, thus leaving little room for using tax and spending to counter the downturn. And in fact, the situation worsened in subsequent years becoming especially serious in 2005. Then the deficit reached 4.3 per cent of GDP; the government was forced to cut its growth forecast for the year to 0 per cent, and the European Commission decided to recommend application of the excessive deficit procedure, giving Italy until 2007 to bring its deficit below the 3-per cent ceiling.

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Finally, the government was also prevented from using budgetary policy as an effective tool of macroeconomic management by the level of the public debt (which stood at 110.5 per cent in 2000) – and was unsuccessful in meeting its targets for debt reduction. This was because the economic downturn brought lower-than-expected rates of growth while also diminishing the proceeds potentially available from privatization through its effect on the performance of stock markets. Meanwhile, tackling the debt by acting on spending and taxation directly was made difficult by the considerable degree of inertia built into patterns and levels of spending – with budgets compiled from bids originating in a large number of government departments all of which began from the assumption that existing operations needed to be maintained at then existing levels (Visco 2005) – and by the 2001 election programme – which had promised increases in expenditure in a number of specific areas (such as welfare and law and order) as well as income tax cuts.

Life under Berlusconi What, then, was life actually like for those who lived in Italy under the Berlusconi government from 2001 to 2006? Those being born would have been born to mothers who on average had less than two children per head and whose fertility rate, though it had been declining until 1995–2000, had been increasing since then.2 Emergence upon the world for the new born would have been assisted by a health service quite efficient by European standards (De Cecco 2007: 765); while older siblings, attending primary school, would have found themselves acquiring levels of knowledge sufficient to place them very near the top in international league tables (Dei 1998: 104). Brothers and sisters older still, those attending secondary school, would probably not have been so fortunate. They would have attended rather poorly resourced schools and as a consequence found themselves performing rather below the average for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and large European countries in science, reading, mathematics and problem solving.3 The oldest in the family, those attending university, would have found themselves taking, or studying alongside students taking, new two-tier degree programmes introduced in 1999 that were having some success in increasing the country’s traditionally very low retention rates and the proportions successfully completing their programmes.4 What of the economic resources available to the families in which the children of this period found themselves? If the children had been unlucky, they might have belonged to one of the 10 per cent of households that in 2004 had to live on an average annual income of no more than €7,686 or €640.50 per month (Bank of Italy 2006: 61). Such families would not have been helped by the lack of a national minimum income scheme, whose continuing absence was intimately bound up with: the role of the extended family (which continued to provide welfare services in a range of fields, mostly by unpaid female labour); the large underground economy (which continued to offer employment and therefore income to groups with restricted access to the social insurance benefits), and a lack of administrative competencies (which had been slow to develop in Italy as elsewhere in Southern Europe and had restricted the availability of the pragmatic and relational skills needed to manage means-tested benefits effectively) (Ferrera 2005: 8–11). At the other end of the income scale, the 10 per cent of households receiving the most income (over 25 per cent of the total) had more than €78,000 per year to live on (Bank of Italy 2006: 61) – but this did not necessarily mean that they were happy. In 2005, Bagnasco showed that those most likely to fall into this category – entrepreneurs, freelance professionals and managers – had suffered a relative loss of net household wealth during the 1990s; so it was not, perhaps, very surprising that the early part of the Berlusconi period was characterized by high-profile

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newspaper discussions of the supposed ‘malaise’ of the ‘middle class’, revolving around ideas of ‘increasing fragility’, ‘impoverishment’ and ‘vulnerability’ (Bagnasco 2005: 205). In fact, in the period that succeeded the advent of Berlusconi, the middle classes improved their relative position, while for manual workers, the loss of ground that had begun in the late 1990s, continued apace (see Table 1.1). What may have been driving perceptions of middle-class vulnerability is the possibility of a relative loss of resources over the longer term – of households in the first and second quintiles in terms of the distribution of wealth in 1995, 30.6 and 34.5 per cent, respectively, had fallen to lower quintiles by 2004 (Bank of Italy, 2006: 18) – and/or the experience of rates of inflation higher than the average owing to typical middle-class spending patterns (Bagnasco 2005: 212–13). Certainly, this would make sense of many of the specific perceptions of economic stagnation at this time – especially those driven by the belief that there had been massive hidden price increases following introduction of the Euro notes and coins at the start of 2002 (Guarnieri, Newell 2005: 32–3). As Marco Albertini (2004) has pointed out, individuals’ economic well-being is determined at the confluence of the market, the state and the household or family, and is significantly influenced by the nature of the relationships within the latter. Moreover, as Chiara Saraceno (2004: 47) has pointed out, ‘families mediate and interpret social change in the everyday interaction of their members’. Between 2001 and 2006, the experience of family life would have been one heavily influenced by expectations of intergenerational solidarity. This could be seen, first, in a continuation of the already apparent tendency for young people to remain in the parental home substantially longer than the EU average, delaying marriage and little inclined, relatively, to embrace alternatives to these two types of living arrangement, such as cohabitation. Though enjoying full adult status in cultural as well as legal terms the young people would have been expected to contribute little to the household materially or practically (Saraceno 2004: 50). Second, the level of intergenerational solidarity would have manifested itself through care in the family of elderly relatives, for whom social services are scarce relative to those available in other European countries. Both cause and consequence of these two sets of circumstances was the persistence of a relatively entrenched gender division of labour within the family and hence of relatively low levels of female participation in the labour force. But that is not all. For some women, the situation was getting worse; for the population was becoming increasingly composed of elderly people, while the daughters of the women responsible for caring for them were more likely to be in paid employment, low though women’s labour-force participation

Table 1.1: Median Net Household Wealth by Work Status of the Head of the Household (indices; Italy = 100) Year Work Status

1995

1998

2000

2002

2004

Entrepreneurs and professionals

296.5

213.3

203.3

229.4

227.1

Managers and executives

222.6

175.2

185.1

218.5

205.5

Self-employed workers

188.2

177.6

161.9

175.6

183.3

White-collar workers

134.5

128.7

124.9

123.9

122.7

65.0

64.8

51.4

39.0

33.4

Blue-collar workers Source: Bank of Italy, 2006, table 3, p. 18.

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was, comparatively speaking. Hence, increasing numbers of women could look forward to a longer period of old age with fewer family resources to rely on than had been the case with their mothers (Saraceno 2004: 55). Intergenerational solidarity in families coincided with – indeed supported – a growing individualization of consumption and behaviour patterns on the part of individual family members (ibid.: 49); staying on in the parental home, for instance, did not mean particular restrictions on autonomy. Indeed, growing freedom within the family appeared to bring with it a growth in solidarity and loyalties outside the family which took a rather distinctive form. Already, in the final decades of the twentieth century, it had been apparent that the familial changes were linked with broader societal changes reflected in the decline of the subcultures and in the religious and ideological certainties of the cold war period, which created space for the growth of a ‘new associationism’. This was expressed by a wide range of small groups, cooperatives, nonprofit and volunteer organizations, ‘pragmatic, rather than ideological, inclusive rather than exclusive, non-violent’ (Ginsborg 2003: 121). The process continued apace under the Berlusconi government. Between 1999 and 2003, the number of non-governmental organizations rose from 170 to 200, while between 2001 and the end of 2003, the number of voluntary organizations rose by 14.9 per cent. Meanwhile, between 2001 and 2004, the number of social cooperatives grew from 5,515 to 7,100 (Censis 2005: 14–15). Underlying this flowering there appeared to be growing drives to socialize outside the family and restricted friendship networks that were of a more general, cultural nature. The spread of the new media undoubtedly had an important role here. Thus regular users of mobile phones went up from 39.3 per cent to 76.3 per cent between 2001 and 2005, with those aged between 14 and 17 especially likely to emphasize the importance of the devices in friendship networks (ibid.: 13–14) – while the development of web technology, with its chat rooms, discussion forums, blogs and so on clearly worked in the same direction. The apparent growth in civic commitment appeared to be accompanied by a growth in protest activity, with the number of street demonstrations of various kinds rising from 3,576 in the year 2000, to 7,022 in the year 2004 (ibid.: 13). There are very good reasons for viewing the two as parts of a single phenomenon, one of which is what Andrews (2005: 7) refers to as the absence of a ‘sense of state’. Perpetuated by the conduct of the pre-1994 governing parties, first, and by the populism of Berlusconi, second, such absence can be thought of as a cultural trait deriving from the encouragement of clientele practices rooted in familistic assumptions that could and sometimes did spill over into instances of high-level corruption and collusion with criminal organizations. In such a context, acts of civic engagement or activity that in some way implied a commitment to the welfare of the collectivity inevitably carried connotations of opposition to conventional politics and to the status quo. In the context of a Prime Minister explicitly seeking to use Parliament to pursue laws with no apparent purpose beyond the resolution of his private legal difficulties, the activities would tend to carry the very specific connotations of opposition to the government of the centre-right. Moreover, the activities would have been fed by that cultural trait that leads Italians to have little sense of pride in their citizenship and which, in the period under investigation, would have given rise to two reactions: one was the resigned cynicism which, in Berlusconi’s supporters would have provoked indifference to his alleged misdemeanours and admiration for the acumen by which he had enriched himself and successfully taken on the political establishment. The other was the sense of anger, which, in centre-left supporters would have sustained the perception of a man who, by creating a culture of illegality, sullied the country’s democracy and thereby denied them the possibility of feeling proud to be Italians (see Andrews 2005: 15–39). It is possible to see the rise in protest activity as one indicator of the emergence, during the Berlusconi years, of a ‘new opposition’ whose centre of gravity was in the social movements

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rather than in political parties (see Chapter 6); whose most dramatic expression was the Genova anti-capitalist protest in July 2001; whose adherents were driven by themes of social justice, traditional to the left, but also by themes (such as defence of an independent media) that extended beyond it. The new opposition challenged two major stereotypes about Italian society, one concerning the role of the Church, the other, the position of the South. The Church was a focus for protests against the war in Iraq, given the Pope’s own opposition; and this revealed much about how the Church’s role in society and politics had changed since the days when it could demand and expect widespread conformity to its strictures and could exploit its privileged relationships with the governing Democrazia Cristiana (DC). True, the Church retained considerable social authority: large majorities still turned to it for performance of life’s most important rites of passage, those surrounding birth, marriage and death. And it could, as at the 2006 election when its position on civil partnerships threatened to divide the centre-left, still intervene in public life with a more-than-realistic hope of influencing legislation. But it could not take support for its agenda for granted: as a survey carried out in 2005 revealed, while large majorities said they trusted the Church as an institution, most said they disliked Church attempts to influence political decisions and impose on the public its moral teachings (Bordignon 2005b: 18). This meant that, far more than in the past, the Church was obliged actively to campaign, through the mass media and direct appeals to the public, in order to get a hearing and influence public policy; for, with Catholics distributed across the centre-left/centre-right political divide, it could not afford to be identified with one coalition to the exclusion of the other. However, the 2005 referendum on assisted insemination revealed the paradox that secularization and related changes helped the Church retain considerable influence in the Italian society of the Berlusconi years.5 First, the referendum was itself confirmation that the number of religion-related controversies had grown, not diminished, with time as scientific progress had brought to the fore new problems on which the Church wanted to take a position (Rémond 1999: 36). Second, the Church’s successful argument for retention of the restrictive legislation passed in 2004 appeared to find an echo even among left libertarian voters, apparently worried by the implications of not subjecting to adequate democratic controls scientific research whose implications are often difficult to interpret. The referendum thus revealed that the Church, as it was no longer identified with one side in a great ideological conflict, no longer faced a public that was either prejudicially for or against, any of its specific messages (Ceccarini 2005: 857–8). This meant – third – that when in early 2005 the papacy changed hands, commentators could claim to discern a vitality among Catholic organizations much greater than in the past when it ‘lay more hidden between the folds of a secularized society’ (Il Mulino 2005: 821). With regard to the position of the South, the Berlusconi years were marked by a continuation of what had already been recognized as the emergence of a new associationism there as much as in the remainder of the country. Characterized by the multiplication of groups active in the fields of cultural consumption, civic commitment and the fight against organized crime (Ginsborg 2003: 124), the new associationism tended to clash with stereotypes (reinforced by the presence of organized crime groups such as Cosa Nostra, ‘Ndrangheta and the Camorra) that saw the South as a place ‘characterized by a lack of civic commitment among (its inhabitants) who supposedly react passively to the influence which the Mafia exercizes over the territory’ (Parini 2000: 10). What also tended to clash with such stereotypes was the decline in power and influence of the Mafia itself – symbolized by the arrest of Antonino Giuffrè in 2002 and Bernardo Provenzano in 2006 – along with that of other criminal organizations. Again, this was the continuation of trends set in motion earlier, the law-enforcement community having achieved significant successes against organized crime since the early 1990s (Paoli 2007: 854–5). The results could be seen in the rising trend in the number of organized criminals arrested together with the decline in the number of organized crime-related murders (see Figure 1.1). The downward trend

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26 JAMES L. NEWELL

600 500 400 300 200 100 0

Organized criminals arrested

03

02

20

01

20

00

20

99

20

98

19

97

19

96

19

95

19

94

19

19

19

19

93

Organized-crime related murders

92

Number

Figure 1.1: Organized Criminals Arrested and Organized Crime-Related Murders in Sicily, Calabria and Campania 1992–2003

Year Source: Adapted from tables 1 and 2 in Paoli (2007: 861, 864).

in the latter would have been even steeper with the exclusion from the figures of Campania where the continuation of relatively high rates compared to other Italian regions paradoxically testified to law-enforcement successes; for, ‘weakening of the most powerful criminal clans . . . left open spaces for a variety of middle-sized and small crime groups that often fight each other for control of the local territory’ (ibid.: 867).

The Government’s Response This throws a spotlight on the final issue to be considered in this chapter, namely, the Government’s responses to the economic and social circumstances in which it found itself having to operate – for one of the most significant aspects of the anti-organized crime successes was how little they owed to the actions of the Berlusconi coalition. True, the government did pass legislation (law no. 279/2002) to make permanent and to extend the special incarceration regime for persons convicted of Mafia-related crimes; but it also sponsored a general reform of the judicial system that did nothing to address the notorious slowness of Italian civil and criminal procedures, while provoking uproar among judicial personnel (ibid.: 874; Pederzoli 2005). And the Government arguably contributed to a loss of public support for a vigorous campaign against organized crime through its constant virulent criticisms of public prosecutors and their investigative methods (Paoli 2007: 872–3). Beyond that, from the perspective of the economy and society, the three most striking features of government policy making between 2001 and 2006 were the coalition’s reforms in the area of microeconomic policy; a 2004 reform of the pensions system, and the Government’s efforts to advance its cause in the EU arena. Microeconomic policy stood out because the restrictions on the government’s choices in the area of macroeconomic policy, discussed above, inevitably led it to give correspondingly greater attention to what it could do in the former area. There, two major reforms were sponsored. One was the so-called Moratti reform of March 2003, which sought to reorganize the system of education below university level through changes that included a gradual raising of the schoolleaving age, opportunities for pupils to combine education with work experience, annual testing of pupils and a new National Institute for Evaluation of the Education System (INVALSI) along the lines of the UK’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills

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(OFSTED). Clearly designed to gear the education system much more closely to the needs of the country’s productive system than had previously been the case, the reform was driven by the hope that improvements in education and training would increase labour productivity, help the country to meet the challenge of the new economy, and contribute to reducing regional employment disparities (the highest in the EU) and increasing employment rates (among the lowest in the EU). While the European Commission was very enthusiastic about the reform,6 most of the opposition parties and the trade-union confederations were considerably less enthusiastic, seeing in the establishment of vocational and academic pathways from age 14, a revival under a new guise of the educational selection that had been in place until 1962 (Iucci 2003) and thus a retreat from principles of equality of opportunity and opportunities for upward social mobility. The second reform (law no. 366 of 2001) sought to reduce obstacles to the growth in size of firms, and therefore to technological and organizational innovations that can reduce costs and raise productivity, by extending to minority shareholders in non-listed companies the kinds of safeguards offered by the earlier Draghi law, of 1998, to minority shareholders in listed companies. The 2004 pensions reform stood out because of what it said about the nature of the Government’s reaction to the contradictory pressures it faced in the area of welfare spending. On the one hand, increases in life expectancy, declining fertility rates from the mid-1960s and technological progress had created considerable pressures to increase spending, especially in health. On the other hand, the changing age structure of the population, because of the contribution it had made to the debt problem and the need to bring that down, had also created significant pressures to restrict spending: pensions in Italy had since 1945 been financed essentially according to the method of apportionment (i.e. they were paid, on an earnings-related basis, by the contributions of those currently in employment), rather than by the method of capitalization (where the worker’s contributions are invested to create capital with the value of payments depending on the value of that capital, at retirement). Consequently, there had been a growing deficit between contributions, and pension outlays (Cesari 2000: 22; Ferrera 1997: 234). In essence, the 2004 reform built on earlier reforms passed in the 1990s to push the pensions system further away from apportionment towards capitalization, bringing with it the further privatization of pensions provision. Finally, the government’s efforts in the EU arena stood out for three reasons: first, because of what they revealed about the extent to which European institutions had by the time of the Berlusconi government, permeated the political and economic structures of member states (contributing to an increasing fluidity between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ policy); second, because of what they said about the policy-making handicaps of a government led by one such as Berlusconi; third, because of what they suggested about the general issue with which we are concerned in this chapter, namely, what might have been especially distinctive about the Berlusconi years. First, then, the most pressing objective for the Italian government after 2001 was its own accrediting and that of Berlusconi personally – especially in light of the remarks of The Economist magazine, two weeks before polling day, that Berlusconi was ‘unfit to lead Italy’, a comment that echoed fears widely expressed in European chancelleries. After all, when Jörg Haider’s Freedom Party had entered government in 1999, Austria had been subject to symbolic but humiliating sanctions, the episode appearing to suggest the start of a new era in which European policy makers felt that integration had reached the point where the most intimate affairs of any one country were properly the concern of all of the others. In relation to the second issue, at least three factors worked against the accrediting Berlusconi sought for himself. First, it was hostage to his legendary capacity for gaffes. Second, the fact that he was a charismatic leader exposed policy to the danger that it would be ephemeral, a hostage to internal politics and to Berlusconi’s personal agenda (Andreatta, Brighi 2003: 264–5). Third,

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JAMES L. NEWELL

a man intolerant of institutional restrictions and used to giving orders, Berlusconi lacked diplomatic abilities. It was hardly surprising, then, that the Italian presidency of the EU in the secondhalf of 2003 was widely viewed as a wasted opportunity; for success in the opportunity the presidency provides for acquiring greater prestige requires skills of mediation – fundamental for the building of consensus where many decisions were still subject to Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) or unanimity – and leadership – especially the capacity to work with the Commission president to maintain and enhance the image of the EU overall. As it was, Berlusconi was unable to draw any advantage from the fact that the Commission presidency was occupied by a compatriot (i.e. the former leader of the centre-left, Romano Prodi, who would defeat Berlusconi in the 2006 elections). Instead, Berlusconi was unable to resist attacking Prodi to appeal to domestic audiences. As EU president, he found it difficult to put aside bilateral relations to defend collectively agreed positions – as was revealed by his November 2003 remark that reports of the lack of respect for human rights by Russia in Chechnya, condemned by several governments and international organizations, were media distortions (Morata 2004: 152). Thus it was that incidents such as these combined with substantive disappointments – such as the inability to secure adoption of the new European Constitution before the presidency expired – to feed a widespread perception that the presidency itself had been an ‘enormous failure’ (ibid.: 163). Finally, it was widely implied, once the Government’s approach had become clear, that if there was something distinctive about Berlusconi’s time in office, then it was to be found precisely in its stance towards the EU: much more assertive than in the past; once invariably and uncritically pro-European in every respect – now considerably less warm, and even ‘Eurosceptic’. This attitude requires careful interpretation. On the one hand, there is no doubt that the government’s pronouncements were more abrasive, and its positions less accommodating than observers had become accustomed to; and it is easy to find explanations for this – the change suited the government in its efforts to distinguish itself from its predecessors. It also formed part of its populist claims to be the true representatives of the people against the ‘stifling restrictions’ of established institutions (many of which, after all, are associated with Europe and European integration) – just as previous governments had presented Europe as the source of salvation for all kinds of woes thereby obtaining support for domestic policies otherwise difficult to implement (Croci 2005: 71). On the other hand, international constraints, a country’s capabilities, and dependence on public confidence and foreign-policy professionals all make it extremely difficult for governments to set new courses in foreign policy at will (Croci 2008). Therefore, beneath the propaganda and the more loudly acclaimed efforts to maximize Italy’s influence in Europe, it is difficult to discern much by way of change in fundamental policy objectives or their pursuit. These remained the traditional ones of active support for further European integration combined with the maintenance and strengthening of Atlantic ties – as was shown very clearly by the government’s stance in the events leading up to the Iraq war of 2003. In the first instance it sought to avoid the rift that took place between the United States on one side and France and Germany on the other in the months prior to the initiation of hostilities, apparently convinced that united opposition to Saddam Hussein made it more, rather than less likely that armed conflict could be avoided and aware that it was in everyone’s interests that, if force was to be used it was used with, rather than without, the explicit authorization of the UN. Once France and Germany had defected from this position, the government sought to avoid two opposing dangers. On the one hand, to have been part of the ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ forces undertaking the March 2003 invasion would have been to fly in the face of the opinions of a large majority of the Italian public, which has always had a far more cautious attitude to the use of force to resolve international disputes than many if not most other West European publics. Italian forces were thus not sent to Iraq until its capitulation, and then supposedly for ‘humanitarian peacekeeping purposes’. On the other hand, to have sided with

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France and Germany would, by isolating Britain, have widened the Atlantic rift still further, thus reducing the possibilities for further European defence integration. And by linking Italy with a country – France – favourable to the development of European defences independently of America, it would have raised the spectre, of which Italian policy makers have always been fearful, of subordination to a Franco–German directoire in Europe (Croci 2005: 66–9). Thus it was that the government spent considerable energies in the ultimately impossible task of seeking, in relation to Iraq, to re-establish a common European policy, to maintain transatlantic solidarity and to work for a resolution of the crisis within the UN framework (ibid.: 140).

Conclusion An attempt to condense all of the foregoing details into a single ‘image’ summing up the ‘essence’ of the period would almost certainly fail; but one can attempt a judgement about what seems most distinctive about these years by selecting from what is inevitably a partial set, those themes that appear most striking. On this basis one might suggest that the Berlusconi years were above all ones in which Italian society became both more unequal and more deeply divided. Inevitably these two features were related. On the one hand, government action and inaction in areas from education to welfare did little to counter the growing divisions or the sense that life generally was for many becoming harder, especially for women. They, as mentioned, faced growing domestic burdens with fewer of the resources that had been available to their mothers. Young people in education faced restrictions on opportunities for upward mobility unless they were among the brighter. Those in employment faced the burden of having to pay for pensions twice: once to finance, through apportionment, the earnings-based pensions of those who had already retired; a second time in order to build, through capitalization, their own pensions, without, however, any guarantee as to the size of the pensions. Manual workers faced a decline in relative income. On the other hand, many of the actions that the Government did take seemed to turn ‘individualism into egoism’, to embody ‘competition without rules’ (Leoluca Orlando, quoted by Andrews 2005: 35–6) and even to feed, de facto, a culture of illegality. If this in a sense chimed with the declining levels of conformity and the increasingly independent life-styles that were becoming typical of members of Italian families then – paradoxically – these changes were in turn significant in fostering new levels of civic commitment whose cultural connotations were ones of profound opposition to the populism of Berlusconi. From this perspective 2001 seemed to represent a watershed. Of course deep division had been stock-in-trade of the cold war Italy of ‘Christ versus communism’. But paradoxically, this very division had, through its corresponding subcultures, been a source of cohesion. The point is that in the years leading up to 2001 there had been at least the semblance of a sense of common purpose, cultivated by government-led efforts to qualify for membership of the single European currency, and there had been the cohesive effects of a range of related reforms bringing new levels of efficiency in areas ranging from the public administration to the health service. All this seemed to change in 2001 when there was a considerable upsurge in protest activity. The unifying figure of President Ciampi did something to mitigate the depth of political and social animosities, but the sharpness of the image that results from the juxtaposition of the Genova conflicts of July 2001 and the paese spaccato in due (country split down the middle) of April 2006, is unmistakable.

Notes 1. Essentially, the existing law, providing for three-quarters of the members of parliament to be elected by the single member, simple majority system, the remaining quarter proportionally,

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

JAMES L. NEWELL

was replaced with a law providing for all members to be elected proportionally and for the award of a majority premium to the party or electoral coalition receiving the most votes (nationally, in the case of the Chamber; in each region in the case of the Senate). The change favoured the centre-right because experience had shown that the centre-right performed better in the proportional arena under the old law than it did in the single-member, simple plurality arena where common, coalition candidates were required and where voters could therefore often only support their preferred coalition by also casting a vote for a candidate drawn from a party other than their most preferred one. Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, 2005. World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision. Available at: www.un.org/ esa/population/publications/WPP2004/wpp2004.htm. Accessed 23 October 2007. See the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) whose 2003 results can be consulted at: www.pisa.oecd.org/document/50/0,3343,en_32252351_32236173_37627442_ 1_1_1 _1,00.html. Accessed 23 October 2007. Comitato nazionale per la valutazione del sistema universitario, ‘Sesto Rapporto sullo stato del Sistema Universitario’, available at: www.cnvsu.it/_library/downloadfile.asp?id=11294. Accessed 23 October 2007. The referendum concerned a 2004 law extending the protection of human life to the point of conception. Voters were actually asked to consider, and to vote on separately, four issues: the use of human embryos for research purposes; anonymous insemination using sperm banks; the availability of artificial insemination for reasons other than the sterility of one of the partners; the numbers of eggs that can be fertilized during each attempt at insemination. Church campaigners against change to the restrictive legislation urged voters to boycott the polls in an effort to invalidate the result through a failure of the turnout to reach the quorum – which in fact happened and which raised constitutional issues in view of the legal position which defines voting as a ‘civic duty’ (Art. 48, Constitution) as well as a right. In January 2006, it singled out ‘measures aimed at improving educational performance’ as one of the specific strengths of Italy’s ‘National Reform Programme for Growth and Jobs’. Available at: www.europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction .do?reference=MEMO/06/38&format= HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en. Accessed 26 October 2007.

References Albertini, M. (2004), ‘Who were and who are the poorest and the richest people in Italy’, Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, quaderno no. 31, University of Trento. Andreatta, F. and Brighi, E. (2003), ‘La politica estera del governo Berlusconi. I primi 18 mesi’, in J. Blondel and P. Segatti (eds), Politica in Italia. 2003 Edition, Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 263–81. Andrews, G. (2005), Not a Normal Country: Italy after Berlusconi. London: Pluto Press. Bagnasco, A. (2005), ‘The question of the middle class’, in C. Guarnieri and James L. Newell (eds), Italian Politics: Quo Vadis? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 204–22. Bank of Italy (2006), ‘Supplements to the statistical bulletin, sample surveys: Household income and wealth in 2004’, year XVI, (7), January, available at: www.bancaditalia.it/statistiche/indcamp/bilfait/ boll_stat/en_shiw04.pdf Accessed 26 October 2007. Bordignon, F. (2005a), ‘Contiamo sulle istituzioni locali, molto meno sullo Stato. Ma Ciampi ci mette d’accordo’, Il Venerdì di Repubblica, 16 December. — (2005b), ‘Fiducia nella Chiesa, ma niente ingerenze. Quattro italiani su dieci: Il Vaticano non faccia politica, “Scegliamo da soli” ’, Repubblica, 18 December. Bull, M. and Newell, L. J. (2005), Italian Politics: Adjustment under Duress. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Bull, M. J. and Pasquino, G. (2007), ‘A long quest in vain: Institutional reforms in Italy’, West European Politics, 30, (4), pp. 670–91. Ceccarini, L. (2005), ‘Fedeli, secolarizzati, irregolari: I cattolici italiani’, Il Mulino, (5), pp. 852–62. Censis (2005), 39° Rapporto annuale sulla situazione sociale del paese, available at: www.censis. it/277/280/339/5682/cover.asp. Accessed 28 October 2007. Cesari, R. (2000), I fondi pensione. Bologna: Il Mulino. Croci, O. (2005), ‘Much ado about little: The foreign policy of the second Berlusconi government’, Modern Italy, 10, (1), pp. 59–74. — (2008), ‘The second Prodi government and Italian foreign policy: New and improved or the same wrapped up differently?’, Modern Italy, 13, (3), pp. 291–303. De Cecco, M. (2007), ‘Italy’s dysfunctional political economy’, West European Politics, 30, (4), pp. 763–83. Dei, M. (1998), La scuola in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino. Ferrera, M. (1997), ‘The uncertain future of the Italian welfare state’, in M. Bull and M. Rhodes (eds), Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics. London and Portland OR: Frank Cass, pp. 231–49. — (2005), ‘Welfare states and social safety nets in Southern Europe: An introduction’, in M. Ferrera (ed.), Welfare State Reform in Southern Europe: Fighting Poverty and Social Exclusion in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Milton Park: Routledge, pp. 1–32. Ginsborg, P. (2003), Italy and its Discontents. London: Penguin. Guarnieri, C. and Newell, L. J. (2005), ‘Introduction: 2004 – a year “on hold” ’, in C. Guarnieri and J. L. Newell (eds), Italian Politics: Quo Vadis? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 29–46. Il Mulino (2005), ‘Cattolici in un paese smarrito’, Il Mulino, (5), pp. 821–2. Itanes (2001), Perché ha vinto il centro-destra. Bologna: Il Mulino. Iucci, S. (2003), ‘La legge punto per punto’, available at: www.rassegna.it/2003/speciali/scuola/moratti. htm. Accessed 28 October 2007. Morata, F. (2004), ‘La presidenza italiana dell’unione europea: Un semestre “anomalo” ’, in V. della Sala and S. Fabbrini (eds), Politica in Italia. 2004 Edition, Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 145–66. Natale, P. (2002), ‘Una fedeltà leggera: I movimenti di voto nella II Repubblica’, in R. D’Alimonte and S. Bartolini (eds), Maggioritario finalmente? Bologna: Il Mulino. Nevola, G. (2003), ‘Quale patria per gli italiani? Dalla “repubblica dei partiti” alla pedagogia civiconazionale di Ciampi’, in G. Nevola (ed.), Una patria per gli italiani: La questione nazionale oggi tra storia, cultura e politica. Rome: Carocci editore, pp. 139–91. Paoli, L. (2007), ‘Mafia and organised crime in Italy: The unacknowledged successes of law enforcement’, West European Politics, 30, (4), pp. 854–80. Pederzoli, P. (2005), ‘The reform of the Judiciary’, in C. Guarnieri and J. L. Newell (eds), Italian Politics Quo Vadis? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 153–71. Parini, E. G. (2000), ‘Mafia and civil society: Stereotypes and perspectives’, ECPR News, 11, (4), pp. 10–11. Parkin, F. (1979), Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique. London: Tavistock. Rémond, R. (1999), La secolarizzazione: Religione e società nell’europa contemporanea. Rome and Bari: Laterza. Saraceno, C. (2004), ‘The Italian family from the 1960s to the present’, Modern Italy, 9, (1), pp. 47–57. Tarchi, M. (2003), L’Italia populista: Dal qualunquismo ai girotondi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Visco, V. (2005), ‘Spesa pubblica e procedure di bilancio’, Il Mulino, (4), pp. 698–705.

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CHAPTER TWO

The Changing Face of the Media: A Catalogue of Anomalies1 Cristopher Cepernich (Translated by Clodagh Brook)

26 January 1994: From Innovative Entrepreneur to Political Conservative This chapter will explore the effects that the ‘Berlusconi years’ have had on Italy’s radio, television and media systems. As will be clear from the Introduction, this is far from an easy task: Berlusconi is a complex figure whose roles as entrepreneur and politician have etched deep contradictions in him, and after almost fifteen years in politics, these are so entwined as to have become indistinguishable. In this chapter, I propose to create an annotated catalogue of the anomalies found in Italy’s communication policies and in the media system as a consequence of the contradictions incarnated by Berlusconi from the moment he stepped into politics on 26 January 1994. Before 1994, Berlusconi, as entrepreneur, had played the role of innovator. He founded a publishing empire and contributed to modernizing the way in which TV and entertainment were conducted, reforming both programmes and formats, and successfully winning audiences, so that his channels – Canale 5, Italia 1 and Rete 4 – equalled and often exceeded the number of spectators of the public TV channels. Of course, he was working within a duopoly which saw him competing on an equal footing solely with public TV (Menduni 2002; Ortoleva 1995). When he entered the political arena, his election campaign was characterized by his use of marketing experts from his own advertising agency, Publitalia. This move in itself marks a transformation in the forms of political communication (Campus 2004; Livolsi, Volli 1995; Mancini, Mazzoleni 1995; Marletti 2007; Marletti, Roncarolo 2000; Mazzoleni 2004; Morcellini 1994; Novelli 1995, 2006). It is worth stressing that it was Berlusconi who was ultimately responsible for breaking the monopoly of public television. He took his first step towards this when he turned to his advantage a sentence passed by the Constitutional Court in July 1976. This sentence recognized the legitimacy of private initiatives in local broadcasting. Berlusconi stepped in and soon acquired three local networks, the last of which was Rete 4, which he bought from Mondadori in 1984. His second move was to take advantage of the sector’s complete lack of regulation in order to begin broadcasting his regional networks nationally. It was only in 1990 that the first organic law for radio and television was introduced. The Mammì law, as will become clear later, far from controlling the ‘wild west’ that television had become in the 1980s, limited itself to legitimizing what was already in place. In so doing, it effectively sanctioned the television duopoly

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RAI/Fininvest. Berlusconi’s company, Fininvest/Mediaset, thus gained the space and resources necessary to enable it to grow into a giant in the sector. By 2006, it had a turnover of €2.956 billion from its advertising revenue alone. Television, however, is only one of the many activities which make up the Berlusconi family ‘empire’. Let us look now briefly at the others: Cinema, radio, and television. In Italy Mediaset holds (a) three analogue terrestrial channels (Canale 5, Italia 1 and Rete 4) and Mediaset Premium on digital terrestrial television (the latter uses a pay-per-view formula, drawing in viewers through its scheduling of cinema and live football). Apart from this Mediaset also owns the advertising agency, Publitalia ’ 80, which is a top earner alongside Promoservice Italia and Publieurope, the latter controlling 30 per cent of the advertising market in Germany and 15 per cent in the United Kingdom. (b) Mediaset owns the R.T.I production company, through which it produces, among other things, advertisements (Media Shopping Spa), television programmes, including successful sitcoms and soap operas (Videotime Spa and Mediavivere Srl), cinema (Medusa Film Spa) and theatre (Fascino). (c) Mediaset Investimenti Spa controls the Spanish station Telecinco and the advertising agency Publiespaña, not to mention the largest production and distribution circuits for cinema and home video in Italy (Medusa Cinema, Medusa Multisala, Medusa Video and 51 per cent of Blockbuster Video Italia). (d) Mediaset Investment Srl has allowed Mediaset to recently acquire 99.7 per cent of Endemol Investment and 75 per cent of the Endemol Group, the most important worldwide group in the production and export of television programmes. In addition, Mediaset holds a 14.35 per cent share of the cable television company, Breizh, and a series of other pay-TV channels. In 2005, it acquired the Italian radio network, One-O-One through the Mondadori group. The publishing sector. The Berlusconi family owns 50.3 per cent of Mondadori, which, in holding roughly 31 per cent of the Italian book market, is one of the largest publishing houses in Europe. Through Mondadori, Berlusconi has significant influence over well-established publishing groups such as Einaudi, Sperling & Kupfer and Frassinelli. Through its more than fifty subsidiaries, Mondadori has entered the publishing sector in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and Latin America. The Mondadori Group edits more than forty-five magazines, including Panorama (Italy’s most widely read news magazine), gossip and women’s magazines, and TV guides (e.g. Sorrisi e Canzoni TV, a magazine that tops the family entertainment and music magazine category). Overall, Mondadori covers about 60 per cent of the magazine sector. It is also involved in international joint ventures with Hearst Corporation (Cosmopolitan), Rodale Press (Men’s Health), Gruner & Jahr (a subsidiary of the Bertelsmann Group which publishes Focus and many other prominent titles). Finally, mondadori.com boasts numerous online publishing activities. Through Fininvest, the Berlusconi family also publishes the daily newspapers, Il Giornale and Il Foglio. New media. Mediadigit manages all the Berlusconi Group’s activities in new technologies, including the internet, thematic TV channels and teletext. Other sectors. These include the insurance, banking and financial firms which form part of the Mediolanum Group and Doris Group. The Berlusconi Group also has holdings in areas as diverse as mobile phones, chain stores and sports clubs (including the football team, A.C. Milan). Herein lies the contradiction of Berlusconismo. On the one hand, as entrepreneur, this media tycoon has managed to make significant innovations in telecommunications and with them has transformed a large sphere of Italian society; on the other, however, the Berlusconi years are characterized by significant and problematic issues. In the wake of his entry into the

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Italian political arena, these became glaring anomalies. The source of every peculiarity and every political conflict can be found in the disputable compatibility between Berlusconi’s role as entrepreneur in media, communications and in other business sectors – and his role as head of government. In the limited space available here, I will take into consideration only some of the key issues that result from Berlusconi’s direct engagement in politics. The first of these is the conflict of interests between Berlusconi’s media involvement and his public duties as head of government. The second is the way in which the modernization of Italy’s communications system has taken place; a modernization in large part still incomplete. Finally, I will be exploring the way in which Berlusconi has exercised his leadership. On numerous occasions, in fact, Berlusconi’s style has determined a deterioration in his relationships with journalists and an exasperation of the bitter political climate between majority and opposition. In its turn, this has encouraged mistrust among the general public of state institutions and politics, as well as encouraging the growth of anti-politics (Campus 2006; Marletti 2002; Mastropaolo 2000, 2005).

The Conflict of Interests The ‘original sin’ standing right at the heart of all anomalies in the Italian communications system and muddying the relationship between media and politics lies in the ethical, political and economic question of the conflict of interests. This conflict of interests rears its head every time Berlusconi finds himself combining posts in public office, such as head of government, with his position as title holder of the three biggest commercial television networks. The conflict has two sides. First, as a public figure, Berlusconi is obliged to propose universalistic policies for market regulation that will safeguard the public interest. However, as a private citizen and entrepreneur, he may instead find himself favouring proposals aimed at maximizing the profit of the companies which he and his family own, to the detriment of potential competitors. The second, but equally important, aspect of the conflict of interests is political. The television networks that Berlusconi controls are more than just an economic empire; they are also a powerful instrument for influencing public opinion. He has used them more than once to successfully turn important political campaigns in his favour. A striking example is the case of the three popular referendums proposed by the Partito Radicale (the Radical Party) in 1995. These were immediately baptized by Berlusconi’s camp as the ‘anti-Fininvest referendums’. The first of these proposed to repeal an article of the Mammì law which permitted the concentration of three television networks in the hands of private operators. The second aimed to repeal permission to frequently interrupt television programmes with adverts. The third called for a lowering of the ceiling of advertising revenue permitted for private television networks. A volley of anti-referendums publicity immediately emanated from Fininvest’s networks, equalled only by the levels of publicity which had accompanied Berlusconi on his proverbial ‘taking to the pitch’ of politics in 1994. All the most popular Fininvest stars came out in support of the campaign to defend Berlusconi’s networks. The quorum was reached and Italians defeated the proposals: 56 per cent of voters stood against the repeal of the existing laws. Various explanations have been proffered to explain this outcome. Some claim that Italians had been ‘captivated’ by commercial television and were simply no longer willing to give it up. Berlusconi’s propaganda could thus easily evoke the spectre of a television blackout, inducing the fear that should the ‘yes’ vote win, Fininvest would no longer be able to broadcast under the same conditions. Norberto Bobbio is one of those who took this view: The main reason that the founder of Fininvest won the referendum that would have diminished his power in TV was the very fact that he had this power. It is, in fact, undeniable

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that the unscrupulous use of three TV networks has allowed them to become the principal instrument for obtaining the results he wants, that is for impeding their dismantlement. The result of the three referendums demonstrates that the almost exclusive control of private TV by a political group is an irresistible force. (Bobbio, 1995) The analysis of voting patterns highlights that even as much as 36.8 per cent of supporters of Rifondazione Comunista (RC) – a party which has always been very critical of Berlusconi – voted in favour of Fininvest in the referendums (See Stampa, 13 June 1995a). Other commentators have, however, advanced different explanations for the failure of the referendums. There have been critics, for example, who base their analysis wholly on what happened on the left. Some parties, in particular RC and the Federazione dei Verdi (the Green Party), attacked the heads of the then Partito Democratico della Sinistra (PDS) – especially the Party Secretary, Massimo D’Alema, and Walter Veltroni – for having done less than they might have done to win the battle. Naturally, the Secretary of the PDS rejected the accusations. However, at the same time he made no mystery of his lack of support for referendums proposed by left-wing politicians seen by the PDS as extremely radical. D’Alema argued that even if a victory had been won, it would have been hard to manage because it would have seemed punitive towards Fininvest, especially in the face of the political elections scheduled for the following autumn. It could also have interfered with the recent pronouncements of the Constitutional Court, which at that time was attempting to straighten out radio and television.2 To this, one can add, as Veltroni was to say, that ‘each time the left lines itself up “against” [Berlusconi], it pays a high price’ (Stampa, 13 June 1995b). That price is defeat. It is only with the Maccanico law (n. 249 of 31 July 1997) that a more systematic regulatory framework for television frequencies was instated. This law also proposed to deal with questions regarding the antitrust which had remained suspended.3 Nonetheless, the law was declared illegitimate by the Constitutional Court (Sentence n. 466 of 20 November 2002) insofar as it permitted Mediaset to maintain three terrestrial television licenses. This contradicted an earlier ruling of the same court (Sentence n. 420 of 1994): Article 3, Subsection 7 of the Maccanico law violated Article 21 of the Constitution on the freedom of information, in that it failed to establish a final and immovable date – before 31 December 2003 – for programmes exceeding the law’s new limits for broadcasting to be moved to satellite or cable. The influence that Berlusconi enjoys through his television and publishing apparatuses is only part of the picture, however. The power deriving from the political control of public TV also needs to be taken into account. In Italy, political parties – especially those of government – exercise a strong influence over RAI: the sole licence holder providing public television and radio channels. Although RAI is a joint-stock company, the majority shareholder is the treasury. RAI’s board of directors comprises nine members, seven of whom are nominated by the Parliamentary Supervisory Commission, while the remaining two are nominated directly by the treasury. Treasury members include the president of the board of directors. That the system is structured in this way explains why RAI is often accused of providing information which is not independent of political parties, and of lacking pluralism and an impartial hiring policy. These problems cannot but be exasperated when a figure like Berlusconi, who is already influential in media and telecommunications, becomes head of government, and so, effectively controls the entire Italian radio–television system. There is no need to resort to catastrophist theories in order to understand that concentrating the information apparatus in this way can be a determining factor in guiding Italian politics. The problem of the conflict of interests is even more complex when we consider that Berlusconi has taken every opportunity to oppose any attempt at negotiation and mediation that might result in even the slightest diminution of his control.4 He has, for instance, opposed every

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solution that recommends the kinds of blind trusts found in the world’s most advanced democracies (especially in the United States, a country which Berlusconi has more than once cited as a model).5 However, this is not the end of the story. Berlusconi’s last government approved a law which was indicated by many as one of the most evident cases of ad personam legislation. On 3 May 2004, Law 112, known as the Gasparri law after the minister of communication from Alleanza Nazionale (AN) who drafted it, reorganized the radio–television system. The Gasparri law introduced important changes, including (a) the obligation for telecommunication companies to define their position within the general framework of the Sistema Integrato delle Comunicazioni (SIC), the integrated system of communications that includes newspapers and magazines, traditional and online publishing, radio, TV, cinema and advertising, and (b) the ruling that the companies in this sector cannot earn revenue above 20 per cent of the total revenue of the SIC, whether directly or through subsidiaries. This limit, which replaces the 30 per cent imposed by the Maccanico law seven years earlier, permits substantially higher earnings for private operators. The ceiling for the Maccanico law was calculated using revenue from the television sector alone, whereas the Gasparri law applies it to the SIC, encompassing, in other words, a much wider range of resources. Figure 2.1 shows the severe imbalance in advertising market share within the Italian radio– television sector. It is clear that Mediaset’s behaviour in the market damages not so much the three public networks6 – which earn more than half their revenue in licence fees (56.2 per cent in 2006) – as it affects competition between private players: Sky Italia (owned by the American group, News Corporation, and headed by Rupert Murdock), Satellite pay-TV (operating in Italy since 2003), and Telecom Italia Media (which owns two analogue terrestrial channels, La 7, and MTV Italia). Together these companies earned only 3.3 per cent of the available advertising revenue. However, as we will see later, despite the fact that pay-TV had an impact on Italy far later than it had in other European countries, its usage is now growing rapidly. How the conflict of interests relates to political communication, on the other hand, can be seen in Berlusconi’s repeated and bitter contesting of Law 28 of 22 February 2000, known as the par condicio law. This is the law which regulates the visibility of parties and politicians on television during election campaigns. It aimed to narrow the gap in media visibility that had resulted from Berlusconi’s heavy use of electoral advertising on his networks, and ‘guaranteed equality of treatment and impartiality with regard to all political subjects, ensuring access to the means of information for political communication’ (Article 1, Subsection 1). The par condicio Figure 2.1: Market Shares, Media Advertising Revenue (%) Radio 6% External advertising 6%

Printed media 32%

Internet Cinema 2% 1%

Television 53%

Source: Relazione Annuale dell’Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni 2007 (see AGCOM 2007).

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law built on Law 515 of 10 December 1993, which had also regulated electoral campaigns, introducing the principle that ‘radio and television broadcasters must assure that all political subjects have impartial and equal access to information and political communication’ (Article 2, Subsection 1). The par condicio law established as obligatory the ‘transmission of political programmes on radio and analogue terrestrial television’. Participation in these programmes was free (Article 2, Subsection 4). It also established that the results of opinion polls could not be made public in the 15 days running up to an election (Article 8). The main objection that Forza Italia made to this law was that its division of television space into equal parts among all the electoral parties took no account of how representative this was of the political parties. Berlusconi’s allies in the centre-right coalition, however, defended the law, even if they tempered their position with generic proposals for its improvement. A catalogue of Italian anomalies could not be complete without discussing the failure of par condicio legislation to instigate effective controls over television programming. In broad terms, the law refers this task to the telecommunications watchdog and to the regional committees for communication (Co. Re. Com). The legislation makes no precise distinction between ‘political communication’ and ‘information’ (Massoli et al. 2007). Furthermore, the sanctions are inadequate for dissuading the big private networks from ‘taking an active part’ in a candidate’s campaign because they are too light and too complicated to apply. In case of an infraction, for instance, the watchdog orders the broadcaster to air reparatory programmes in which the slighted political parties are offered the greatest air-time, so rectifying the imbalance in visibility. Should the network fail to comply, the watchdog is obliged to commute this into pecuniary sanctions. However, for the large national networks, the size of these sanctions will barely affect their balance sheets. Moreover, these already weak checks are regularly made only long after the campaigns have ended. Berlusconi’s steadfast opposition to attempts to settle the problem of the conflict of interests, together with the incapacity (or lack of determination) shown by the centre-left governments in finding an adequate solution, constitutes the most significant anomaly of the Italian system. This also underlies profound institutional conflicts: state organs in charge of settling the questions surrounding the conflict of interests are regularly attacked and delegitimized by Berlusconi, who accuses them of political partisanship (famously calling the judges who speak out against him, ‘red magistrates’). It is certainly no coincidence that the Single Negotiating Act of radio and television (Decree law n. 177 of 21 July 2005), which was to rationalize and harmonize regulations in the sector, is entirely separate from the regulations which concern issues of competition and frequencies.

An Incomplete Modernization When Silvio Berlusconi first came to power, he presented himself in the public arena as the ‘new man’ of communications, a leader who was capable of understanding the spirit of Italians’ changing customs and lifestyles. He promised to bring to politics the same entrepreneurial spirit that had brought him fame and success, injecting a strong dose of optimism for the future into communications with his vast audience of spectators and citizens. This led Berlusconi to become the epitome of the telepopulist leader (Sartori 1989a; Sartori 1989b; Taguieff 2000). Availing himself of his large company staff, in the mid-1990s Berlusconi was in a position to tackle the demand for renewal that was widespread in many sectors of Italian society. This was while the apparatus of the parties of the left was still indulging in that self-referential political culture that for 40 years had celebrated its own increasingly worn-out rites, to the indifference of the greater public.

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As we have said, Berlusconi’s modernization of communications is, however, incomplete, in terms both of its structure and its culture. If we look carefully, in fact, we can see that, in the main, his modernization has affected only the surface, and has been unable or unwilling to resolve the problems of the Italian media system. In fact, in some cases it has only aggravated them. This is particularly evident as far as the editorial market is concerned. The creation of a television giant founded on three large commercial networks has, of course, the merit of definitively having put an end to the state monopoly in this sector, and has greatly increased television viewing. However, rather than opening the door to pluralism and to selective market competition, the Berlusconi years instead consolidated the RAI/Mediaset duopoly. This blocked the system, impeding the entry of new competitors until at least 2003, the year in which the Murdock Group entered the field. Another fundamental structural aspect over which Berlusconi’s modernization seems to have only limited effect is the anomalies in the distribution of advertisements in the different media. Until the 1980s, unlike most of the rest of Europe, Italy had invested little in the advertising market. This had resulted in an insufficient development of the consumer market (Falabrino 2007; Gambaro, Silva 1992; Perrucci, Richeri 2003). Berlusconi, however, intuitively realized that in Italy, as in the United States, commercial television could support itself by selling advertising space to companies who wanted to increase sales of their products. However, the expansion of advertising that ensued was attained at the cost of severely skewing the market. In fact, as Figure 2.2 shows, advertising investment poured into television, to the detriment of print media and other communication sectors. This differs from the picture in most of Europe and the United States, where the relationship between the means of communication is more balanced, and where, if anything, it is print media that orientates the consumer market (Bassat, Livraghi 2005). The tipping of the balance in favour of advertising on television (and especially commercial television) that developed in Italy, had consequences, too, of a cultural nature. A possible hypothesis – one which would, however, need further research – is that this rendered Italian consumerism less selective in this period, as products of mass consumption were favoured over quality ones, thereby reducing the differentiation of consumption typical of a well-developed market. Figure 2.2: Advertising Investment in Italy (%) 56.6

60

54.9

50 40 30

28.5 29

20 9.8 9.5 10

3.3 3.3

1.9 3.3

Telecom

Sky

0 Rai

Mediaset

2005

Altri

2006

Source: Relazione Annuale dell’Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni 2007 (see AGCOM 2007).

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Besides this, it is generally held that the expansion of advertising in Italy, an expansion which outstripped anything in Europe, progressively undermined the quality of Italian television, as programmes were repeatedly interrupted and fragmented. The content-rich shows broadcast in the early years of Italian TV were replaced by programmes which then acted simply as containers for advertisements: these programmes were ever more standardized, repetitive and lacking in content; their main focus becoming the TV host or the programme’s theme tune (Grasso 2004). At the beginning, this seemed innovative, and some critics talked of ‘neotelevision’, but gradually it gave way, with few exceptions, to a flood of poor-quality offerings, like reality TV, which focused on people’s private lives and on the representation of pain (Bruno 1999; Casetti 1988; Pecchioli 2005). This decay in the quality of television programming on Mediaset channels spread to the public channels, and RAI has now abandoned any idea of service in the scramble for audience share. The structural and cultural anomalies of the Italian communication system – which were aggravated rather than resolved during the Berlusconi years – appear particularly worrying if considered in the light of Italy’s ongoing digitalization and its multimedia convergence. When we look at this developing scenario, the limits of Berlusconi’s incomplete modernization are clear. The crisis of generalist TV channels and the progressive reduction of their audience share – a phenomenon already seen in the United States – is rearing its head in Europe too: numerous signs of it can now also be seen in Italy. The advent of DTT satellite platforms increased the number of programme schedules available to audiences and consequently decreased the audience for the two established operators, RAI and Mediaset. In fact, between 2002 and 2006 mean audience concentration has dropped. Even if audience share for RAI and Mediaset together remains at more than 80 per cent of the total, this has slipped by more than 5 per cent since 2002. This is a result largely of Sky’s performance, which today reaches 8 per cent of the Italian public.7 The structural and cultural bases for Mediaset have been, and for the most part remain, anchored in analogue technology and in the need to attract large audiences, the source of its advertising revenue profit. Even the programme to develop DTT was in the end closely linked to the rationale of consolidating this private broadcasting monopoly. And it is here that we find yet another Italian anomaly. Even if the Gasparri law stated among its objectives its support for the birth of a new production sector through new technology and its encouragement of the entry of new players into the television market, in reality it concentrated DTT in the hands of operators already active in the field. By doing this, (a) it forced RAI to make a huge investment in the sector, as it was effectively Mediaset’s only competitor; such investment was predictably unproductive for RAI since the only income-producing programmes – Serie A (the national football league), the English Champions League, and first-run cinema – are broadcast by Mediaset; (b) it enabled Mediaset to break into pay-TV networks through its distribution of subsidized decoders – which decrypt the signal when attached to a TV – at a cost to the public purse; (c) it led to a focus on competing for sports coverage between DTT operators, thereby reducing, rather than increasing, the range of programmes offered (Ortoleva 2005). This marks the last step in the incomplete modernization of the Italian media system. The communication policies adopted by government have been personalistic and are aimed at maintaining the status quo, whether of the right or the left. They are as ambitious and forwardthinking in their intentions, as they are unrealistic and weak in their realization. The case of the introduction of DTT is paradigmatic in this regard. Initially, the Gasparri law had established 2006 as the deadline for the switch from analogue to digital television. However, it failed to take into account that countries which were considerably better prepared for this change had set timeframes that were substantially longer: the United States and Germany set their target for 2009; Japan and France for 2011, and the United Kingdom for 2012. It is, of course, true that the

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2006 deadline was originally proposed by the centre-left government, but at the time when the centre-right passed the Gasparri law, it should have been clear that this deadline was unrealistic. In order to meet it, in fact, the legislation earmarked substantial funds for subsidizing the purchase of decoders for the general public. However, these publicly subsidized decoders were not then immediately met by an adequate supply of channels and programme schedules, with the exception, that is, of football matches.8 It is hard not to notice how it is at this point, after having blocked the Italian television system for years, that Mediaset began rather urgently to manage its transition towards the new broadcasting technologies; the way it did so coincided exactly with the plans of the Berlusconi government. The case of Europa7 should also be mentioned, as it illustrates the connections between these considerations and those surrounding the conflict of interests (Wagner 2003). In 1999, the entrepreneur Francesco Di Stefano, who already owned the local television network, Italia 7, decided to set up a station which would have national coverage. He took part in the public competition for the assigning of national analogue television frequencies that had been established by the Maccanico law under D’Alema’s centre-left government. The Piano Nazionale di Assegnazione delle Frequenze per la Radiodiffusione Televisiva (The National Plan for the Assigning of Frequencies for Television) assigned eleven national analogue stations: three for public TV (RAI) and eight for private groups. Di Stefano competed for two of the eight available frequencies, one for Europa7 and the other for 7Plus, winning the license for Europa7. He prepared a considerable business plan for the launch of his network: it projected the hiring of roughly 700 professionals, the construction of a 20,000 metre production centre in Rome – with eight highly technological production studios – and a rich and original schedule. Unluckily for Di Stefano, however, the frequency which Europa7 had been assigned was already occupied by Mediaset’s Rete4 signal. On 22 September 1999, Europa7’s licence was registered at the Audit Office, and on 28 October a licence was issued which was to enable broadcasting to begin before 31 December 1999. In reality, however, because Europa7 had not already been transmitting on a national scale – unlike all public TV stations and some private ones like Mediaset – it had to await the assignment of frequencies. This never happened. Instead, Salvatore Cardinale, the centrist minister for communications in the centre-left D’Alema government, contravened the outcome of the competition, and in July emitted a ministerial decree for the so-called ‘surplus channels’ – that is, Rete 4 and Tele+ Nero – allowing them to continue their analogue transmissions. This ‘froze’ Europa7’s position, and marked the beginning of a long legal and political battle by the network. On Christmas Eve 2003, the second Berlusconi government passed Decree law 253, known as the Decreto Salvareti, the ‘Save the Networks Decree’. The date was probably deliberately chosen, given the distractions that political analysts would have had at that time. Nonetheless, it attracted ironic comment about the great Christmas present Berlusconi was getting from his own government. The decree law stated that the ‘surplus channels’ (therefore also Berlusconi’s Rete 4) could continue broadcasting on the frequencies that they already occupied, whether on analogue or on terrestrial digital. The decree became law on 24 February 2004, despite the opposition’s obstruction of the bill: the centre-left transformed the parliamentary sitting into a long marathon, protracted late into the night. In 2005, following Europa7’s petition against the TAR sentence (16 September 2004) that denied it €3 billion compensation for damages caused when it could not broadcast (despite having the right to do so), the Council of State petitioned the European Court of Justice (EJC). On 30 November 2006, when the Prodi government had been in power for six months, the hearing at the EJC took place: the state’s lawyers defended the Gasparri law against Europa7, supporting the positions previously expressed by the Berlusconi government. On 31 January 2008, however, the ECJ produced a sentence which recognized Europa7’s right to an analogue frequency. The

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sentence heavily criticized the behaviour of Italian governments surrounding the affair, highlighting how the systematic application of transitory regimes in the regulation of the frequencies had had the effect of impeding market access for those operators who did not already hold frequencies. These regimes had had the effect of fossilizing national market structures, protecting national operators already active in the market. The European Union thus contributed to highlighting yet another Italian anomaly. In the end, on 31 May 2008, the Council of State rejected Europa7’s final appeal against the minister for communications and Mediaset. Di Stefano’s request for the suspension of Rete 4’s license to transmit had failed.

Berlusconi’s Leadership: Censorship and the Deterioration of the Political Climate The anomalies we have described thus far regard the conflict of interests and incomplete modernization, but anomalies are also found in relation to politics and information. The high degree of conflict present in the relations between media and politics during the Berlusconi years has certainly had negative effects on the general political climate. This is easy to explain in the light of the collateralism (Seymour-Ure 1968) that historically characterized the relationship between journalists and politicians in Italy. Italian political journalism has always taken sides, acting as spokesperson for political groups or parties. In the presence of a strong political party, determined in its attempts to control the media, journalism can simply end up being ‘subjugated’ (Street 2001). To paint a full picture, one should note that while Italian television has at times been proBerlusconi, the same cannot be said of those newspapers with the greatest readership (Il Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, La Stampa, Il Messaggero, Il Sole-24 Ore), which instead have often assumed critical positions towards Berlusconi. There are some exceptions, naturally, notably Il Giornale and Il Foglio – which are owned respectively by Paolo Berlusconi (Silvio’s brother) and his wife Veronica Lario9 – and the news weekly, Panorama (belonging to the Mondadori Group). In this context, it is hardly surprising that the bitterest rifts between Berlusconi and journalists have taken place while he was in a position of political power. As already noted, the head of government has indirect control of RAI through the nomination of the highest positions within it, and this leads to control over the content of broadcasts. Here we should remember the sensational cases of censorship that struck journalists Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro and comedians Daniele Luttazzi and Sabina Guzzanti (see Chapters 7 and 16). It is difficult to ascertain whether this work of ‘normalization’ of information and of political satire on television can be ascribed directly to Berlusconi, or whether it is his exegetes and executors being overly zealous in putting his ideas into action. Berlusconi has always denied involvement. However, the fact is that, on the networks his family owns, a ‘toning down’ of editorial lines and journalistic headlines can be said to have occurred. For example, on 11 November 2004, with the end of Berlusconi’s legislature in view and the 2006 elections looming, Enrico Mentana, the director and founder of the daily news programme, Tg5, a man who had always safeguarded the news from its owners’ influences, was removed from his post after 13 years. He was substituted by the editor of Panorama, Carlo Rossella, a measured but faithful supporter of Berlusconi. The current political climate is, therefore, one in which there is a clear division between those Italians who support Berlusconi and those who oppose him. Berlusconi, often with the clumsy complicity of his adversaries, has frequently been able to turn this situation to his advantage, reducing electoral consultations to referendums for or against his person. In this sense, the

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chief responsibility that Berlusconi has for the deterioration of the political climate lies in the fact that he has intentionally adopted a strategy of creating splits. Indeed, the anticommunist rhetoric and the witch-hunts which characterize his behaviour towards the left had not been adopted since McCarthy’s anti-communism during the 1950s (Amadori 2002; Antelmi, Santulli 2002; Benedetti 2004; Fedel 2003; Squarcione 1994). Berlusconi’s attitude can be explained by his failure to gain ground among the left-wing electorate10 : this failure dashed his hopes for becoming a charismatic cross-party leader. Instead, he had to consolidate and compact his ranks on the right.

Concluding Notes The many anomalies which characterize Italy’s communication policies and its media system are today under scrutiny worldwide. Public opinion, both within the European Union and internationally, has increasingly expressed an interest in them, whether just to report them or to sanction them. Even here, though, Berlusconi’s modernization can be said to be incomplete. This modernization began in the 1980s, the years of Berlusconi the publisher, of Craxism, of ‘Milano da bere’,11 a time when the media system – made up primarily, but not exclusively, of television – strove towards innovation and development. Berlusconi broke the taboo of the public television monopoly, introducing a model founded on the coexistence of the public service with a strong private competitor. In so doing, the logic of television as a commercial enterprise, reaping profits through advertising, was born in Italy. Closely related to this was the birth of ever more sophisticated systems for measuring audiences, the expansion of television programming into new timeslots (first lunchtime, then the morning, and finally night-time), and the increasingly invasive presence of TV films, serials, soap operas and sit-coms, coming primarily from the English-speaking world. This modernization, however, stopped suddenly in the years subsequent to Berlusconi’s entry into politics. Berlusconi’s 15 years as a politician are characterized by leopard-like immobility and a rigorous conservation of the already-existent, as he protected private interests though his defence of Mediaset’s position as the only strong private entity on the national media market. In fact, as we have shown, Berlusconi’s companies have significantly consolidated their dominant market position through policies which have increased their profits and have impeded the entry of other strong players onto the market (even in the case of the launch of Digital Terrestrial Television). Ultimately, this is the unresolved question of the conflict of interests, a knot which is really difficult to unravel while Silvio Berlusconi is still a protagonist on the political scene, and while the centre-left – whether in government or in opposition – continues to take the problem off the political agenda or treat it as a political bargaining tool as and when it suits them.

Notes 1. I would like to thank Prof. Carlo Marletti, with whom I discussed this chapter in depth and to whom I owe many of its ideas. 2. The sentences in question are n. 112 of 26 March 1993 and n. 420 of 7 December 1994, which declared Article 15 of the Mammì law on antitrust discipline unconstitutional, holding that the limitation to three networks and to 25 per cent of the networks provided for in the plan for assigning frequencies was unable to guarantee the necessary respect for pluralism in the television sector; it aimed to strengthen what was already an existing dominant private position, in view of the

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ceiling of nine national networks, rather than moving so as gradually to contain or reduce it. Nor is it reasonable that the legislative body should have stipulated a less rigorous limit on concentrations of television channel ownership than that which applies to the printed press. 3. As well as setting up the Communications Watchdog, the Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni (Article 1, Subsection 1), the law provided for: (a) the prohibition of any act or behaviour having as its object or its effect the constitution or maintenance of a dominant position; (b) the prohibition for a subject holding television licenses to ‘broadcast more than 20 per cent of the analogue television networks and television programmes nationally’; (c) the prohibition for a subject holding television licenses to make profits of more than 30 per cent of the national television sector revenue. In practice, Mediaset would have had to move one of its networks to satellite TV. 4. Berlusconi’s main argument is that he had already resolved the problem with a law on the conflict of interests. Article 2, Subsection 2 of Law 215 of 20 July 2004 prescribes that ‘individual entrepreneurs will see to the nomination of one or more agents as per Articles 2203 to 2207 of the Civil Code’. This clause, however, is fragile, and has clearly failed to resolve the problem. 5. As far as the conflict of interests issue is concerned, the Italian anomaly has a double regulatory origin. First, no antitrust regulations have been made to limit concentration since Law 223 of 6 August 1990 (the Mammì law) was declared illegitimate in Subsection 4 of Article 15 of the Constitutional Court sentence n. 420 of 1994, in which a private individual was allowed to hold three of the nine licenses that can be assigned to private individuals, or to own 25 per cent of the total number of networks foreseen by the plan for their assignment. This decision made it necessary to establish new and reformulated antitrust regulations, such as Law 249 of 31 July 1997 (the Maccanico law). The second article of this law contained a redefinition of the anti-concentration parameters which would guarantee the protection of the pluralism of information. As we have seen, parts of this law were also declared illegitimate by the Constitutional Court sentence n. 466 of 20 November 2002. The anomaly also results, however, from the lack of adequate legislation on the eligibility of legal representatives of private companies, administrators and managers of companies. This eligibility is regulated by the ambiguous (and now outdated) Article 10 of the Single Negotiating Act of the DPR electoral laws n. 361 of 30 March 1957. 6. Mediaset’s acquisition of the Dutch production company, Endemol, was a cause for concern in Italy, because this company, as well as being the most important company for the production of television formats on a global scale (it produces Big Brother), is also among the main suppliers of programmes for RAI. Some suspected, therefore, a possible conflict of interests deriving from the fact that a Mediaset subsidiary would have been providing programmes to a direct competitor. 7. La7, the ‘third pole’ of analogue TV broadcasting in Italy, also benefited from the erosion of the duopoly. Launched on 24 June 2001, La7 is today owned by Telecom Italia Media, who also owns 51 per cent of MTV Italia. From June 2006, La7’s position has stabilized at 3.1 per cent of the average daily share. This is not inconsiderable if one keeps in mind that up until the previous year its share was sitting firmly at 1.5 per cent. The strong points of the network today are its information programmes – such as the Antonello Piroso’s daily news and a series of serious in-depth news programmes. It also provides ‘intelligent’ entertainment and some increasingly popular sports among Italians, such as rugby and sailing. 8. At the time of the launch of DTT (on 22 January 2004) Mediaset alone had invested €70 million, achieving 60 per cent of the national cover with digital repeaters, and had invested another 118 million for the television rights of the matches of eight teams until 2007.

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La7 (Telecom Group) had invested 32 million for the rights of nine teams for three years. By way of comparison, it is worth mentioning Sky (Murdoch Group) who bought the rights of all first and second division matches for about €400 million. 9. The function of this is clearly to get around the regulations concerning the concentration of ownership of daily newspapers (Law n. 416 of 5 August 1981, Law 67 of 25 February 1987, Law 62 of 7 March 2001, and their subsequent modifications). 10. The left have always been hostile towards him, apart from a few ex-socialist transfugees who entered Forza Italia in the immediate post-Tangentopoli era. 11. ‘Craxism’ is a term which refers to the new reformist path which the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) took in 1976 when Bettino Craxi was party secretary, establishing itself particularly in the 1980s. With Craxism, the party abandoned Marxist ideology in favour of a social-democratic political line and, as time passed, the party was entrusted to the increasingly personalistic leadership of Craxi, to his decision-making style, and his spectacular political style that verged on self-celebration. Milano da bere (the Milan you can drink) is a common expression taken from a claim made in a famous advertisement for an alcoholic drink then much in vogue. It defines the political and cultural climate that characterizes Milan in the 1980s, capital of Craxism, of widespread economic well-being, of fashion, of glamour and of an (alleged) widespread willingness to further one’s career at the expense of others.

References AGCOM (2007), ‘Relazione Annuale dell’Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni 2007’, available at: www.agcom.it/Default.aspx?message=contenuto&DCId=5, Accessed 1 March 2009. Amadori, A. (2002), Mi consenta. Metafore, messaggi e simboli: Come Silvio Berlusconi ha conquistato il consenso degli italiani. Milan: Libri Scheiwiller. Antelmi, D. and Santulli, F. (2002), ‘Risorse semantiche per la costruzione del consenso: Il caso Berlusconi’, Comunicazione Politica, 3, (2), pp. 171–92. Bassat, L. and Livraghi, G. (2005), Il nuovo libro della pubblicità. Milan: Il Sole-24 Ore. Benedetti, A. (2004), Il linguaggio e la retorica della nuova politica italiana: Silvio Berlusconi e Forza Italia. Genova: Erga Edizioni. Bobbio, N. (1995), ‘La lezione dei dodici referendum’, Stampa, 13 June. Bruno, M. W. (1999), Neotelevisione. Dalle comunicazioni di massa alla massa di comunicazioni. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Campus, D. (2004), ‘La comunicazione politica di Berlusconi. Percorsi di lettura’, Comunicazione Politica, 5, (1), pp. 179–89. — (2006), L’antipolitica al governo: De Gaulle, Reagan, Berlusconi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Casetti, F. (1988), Tra me e te. Strategie di coinvolgimento dello spettatore nei programmi della neo-televisione, Turin: Eri-Rai. Falabrino, G. L. (2007), Storia della pubblicità in Italia dal 1945 ad oggi, Rome: Carocci. Fedel, G. (2003), ‘Parola mia. La retorica di Silvio Berlusconi’, Il Mulino, (3), pp. 463–73. Gambaro, M. and Silva, F. (1992), Economia della televisione. Bologna: Il Mulino. Grasso, A. (2004), Storia della televisione italiana. Milan: Garzanti. Livolsi, M. and Volli, U. (eds) (1995), La comunicazione politica tra prima e seconda repubblica. Milan: FrancoAngeli. Mancini, P. and Mazzoleni, G. (1995), I media scendono in campo: Le elezioni politiche 1994 in televisione. Turin: Nuova Eri-Rai. Marletti, C. (2002), ‘Il ciclo dell’antipolitica e i risultati delle elezioni del 13 maggio in Italia. Verso un nuovo clima d’opinione?’, Comunicazione Politica, 3, (1), pp. 9–30. — (ed.) (2007), Il leader postmoderno. Milan: FrancoAngeli.

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Marletti, C. and Roncarolo, F. (2000), ‘Media influence in the Italian transition from a consensual to a majoritarian democracy’, in R. Gunther and A. Mughan (eds), Democracy and the Media. A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 195–240. Massoli, L., Polcaro, A. and Polito I. (2007), ‘Comunicazione politica e par condicio: Il ruolo dell’Autorità tra attività regolamentare ed esperienze applicative’, Comunicazione Politica, 8, (2), pp. 273–292. Mastropaolo, A. (2000), Antipolitica all’origine della crisi italiana. Naples: L’Ancora del Mediterraneo. — (2005), La mucca pazza della democrazia. Nuove destre, populismo, antipolitica. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. Mazzoleni, G. (ed.) (2004), ‘Il grande comunicatore. Dieci anni di Berlusconi sulla ribalta’, Comunicazione Politica, 5, (1), pp. 5–201. Menduni, E. (2002), Televisione e società italiana 1975–2000. Milan: Bompiani. Morcellini, M. (ed.) (1994), Elezioni di tv. Televisione e pubblico nella campagna elettorale del ’94. Genova: Costa & Nolan. Novelli, E. (1995), Dalla tv di partito al partito della tv: Televisione e politica in Italia 1960–1995. Scandicci: La Nuova Italia. — (2006), La turbopolitica: Sessant’anni di comunicazione politica e di scena pubblica in Italia 1945–2005. Milan: Bur. Ortoleva, P. (1995), Un ventennio a colori. Florence: Giunti. — (2005), ‘Il futuro digitale. Il declino industriale del sistema dei media italiano’, Problemi dell’Informazione, (3), pp. 265–80. Pecchioli, M. (ed.) (2005), Neotelevisione: Elementi di un linguaggio catodico glocal/e. Milan: Costa & Nolan. Perrucci, A. and Richeri, A. (eds) (2003), Il mercato televisivo italiano nel contesto europeo. Bologna: Il Mulino. Sartori, G. (1989a), ‘Videopolitica’, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, 19, (2), pp. 185–98. — (1989b), ‘Video-power’, Government and Opposition, 24, (1), pp. 39–53. Seymour-Ure, C. (1968), Press, Politics and the Public. London: Methuen. Squarcione, M. (1994), ‘Occhetto e Berlusconi: Percorsi linguistici e strategie argomentative’, in M. Morcellini (ed.), Elezioni di tv. Televisione e pubblico nella campagna elettorale del ’94. Genova: Costa & Nolan. Stampa (1995a), ‘Analisi. I flussi del voto: I più fedeli? Azzurri e pidiessini. Rifondazione “ribelle”: Il 36% vota Fininvest’, 13 June. — (1995b), ‘Il leader PDS: “Sono circondato da generali senza esercito”. Veltroni: “Quando siamo contro perdiamo” ’, 13 June. Street, J. (2001), Mass Media, Politics and Democracy. Houndmills and New York: Palgrave. Taguieff, P. A. (2000), L’illusion populiste. De l’archaïque au médiatique. Paris: Berg International. Wagner, A. (2003), Il grande scippo. Europa7 e Rete4 : L’incredibile vicenda delle frequenze televisive e gli effetti della legge Gasparri. Rome: Editori Riuniti.

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CHAPTER THREE

Electoral Campaigning and the New Media Roberto Grandi and Cristian Vaccari1

Introduction Political communication evolves as a result of changes in the social, political and communication systems. Over the last decade, a significant amount of comparative research has investigated how election campaigns are developing around the world as a response to social, cultural, political, legal and technological transformations (Blumler, Kavanagh 1999). In particular, Norris (2000) classifies campaigns as premodern, modern and postmodern. Premodern campaigns were characterized by a prominent role for party-centred communication (party newspapers, literature distribution, door-to-door canvassing), which in turn meant that the main effect of campaigns was to reinforce pre-existing attitudes and mobilize partisan voters through social networks and selective exposure to propaganda (Lazarsfeld et al. 1944). Modern campaigns were marked by the advent of television and mass communication, which, together with the weakening of party identification and organization, gave way to candidate-centred politics (Wattenberg 1991), ‘electoral-professional’ parties (Panebianco 1982), professionalized campaigns run mostly through television, and a transformation of citizenship and representation in the form of an ‘audience democracy’ (Manin 1997). Postmodern campaigns are characterized by an increase in the sheer volume of messages, due to the multiplication of channels and outlets, but also by a fragmentation of the news audience and a significant decrease in citizens’ trust in media institutions (West 2001). Another feature of postmodern campaigns is the rediscovery of horizontal and dialogic forms of communication, resulting in both a revival of traditional electioneering activities such as door-to-door canvassing and direct voter contact, and in the adoption of advanced techniques, such as micro-targeting, internet tools and consumer research, which can increase the effectiveness of direct communication. This chapter will focus on some relevant changes in Italian electioneering during the Berlusconi era. In particular, it will explore the hypothesis that Italian political communication, and especially the centre-left coalition, has developed its own version of postmodern campaigning.

Modern Campaigning in Italy Italian electioneering did not experience a transition from the premodern to the modern era until the early 1980s, when a new generation of party leaders emerged who sought to bypass traditional party structures and build a direct relationship with voters mediated by television. Among them, the secretary of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI), Bettino Craxi (1976–92), was the first prominent politician who created a strong link between party and leader in the minds

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of voters (Merkel 1987). Following the example of Craxi’s political entrepreneurship, the party came to be symbolized by leaders rather than by ideology or historic party symbols. In this context, the first televised political advertisements, some of which featured leaders as spokespeople and symbols for the whole party, appeared in the run up to the general election of 1983, even though their impact on campaigns remained marginal until the 1994 election (Pezzini 2001). In turn, the media started shifting the focus of their coverage from politics and ideology to policy and personality (Roncarolo, Marini 1997), and campaigns centred more on candidates than on parties (Mazzoleni 1992). The electorate became less attached to traditional partisan, cultural and social ties and more open to ‘opinion voting’ (Parisi, Pasquino 1977). The modernization process was accelerated by the success of Berlusconi’s media conglomerate, which by the mid1980s owned three of the six national TV networks together with the largest advertising agency and a multitude of print publications. The commercialization of Italian media played a fundamental role in directing the language of journalism and politics away from ideological appeals and elite-targeted discourse towards a more popular and comprehensible style. When, at the beginning of the 1990s, the party system that had dominated Italian politics for almost five decades collapsed under bribery scandals, Berlusconi rose to power by deftly employing the techniques of modern campaigning. His business experience and his media empire shaped his communication skills and made him the best-equipped person to handle techniques such as marketing, branding, image-making, stage management, polling, market research, advertising, news management and public relations. His party, Forza Italia (FI), was rooted in the organizational and promotional structure of his advertising agency (Poli 2001), and aimed primarily to gain and control media exposure (Calise 1996). As the centre-left was still rooted in the mass-party organizational model, it struggled in the new campaign environment. Berlusconi’s message and techniques seemed to be more modern and better suited to their times, as mass communication, and television in particular, had become the framework through which campaigns were waged. Obviously, the fact that Berlusconi controlled half of the television market helped him convey his message much more easily than his opponents, not only in information programmes but especially in entertainment shows. Moreover, at least in 1994, the regulatory environment of broadcasting during campaigns was quite permissive and enabled Berlusconi’s networks to provide a very unbalanced coverage of the election without incurring in any sanctions, although stricter rules were introduced in 1996 and 2000 (Pezzini 2001). The 2001 campaign can be identified as the high point in the climax of the diffusion of modern campaigning, when Berlusconi effectively dominated the battle for agenda control and positioning on all mass-media fronts (Grandi, Vaccari 2007: 104–12).

2004–05 Part I: The Slow Twilight of Modern Campaigning In June 2004 and May 2005, the centre-right coalition led by Berlusconi suffered remarkable defeats in local elections for several city mayoralties and regional governorships (see Chapter 4). Nationally, the vote provided the first signs of decline in Berlusconi’s model of modern campaigning, while at the local level several campaigns by centre-left candidates successfully employed some techniques of postmodern campaigning. As a result, these elections can be interpreted as the twilight of modern campaigning and the dawn of postmodern campaigning, although, as we will see, these developments are far from seamless and complete. Besides the overall results of the election, two episodes at the national level demonstrate the declining effectiveness of the modern, mass-mediated techniques that were so crucial in Berlusconi’s success between 1994 and 2001. First, especially in 2004, Berlusconi insisted on flooding television outlets. He tried to replicate the winning tactics of 2001, when on the

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most popular Italian political talk show, Porta a Porta (Door to Door), he signed a five-point ‘Contract with Italians’, modelled after the ten-point ‘Contract with America’ stipulated by Republicans in the 1994 US congressional elections and the five-point ‘pledge card’ distributed by the Labour Party in the United Kingdom 1997 general elections. Between February and April 2004, Berlusconi appeared three times on the same show, garnering declining ratings of 2.3, 2.2 and 1.7 million viewers, lower than the programme’s average and almost half the 3.6 million who had watched him sign the 2001 ‘contract’ (De Gregorio 2004). Viewers seemed to tune Berlusconi out, apparently rejecting his strategy of televised overexposure, as if saturation point had been reached. In a remarkably unusual tactical turnaround, Berlusconi declined an invitation for a final appearance on the programme three days before the election (Jerkov 2004). Arguably, the most meaningful sign of Italians’ uneasiness with modern, mass-mediated and unilateral campaigning occurred on the eve of the 2004 election day, when the office of the Prime Minister sent a public-utility text message to millions of cell phones reminding voters about the opening and closing times of the polls. Although the message came from an institutional source and not from Berlusconi’s party or campaign, it triggered a vigorous negative reaction by many recipients, who texted back that they did not want to be bothered by what they considered propaganda. Soon, fake vote-reminder messages derisive of Berlusconi’s started to circulate in a viral diffusion of peer-to-peer communication (Cazzullo 2004). Voters contested Berlusconi’s employing of a personal, horizontal, on-demand and non-hierarchical medium to communicate in an impersonal, vertical, intrusive and top-down fashion. It became apparent that Berlusconi’s electoral defeats resulted not only from growing dissatisfaction with his government, but also from flawed communication strategies and techniques. In the aftermath of the campaign, one of the most prominent Italian political scientists commented: The myth of the winning leader, of politics as marketing, with no territory, no parties and no popular participation, has fallen apart in the hands of its inventor. It would be a paradox if the centre-left were the only one that continues to be fascinated by it. (Diamanti 2004) The Italian public showed increasing signs of dissatisfaction with a political and campaigning style that relied almost exclusively on mass communication, especially television, and that addressed citizens in a top-down, unilateral way through centralized messages. Especially in the context of local elections, a need was clearly felt for a revamping of the ‘politics of proximity’ that had characterized the premodern era, although more in the sense of ensuring continuous and symmetric communication between politics and an autonomous civil society than as a nostalgic return to the mighty mass parties of yesteryear. At the same time, the Italian media system was evolving and the internet was becoming part of the political landscape, but the text-message incident showed that Berlusconi was treating new technologies as just another tool for unilateral mass dissemination, instead of as an interpersonal space for feedback and dialogue. The classic political marketing models adopt military metaphors such as ‘target’ or ‘penetration’ and measure success in terms of the numbers of voters who are reached by and can remember simple messages in the short term. Contemporary approaches that go under the rubric of ‘relationship marketing’, by contrast, focus more on the need to establish long-lasting bonds with voters, who are approached in a more dialogic, personalized and participatory fashion through channels that allow the reciprocal exchange of viewpoints (Bannon 2004). The Italian electorate’s increasing distrust of modern political communication based on the classical marketing model constituted an opportunity for the centre-left to renew its campaigning style and techniques, which it had struggled to adapt to the modern era during the 1990s, and to develop approaches that were closer to the postmodern, relationship marketing model. However, this

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did not happen at the national level, where the coalition mostly relied on billboard advertisements and mass-media visibility (and, in turn, failed to achieve significant electoral gains). It was at the local level that the most significant changes in campaigning styles occurred.

2004–05 Part II: The Dawn of Postmodern Campaigning, Italian Style Local centre-left candidates such as Sergio Cofferati (Mayor, Bologna), Michele Emiliano (Mayor, Bari), Filippo Penati (president of the province, Milan), Renato Soru (president of the region, Sardinia), Niki Vendola (president of the region, Puglia) and Mercedes Bresso (president of the region, Piedmont), among others, unseated incumbents and introduced significant electioneering innovations. Four features related to postmodern campaigning and common to all of them can be identified, though each campaign had specific qualities.

Direct Contact and Retail Campaigning As an explicit counterpoint to the centre-right mass-media-intensive techniques, centre-left local campaigns relied mostly on door-to-door canvassing, volunteer contact and direct giveand-take between the candidate and the citizens, in an explicit reference to the lasting value of retail campaigning. Often poorly funded, these campaigns recruited large numbers of volunteers and organized events that allowed citizens to directly address the candidates, such as town-hall style meetings and walking tours across the city neighbourhoods. Communicating mostly through the grass roots and volunteer networks was a rational strategy for the centreleft, which has historically had a stronger organizational presence than the centre-right but a smaller capability to mobilize mass-media resources. It also had a symbolic meaning after a decade in which the centre-left had been more interested in developing professional media expertise than in nourishing participatory spaces and mobilization networks, a tendency common among many contemporary parties (Dalton, Wattenberg, 2000).

Innovative Media Techniques and Rhetorical Styles Centre-left candidates cannot compete on an equal playing field with the centre-right in terms of financial and media resources, either nationally (given Berlusconi’s direct and indirect control of most nationwide TV networks), or locally (as centre-right campaigns are usually better funded at all levels). Thus, to maximize their effectiveness and break through the ordinary routine of the political discourse, local centre-left campaigns employed innovative media and rhetorical techniques. For instance, Soru – founder of Tiscali Spa, the most successful Italian internet company – and Cofferati were the first two candidates with nationwide recognition to launch personal weblogs. Though still experimental, and not significantly updated and expanded after the election, these were pioneering efforts in Italian politics which were widely reported by the media and used as a tool to attract attention and engage voters (on Cofferati, see Vaccari 2004). Supporters appreciated the opportunity to interact with the candidate and with one another in a participatory environment. Emiliano’s campaign in Bari was recognized as the most creative in the 2004 cycle with respect to TV advertisements. Emiliano’s commercials employed a cinema-verité format that emphasized the strong relationship between the candidate, the territory and the local people. The advertisements gained most visibility through the candidate’s website, which in turn attracted publicity on local and national media. Soru’s TV advertisements were also spread

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mostly through viral diffusion and word-of-mouth. Vendola’s billboard advertisements creatively reframed an accusation that Giuseppe Pisanu, then minister for the interior, had directed at him by saying that Vendola’s candidacy was the poster child for an ‘extremist left that has no separation with subversion’ (Signorini 2005). Vendola, a declared communist and homosexual, employed slogans such as ‘Subversive: because I always put the last first’, ‘Dangerous: like all honest people’, ‘Extremist: in my love for Puglia’, and ‘Different: from those who govern Puglia today’. Vendola’s messages required that voters engage in more nuanced arguments than is often the case in political advertisements, while at the same time implicitly referring to Pisanu’s statement and disqualifying it. Overall, the communication style adopted in the centre-left campaigns’ financed communications was strikingly different from the modern model of constantly repeated, catchy and simple slogans. Though mostly brief, the advertisements employed ‘oblique’ rhetorical devices (Floch 1990), which required active interpretive involvement by the viewer rather than the passive reception of small bits of information. The candidates employed ‘open’ texts (Eco 1989), with ‘gaps’ which prompted audiences to supply their own complementary meanings. Such calls for the public’s involvement in the campaign were profitable in the long run. Although at first the advertisements seemed to be too complex for the average voter to even notice and remember them, most ended up becoming popular ‘mantras’ thanks to the dynamics of appropriation by the viewers. Voters started repeating them and using their formulas in different circumstances, thus contributing to a viral spread of the core messages that also reverberated through the media. This approach to communication is strikingly different from the unidirectional, ‘shotgun’ style of modern campaigns, which tends to place a premium on simple messages and constant repetition. While certainly more demanding towards the public, the rhetorical styles of centreleft candidates were consistent with the idea that citizens must be involved, not only flooded with unilateral messages, and that communication can entail a modicum of dialogue and reciprocity as well as persuasion and mobilization. If the participatory method of electioneering adopted by centre-left campaigns was, in a sense, their message, the slogans these candidates adopted also served to reinforce the central argument that a different type of politics and governance requires a different way to communicate with citizens.

The Leader as a Listener and Mediator In contrast to the grandiose, stage-managed image of the leader as a heroic figure, which Berlusconi had crafted from 1994 to 2001, centre-left local campaigns in 2004–05 defined leadership as the ability to listen to and mediate between the different constituencies and voices within the electorate. In order credibly to interpret such a role, candidates had to distance themselves from the model of the ‘mediated presidency’ – a staple of modern political communication that is believed by some to have led to a ‘Presidentialization’ of politics (Poguntke, Webb 2005) – and instead define their mission as discussion, negotiation, and a search for common ground. Thus, centre-left candidates generally refused to engage in excessive mediated personalization and stressed the value of the participatory networks they were building rather than their personal appeal (Grandi, Vaccari 2007: 112–19). The main campaign performance of this electioneering style involves not speaking or acting, but above all listening. Through the willingness and ability to listen to citizens’ concerns and to engage in dialogue with them, the candidate could more credibly claim to represent his/her constituents. So, for instance, Penati stated that ‘those who get to know me personally get to vote for me’; Emiliano promised to be a ‘mayor-tailor’, and Cofferati’s style was described as the ‘mayor-concertmaster’ (Grandi, Vaccari 2004).

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Participation versus Populism Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) note that populism has become a permanent trait of the current political communication environment, which is reflected in communication formats such as talk shows and ‘infotainment’ programmes which market themselves as advocates for ordinary people. As political disaffection has grown, thus providing ammunition for populist appeals (Tarchi 2003), civic engagement through social networks and movements has increased over the last decade, partially as a response to voters’ dissatisfaction with institutional channels of participation (Livolsi, Volli 2003). Local centre-left campaigns successfully tapped into these sentiments by emphasizing the democratic value of participation as a response and antidote to mediated populism, for which they blamed Berlusconi and, by association, the local centre-right candidates. Such emphasis on participation resulted in three kinds of campaign endeavours. First, as a political priority, participation was a core part of the campaign message. Among the core issues in their manifestos, centre-left candidates included many references to participation as their basic governing philosophy. Second, participation as a practice was employed in drafting the coalition’s platform. Emiliano wrote his manifesto after a series of town-hall meetings focused on specific issues where citizens could contribute their ideas. Cofferati held nine neighbourhood assemblies, five thematic citywide forums, and one final two-day convention to define his platform. Soru asked citizens to contribute to his manifesto both through live meetings and internet tools. Finally, as a form of interaction, participation took concrete form in the relationship between the candidates, social movements and local associations. Candidates ran under the banner of wide coalitions, composed not only of political parties but of local civic committees, associations, and social movements. By engaging organized citizens directly, the candidates inoculated themselves from the populist-flavoured criticism that politicians are disconnected from society, which most movements at the national level routinely voice. However, to turn this campaign practice into a governing tool is proving to be harder than some thought, since institutions still entail tighter constraints to diffuse popular participation than campaigning does.

The 2006 General Election and the Unfinished Transition to Postmodern Campaigning There are obvious differences between local, direct elections of executive officeholders, such as those held in 2004 and 2005, and national parliamentary elections such as those held in 2006. Local elections usually offer a more favourable environment to the centre-left, which is better organized in most areas of Italy and, as a consequence, can recruit stronger local candidates and wage more efficient labour-intensive campaigns. However, national campaigns tend to be more centred on mass-media techniques that allow a uniform message to spread throughout the whole country. Clearly, the centre-left could have learnt some lessons from the 2004–05 cycle and tried to apply them to a wider context in 2006, but many structural differences remained which needed to be addressed. Among those there were two profound changes in the national political and regulatory environments that occurred as a direct consequence of the 2004–05 victories. First, various components of the centre-left coalition (which in the meantime had renamed itself L’Unione), adamant that they would easily win in 2006, began to weaken the alliance’s unity and leadership by trying to differentiate themselves from other coalition partners and its leader Romano Prodi. The internal conflict was resolved by instituting, for the first time in Italy, national primary elections to designate, or better re-legitimize, the coalition’s leader. On 16 October 2005, 4,311,149 voters – about one-fourth of the alliance’s electorate – nominated

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Prodi in a landslide with more than three million votes. Unlike most contemporary political events, the centre-left primaries were far from a mediated happening. Indeed, their visibility on television was quite marginal and L’Unione relied mostly on word-of-mouth communication, channelled through associations, citizen groups, party infrastructures and the new media. Such a campaigning style resembled those spontaneous, dialogic and participatory modalities that had been pioneered in recent local elections. As they reinforced Prodi’s leadership, the primaries also confirmed the need to offer centre-left voters distinctive communication techniques that, while still adapting to the constraints of the mass media, enabled new forms of citizen engagement. Another, not insignificant effect of the primaries was to mobilize the coalitions’ activists and supporters, who were eager to remain engaged in the six months that led to the general election. Whereas the primaries had failed to capture the media’s attention before the vote, their organizational success was indeed conveyed by television and newspapers, as images of the ‘ordered rows’ of people eager to flood polling places, donate money and vote for their candidate were a powerful display of strength for the coalition and thus became an important strategic communication tool as well as a catalyst for mobilization. The second effect of the 2004–05 centre-left success was that the centre-right alliance, alarmed by the possibility of a defeat, redoubled its efforts to remain competitive. After Berlusconi had formed a new cabinet, the electoral law was reformed as a last resort to change the strategic landscape. The overhaul, approved in December 2005 and bitterly contested by the opposition, marked a return to the proportional system with different types of majority bonuses for the House and Senate (Pasquino 2007).2 With the previous mixed system, the centre-left had consistently performed much better in the majority ballot, where coalitional symbols and candidates were present, than in the proportional ballot, where voters chose among party symbols, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the centre-right. Since the differences between the two types of ballots had ranged between one and three million votes in previous general elections, the reform significantly altered the competitive scenario in favour of Berlusconi’s coalition. Furthermore, the new electoral law transformed the communication battlefield by eliminating the role of individual candidates in the constituencies. First, in the case of absent preference voting, a candidate’s chances of election depended only on her placement on closed lists decided by party elites, thus candidates lacked any incentive to campaign locally. Secondly, the large dimensions of region-wide constituencies forced candidates who were willing to campaign locally to cover too large a territory, which made it very hard for candidates to establish relationships with voters. Finally, parties themselves made little or no effort to fill the representational gap caused by the closed lists, as they compiled them behind closed doors rather than through constituency primaries. Therefore, the campaign was centred on parties and their national leaders, which were the only subjects on the ballot and the only sources of communication. Whereas this outcome was strategically beneficial to Berlusconi’s coalition, it was quite detrimental for L’Unione, whose local candidates and organizations typically perform better than those of the centre-right. Allowing Berlusconi to nationalize the campaign without engineering a reaction in the form of renewed local mobilization was L’Unione’s electoral original sin. As local contests disappeared and communication by candidates lost its significance, the whole campaign was transferred into the only national arena, that of mass media, especially television, thus causing the demise of all the decentralized, dialogic devices that the centre-left had fruitfully employed in the 2004–05 cycle and in the 2005 primaries. The campaign was thus much more modern – that is, televised, standardized, generalist and based on unidirectional communication – than postmodern – that is, multichannel, locally declined and centred on more participatory and interactive relationships.

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A modern campaign environment benefited Berlusconi and his coalition, as their only possible strategy to close the gap with L’Unione – which polls quantified at between 5 per cent and 8 per cent points in late 2005 – was to re-mobilize FI’s disappointed voters, whose lower-thanaverage turnout had been crucial in the 2004–05 elections. Television was by far the most effective way to achieve this goal, as the centre-right supporters, especially those who do not regularly vote, tend to be less interested in politics, to have weaker networks of political relationships, and to acquire most of their information through television (Pasquino 2002). Thus, starting in January 2006, Berlusconi launched a large-scale television campaign, in which he appeared on 32 programmes in three months, plus 22 re-runs, covering all genres from information to political talk-shows to entertainment and sports. His one-man-shows often engendered controversies that kept Berlusconi at the centre of the campaign agenda (Campus 2006). Whereas Berlusconi had established the ideal context for a modern campaign and efficiently executed a strategy designed for that kind of environment, L’Unione’s campaign showed that its leaders had not fully understood the implications of the postmodern model and the limits of its applicability in the national context, especially after the electoral law reform. The centre-left did not seriously address the need to reinvigorate its territorial presence, which resulted in a series of traditional mobilization efforts. These were met with little enthusiasm by those voters who had hoped that the cycle of participation and dialogue begun in 2004 and which culminated in the 2005 primaries, would be continued and strengthened. Instead of following a postmodern path, L’Unione’s campaign resembled more a premodern effort, as it neglected those innovative forms of engagement of specific sectors of society that had been pioneered in 2004–05. As for the new media, the centre-left employed them better than the centre-right, but its approach was overall conservative, especially with respect to the internet’s potential for organization and mobilization (Vaccari 2008a). Other political actors, especially in the realm of movements – from the girotondi to anti-globalization social networks to Beppe Grillo’s campaigns against corruption in parliament (see Chapter 10) – had attempted to mobilize voters online and had contributed to shaping the political agenda of the pre-electoral opposition to Berlusconi, sometimes successfully, but the internet was largely a sideshow to an election largely centred on the mass media. Indeed, the Unione’s campaign featured at least two significant attempts to create new forms of citizen engagement. The first was called La Fabbrica del Programma (The Manifesto Factory)3 and aimed to collect ideas and projects from experts, politicians and ordinary citizens to draft Prodi’s manifesto. La Fabbrica had both a physical dimension, in a building in Bologna’s industrial area, and a virtual one, in a website where users could send their proposals, as well as read and discuss those that had been selected for publication. Although it elicited a remarkable amount of content, La Fabbrica lacked the ability to engage large numbers of people across the whole country and could not become a real infrastructure for participation in the campaign’s grass-roots operations. This purpose was to be fulfilled by Incontriamoci (Let’s Meet),4 a section on Prodi’s website which allowed users to autonomously organize local events open to everyone who wanted to contribute to the campaign. However, the project was launched only four months before the vote and it did not reach a sufficient notoriety and critical mass of users to significantly impact on the campaign – little more than twenty thousand people subscribed to Incontriamoci and about one thousand meetings were organized through it. It is not a coincidence that both La Fabbrica del Programma and Incontriamoci were promoted by Prodi, who could not rely on a party infrastructure and thus had greater incentives to experiment new forms of aggregation. Ultimately, because it could not practically transfer onto the national stage what its candidates had been able to do locally in the previous two years, the centre-left waged a campaign based more on the denial of the television-centred (and Berlusconi-mastered) model than on the proposal of a different communication style that could fulfil the needs of centre-left and

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undecided voters. While in late 2005 the Unione had reversed its internal crisis by symbolically ‘getting back to the voters’ via the primaries, it could not find an equivalent strategy to favourably restructure the changing communication environment in the general election. In the last weeks before the vote, it became apparent that the campaign stage was set in terms favourable to the centre-right; the agenda was dominated by the issue of taxes, ‘owned’ by the governing coalition and most challenging for the centre-left, rather than by the record of the incumbent and the state of the economy, both of which voters perceived as poor. Consequently, research showed an increase in voting intentions for the centre-right as election day neared (Sani 2006). A significant number of undecided voters or potential abstainers eventually turned out and largely confirmed their vote for Berlusconi and his coalition. Consequently, L’Unione won the election, but by an unexpectedly razor-thin margin, much smaller than the climate of opinion of the previous three years led to expect.

Conclusion: Incremental Changes, Disaffected Citizens Between 2004 and 2005, Italian political communication moved towards its own version of postmodern campaigning, which, like every model, has had to be rooted in the Italian context. While in other Western countries developments in electioneering have resulted by and large from technological and market changes (i.e. the decline of broadcasting, the increase of available media outlets, the diffusion of talk radio, the increasing relevance of the internet, the possibilities offered by mobile phones), in Italy the centrality of broadcast television still persists almost unchallenged. However, the demands of significant parts of society have forced polit icians to overhaul their methods of relating to voters, though slowly and by trial and error, which has led to the introduction of more participatory styles than allowed for by mass communication. As a result, generalist television, while still the main contact channel with the electorate for most politicians, must now be part of a larger communication strategy by which different types of media are included and integrated to perform specific goals and engage various types of citizens. The 2006 elections, however, have marked a halt in the still-unfinished Italian transition to postmodern campaigning. The central role of television was reinforced and grass-roots engagement was significantly feebler than in the 2004–05 cycle, thus weakening the relationship between politics and society, which was slowly and partially being reconstructed. A similar pattern was observed in the 2008 elections, when grass-roots campaigning was limited, apart from mass rallies with national party leaders, the internet was left on the sidelines, and television was once again the central political battlefield, even in the absence of a debate between the two coalition leaders. The 2006 and 2008 general elections warn us not to postulate that models of electioneering can spread in a linear way, although postmodern campaigning has already been successfully experimented both abroad and, at least in some local contests, in Italy as well. The fact that national and local, proportional and majoritarian elections provide different opportunities for campaigning helps to explain why modern and postmodern approaches were feasible and effective to different extents at these two moments, but agency-related factors must not be overlooked. Parties, candidates and their consultants have the last word in political communication decision-making: it is they who eventually decide whether to adopt a traditional or innovative set of techniques. Moreover, as the effects of the electoral law reform on campaigning have shown, political actors can actively shape the context of the election in favour of one or another model of campaigning. Finally, the almost complete lack of a journalistic profession autonomous from the

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political system (Roncarolo 2002), contributes to preserving the modern model by allowing politicians to exploit television as an almost unconstrained propaganda outlet, where they can by and large freely lay their claims without being kept accountable for their statements by attentive and combative journalists. However, even after the 2006–08 election cycle, the need for a renewal in political communication practices and philosophies in Italian democracy still appears inescapable. Campaigns are a crucial aspect of the relationship between citizens and politics; their development towards the postmodern model can offer a (partial and perfectible) response to the desire for engagement and inclusion that a significant part of the Italian population has been voicing for years. Voters surveyed during the 2008 election claimed to be unsatisfied overall with the political information they receive from television and a majority declared that they trust the opinions of other people more than either television or newspapers (Vaccari 2008b). Thus, while mass communication is still a more convenient and cost-effective way for politicians to reach voters, it is far from satisfactory from the citizens’ viewpoint. A revitalization of the dialogue between voters and political actors could constitute an antidote to the various forms of populism that characterize contemporary politics. It is possible that the years of opposition to Berlusconi provided an incentive to accelerate these trends, but, in the face of the events of the 2006 and 2008 campaigns, the transition appears to be far from complete. Its completion will largely depend on the strategies that political actors will adopt to reinvigorate their presence and legitimacy in Italian society, rather than on the support for or opposition to a controversial leader such as Berlusconi.

Notes 1. We are grateful to the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. In compliance with Italian academic conventions, the authors acknowledge that Roberto Grandi wrote the introductory and concluding sections, while Cristian Vaccari wrote all remaining sections. 2. The law assigns all seats in both chambers of Parliament on a proportional basis, in very wide constituencies with closed lists, thus ruling out preference voting. A clause in the law guarantees at least 55 per cent of seats in the Chamber of Deputies to whichever party or alliance gains a relative majority of the vote, while in the Senate the seats and the 55 per cent majority bonuses are assigned region by region. 3. See www.lafabbrica.eu/. Accessed 29 October 2008. 4. See www.lafabbrica.eu/. Accessed 29 October 2008.

References Bannon, D. (2004), ‘Relationship, marketing and the political process’, Journal of Political Marketing, 4, (2/3), pp. 85–102. Blumler, J. and Kavanagh, M. (1999), ‘The third age of political communication: Influences and features’, Political Communication, 16, (3), pp. 209–30. Calise, M. (1996), ‘Il Partito mediale, un’analisi retrospettiva’, in S. Bentivegna (ed.), Comunicare politica nel sistema dei media. Genova: Costa & Nolan, pp. 215–33. Campus, D. (2006), ‘The 2006 election: More than ever, a Berlusconi-centred campaign’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 11, (4), pp. 516–31. Cazzullo, A. (2004), ‘Gli ultimi assalti con i messaggini’, Corriere della Sera, 12 June. Dalton, R. and Wattenberg, M. (eds) (2000), Parties Without Partisans: Political Change in Advanced Industrial Democracies. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

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De Gregorio, C. (2004), ‘Fuga dalla tv se c’è il Cavaliere’, Repubblica, 8 April. Diamanti, I. (2004), ‘La fine dell’irreality show’, Repubblica, 16 June. Eco, U. (1989), The Open Work. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Floch, J. (1990), Sémiotique, Marketing et Communication: Sous le Signes, les Stratégies. Paris: PUF. Grandi, R. and Vaccari, C. (2004), Cofferati anch’io. Un anno di campagna elettorale a Bologna. Milan: Baldini Castoldi Dalai. — (2007), Elementi di comunicazione politica: Marketing elettorale e strumenti per la cittadinanza. Rome: Carocci. Jerkov, B. (2004), ‘Sms del governo: Andate a votare’, Repubblica, 11 June. Lazarsfeld, P., Berelson, B. and Gaudet, H. (1944), The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pierce. Livolsi, M. and Volli, U. (eds) (2003), L’attesa continua . . . Le elezioni 2001 e dopo . . . Milan: Franco Angeli. Manin, B. (1997), The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mazzoleni, G. (1992), ‘Dal partito al candidato: Come cambia la comunicazione elettorale in Italia’, Polis, 4, (2), pp. 249–73. Merkel, W. (1987), Prima e dopo Craxi: Le trasformazioni del PSI. Padua: Liviana Editrice. Norris, P. (2000), A Virtuous Circle: Political Communication in Postindustrial Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Panebianco, A. (1982), Modelli di partito: Organizzazione e potere nei partiti politici. Bologna: Il Mulino. Parisi, A. and Pasquino, G. (eds) (1977), Continuità e mutamento elettorale in Italia: Le elezioni del 20 giugno 1976 e il sistema politico italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino. Pasquino, G. (2002), ‘Una cultura poco civica’, in M. Caciagli and P. Corbetta (eds), Le ragioni dell’elettore. Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 53–78. — (2007), ‘Tricks and treats: The 2005 Italian electoral law and its consequences’, South European Society and Politics, 12, (1), pp. 79–93. Pezzini, I. (2001), Lo spot elettorale: La vicenda italiana di una forma di comunicazione politica. Rome: Meltemi. Poguntke, T. and Webb, P. (eds) (2005), The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poli, E. (2001), Forza Italia: Strutture, leadership e radicamento territoriale. Bologna: Il Mulino. Roncarolo, F. (2002), ‘Virtual clashes and political games: The campaign in the print and broadcast media’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2001: Berlusconi’s Victory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 143–61. Roncarolo, F. and Marini, R. (1997), I media come arena elettorale: Le elezioni politiche 1996 in tv e nei giornali. Rome: Rai-ERI. Sani, G. (2006), ‘Vincere la campagna, perdere le elezioni’, in Itanes (ed.), Dov’è la vittoria? Il voto del 2006 raccontato dagli italiani. Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 49–60. Signorini, A. (2005), ‘Pisanu: Questa sinistra è sempre più estrema’, Giornale, 23 January. Tarchi, M. (2003), L’Italia populista: Dal qualunquismo ai girotondi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Vaccari, C. (2004), ‘Cofferati 2004: La prima campagna elettorale postmoderna?’, Comunicazione Politica, 5, (2), pp. 217–36. — (2008a), ‘Research note: Italian parties’ websites in the 2006 Elections’, European Journal of Communication, 23, (1), pp. 69–77. — (2008b), ‘La comunicazione nella campagna elettorale 2008: Bilanci e prospettive’, Polena, 5, (1), pp. 177–184. Wattenberg, M. (1991), The Rise of Candidate-Centered Politics: Presidential Elections of the 1980s. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. West, D. (2001), The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment. Boston, New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

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CHAPTER FOUR

In Bed with the Enemy – Infighting among Governing Parties and the Return of the Centre Daniele Albertazzi

This chapter discusses the tensions and clashes between governing centre-right parties that affected Silvio Berlusconi’s second and third tenures as Prime Minister (the 2001–06 period), focusing in particular on the challenge posed to Berlusconi’s leadership by one of his own allies: the Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e Democratici di Centro (UDC). In the first part I will consider the centre-right’s lack of unity, singling out the allies’ different constituencies, their political cultures, their respective positions within the political system and, consequently, their different relationships with the coalition leader Silvio Berlusconi as the main factors explaining the constant infighting that took place, especially between 2003 and 2006. In the second part, I will discuss the challenge to the PM’s authority posed by the UDC – caused by the party’s eagerness to challenge his dominance of the centre-right coalition rather than by incompatibility at the ideological level. Led by the former speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Pierferdinando Casini, in recent years the UDC appears to have completed its journey of progressive estrangement from the right-wing leader Berlusconi. Following the narrow defeat of the centre-right in the April 2006 elections, the party has in fact opposed the centre-left government led by Romano Prodi without co-ordinating its activities with its former allies; moreover, as Berlusconi proceeded to create a new Popolo della Libertà (PDL) party at the end of 2007, asking all parties of the centre-right to merge within it, the UDC has refused to do so and remains autonomous (Albertazzi, McDonnell forthcoming).1

Under a Clear Blue Sky: Silvio Berlusconi’s Second Accession to Power Following the 2001 general elections, Silvio Berlusconi’s position as soon-to-be Prime Minister and leader of the centre-right coalition seemed at first unassailable. Despite the fact that the centre-right had actually lost votes since the previous general elections of 1996 (Newell, Bull 2001: 26), they now enjoyed a clear majority in parliament, mainly thanks to the centre-left’s inability to bring together as broad an alliance as possible on this occasion, something that had cost them very dearly in terms of parliamentary seats.2 Whatever the shortcomings of his opponents, Berlusconi’s position vis à vis his country and political allies was very different indeed from that of 1994, when he had not managed to prevent his governing coalition from collapsing after

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a short stint in power. He now had four reasons to celebrate: 1. Since his coalition was going to enjoy a clear majority in parliament, the media entrepreneur knew that he would be able to push through the legislation he wanted, including controversial measures of personal interest to him, such as the reform of the justice system and media regulation. 2. The centre-right alliance was now dominated by Berlusconi’s own ‘personal’ party (Calise 2000), Forza Italia (FI). This had emerged, once again, as the largest party in the country, attracting 29.4 per cent of the proportional vote and, equally importantly, almost two-thirds of all votes cast for the centre-right. In the meantime, FI’s main allies found themselves in the following situations: the regionalist populist Lega Nord (LN) had been reduced to 43 MPs and was no longer essential to the survival of the government (Newell, Bull 2001); Alleanza Nazionale (AN), which had achieved a very respectable 12 per cent of the proportional vote, had officially shed its pro-Fascist ideology and embraced democratic values only after its congress of 1995, therefore it was still regarded as extreme by many Italian voters and was still working at positioning itself as a respectable and moderate party (Tarchi 2008); finally, the former Christian Democrats, soon to give birth to the UDC, had contributed a mere 3.2 per cent of the vote to the victory of the coalition. In short, the LN (which had caused Berlusconi’s downfall in 1994) had now lost its power of blackmail, the AN depended on Berlusconi, as leaving FI’s leader would have meant ‘a return to the wilderness’ (Diamanti, Lello 2005: 32) of marginalized extreme parties, while the heirs of the mighty DC had brought a dowry of votes to the coalition totalling a mere one-tenth of FI’s. 3. The election had been posited by Berlusconi as a sort of ‘referendum’ on his persona – and he had clearly won it. In a country where political debate has largely centred around personalities in recent years, ‘the mass media and every politician spoke mainly about Berlusconi and the conflicts of interest created by his candidacy for Prime Minister . . . bringing to light the contradictions and problems his victory would open’ (Hallin, Mancini 2001: 2–3). Since Berlusconi’s opponents had basically subscribed to the idea that this would be, first and foremost, a vote ‘pro’ or ‘against’ him, Berlusconi’s clear-cut victory looked very much as his own. 4. As the centre-left had done absolutely nothing to resolve Berlusconi’s conflict of interests while they were in power between 1996 and 2001 – in part due to their internal divisions and in part fearing that the curtailment of his media empire would cause a huge political backlash – the centre-right leader could once again look forward to governing and still wield considerable media power at the same time. Galvanized by the prospect of being about to lead a strong government, Berlusconi immediately adopted a presidential style, and did so even before being invited by the president of the Republic to form a new government. As Roncarolo (2005: 79) explains, Speaking from his study at home [following the announcement of the electoral results] he [. . .] noticeably tried to portray himself as the new leader of the nation, who had already assumed power and was now having his first ‘fireside chat’ with his people. The decor was impressive and evoked the atmosphere of a true presidential palace. In short, the ‘Berlusconi era’ had kicked off under a bright sunny sky. To some extent, the media entrepreneur was right in exuding confidence: at the end of a full term (five years later) he would still be there leading a government (albeit not the same one). However, reaching such a goal did indeed cost him a few sleepless nights, since once the ‘honeymoon’ with the

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electorate had come to an end, the infighting between government allies became constant and relentless.

A Tale of Clashes, Threats and Contradictions Due to the features of the Italian political system and Italian political culture during the years under study in this chapter, whether or not coalitions managed to present a united front at election time (and, obviously, all their constituent members had an interest in doing so to maximize their chances of electoral success), it was then a challenge to remain united in government.3 An initial factor pulling allies apart (whatever the coalition) was political fragmentation, that is, the existence of several parties which all needed to be talked about or else would be forgotten. The ‘tabloidized’, personality-centred and scandal-prone logic governing television may well not have been exclusively an Italian phenomenon, however the trajectory of dumbing down on which Italian TV has embarked – further exacerbated by the introduction of commercial television in the country by Berlusconi himself (Ginsborg 2004; Sartori 2000) – has provided further fuel to the fire of political bickering. By forcing political leaders to sharpen their profile in political debates, television has contributed to raising the confrontational features of Italian politics. In addition to this, the generous public financing of political parties with parliamentary representation (large or small) has also contributed significantly to the fragmentation of the Italian political system. The need for visibility and the increasing importance assumed by party leaders in Italian politics have gone hand in hand with the known reluctance of the electorate to switch their allegiance from one coalition to the opposing one at election time (see Chapter 1; also Mannheimer 2005). In short, parties needed to argue in order to be ‘seen’ and they needed to steal votes from their allies, as they would not gain many from their foes. One party that went on seeking the media limelight and making radical statements in an attempt to show that it had not ‘sold out’ its radical identity was the LN (Albertazzi et al. 2007). While more than happy to turn into a faithful ally of Berlusconi, ready to support legislation meant to protect the PM and his friends from prosecution and foster his media empire, the LN still avoided watering down its extreme rhetoric and propaganda, whatever the strains this was putting on its relationship with the centrists of the UDC. Therefore, the party kept employing outrageous racist slogans, marched against the opening of new mosques and attacked the EU very vehemently every other day (McDonnell 2006). Another complicating factor which has affected all recent Italian governments, including those led by Berlusconi, is that the parties which have provided backing to them have always been rooted in very specific areas of the country, whatever their size: this has often forced them to give voice to very specific aspirations and grievances, typical of the regions they ‘served’ (Diamanti 2007; Diamanti, Lello 2005). In a deeply divided country such as Italy, such needs may well (be perceived to) clash with those of other provinces and regions. The conflict between centre-right parties between 2001 and 2006 was thus also exacerbated by the fact that Berlusconi’s second government appeared to revolve around a ‘northern axis’ which included the LN’s leader Umberto Bossi and the influential finance minister Giulio Tremonti (both of whom are from Lombardy, just like Berlusconi himself), but excluded the UDC and AN, both of which had their power base in the centre and south (Diamanti 2003). Regional tensions re-emerged on several occasions, and nowhere did they become more apparent than in the discussions surrounding constitutional reform. Due to pressures by the LN – whose fundamental raison d’être is the achievement of more autonomy for the regions of northern Italy (McDonnell 2006) – it was agreed to reform the constitution and devolve exclusive powers to the regions in the areas of

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education, health and local policing. This, however, generated fears among the southern electorate (including that of the UDC) that the LN’s bill introducing ‘devolution’ would cause the ending of nationwide standards of service provision in areas such as health and education, as well as allowing the creation of regional police forces independent of the state – with the consequence of exasperating the north–south divide (Donovan 2004). The life of the government from 2003 onwards was thus beset with infighting between the LN and the UDC, which both kept threatening at various stages to abandon the governing majority. In the end, it turned out to be very difficult to force the UDC to back the reform in parliament4 and its support was only secured at the price of passing another bill which endorsed the notion of the ‘national interest’, as well as reintroducing a proportional electoral system in the country (see Note 2), much favoured by this party (Amyot, Verzichelli 2006: 32). Arguably, moreover, the UDC only finally ‘allowed’ the constitutional reform project to proceed, because it knew that even when it did eventually get approved by parliament it would then have to overcome a referendum hurdle, which was far from likely.5 The north–south divide was not the only considerable source of tension during the Berlusconi years, as mentioned above: examples of the different political cultures and sensibilities that were ‘cohabiting’ under the CdL’s roof were also provided by the allies’ reactions to Berlusconi’s halfhearted attempts to adopt neo-liberal recipes to cure the Italian economy and by the debate on immigration. As for the economy, it soon turned out to be rather difficult to fulfil those promises of liberalization, spiced up with tax cuts and the reduction of state expenditures, which had been made to the electorate, without alienating some of the government’s own supporters in the process. While most of FI was keen to try and implement neo-liberal policies, the UDC and AN (but also middle-ranking FI leaders based in the south) were sensitive to the fears of public administration employees (from whom they had gained strong support) and were well aware of the demands being voiced in disadvantaged areas of the south, for even more – and not less – social protection and state intervention. Besides promising tax cuts and offering a federal reform of the state, Berlusconi therefore announced the start of a ‘new era’ of great public works and infrastructure building (many of which would have benefited, and provided work to, the south). The symbol of this alleged hyperactivity in the building sector became a planned bridge connecting Sicily to the mainland which, once again, was opposed by the LN. However, given the very poor performance of the economy, it proved near impossible to cut taxes while dramatically increasing investments in infrastructure, and without reducing state expenditures – for instance, by resorting to laying off considerable numbers of state employees. Not unexpectedly, therefore, the great majority of these promised public works never left the drawing board (Gentili 2005).6 To complicate matters further, the LN’s approach to economic matters turned out to be very ambivalent: in theory the party was liberal, however in practice it remained very protectionist of the interests of the north (Albertazzi, McDonnell 2008).7 For instance, in 2003 the LN fought aspects of a proposed pension reform that would have affected ‘seniority’ pensions (a majority of which were held in the north) and in March 2005 it voted against parts of the government’s ‘Decree on Competitiveness’ since tariffs against Asian imports had not been introduced to protect the industry of the north. The legislation on immigration introduced in this period by the CdL and its accompanying amnesty provide another interesting case study of the difficulties of the government as it tried to reconcile conflicting political cultures. Widely interpreted as the tough response of the far right to the soft policies of the left, the 2002 ‘Bossi-Fini’ law (named after the leaders of the LN and the AN) was in fact eventually accompanied by the second largest amnesty of illegal migrants in the world (only second to the US amnesty of 1986), and this led to the regularization of about 650,000 people. The amnesty allowed the UDC, but also the Prime Minister, to be seen as ‘compassionate’, while also satisfying the need of their middle-class constituencies for cheap female

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immigrant labour (upon which several hundred thousand families relied for the care of the elderly) (see Chapter 13). However, as a consequence of this decision, under Berlusconi the official number of migrant women in Italy doubled, from 726,000 in 2002 to 1.350.000 in 2005 – half of whom were working in the domestic sector (Caritas/Migrantes 2005). Thus the CdL had in the end achieved exactly the opposite of what the anti-immigrant LN had intended by putting forward new legislation (Albertazzi, McDonnell 2008). To add fuel to the fire, having drafted the immigration bill alongside the LN in 2001, two years later the leader of the AN Gianfranco Fini caused an outcry (also within his own party) by proposing to extend the vote in local elections to immigrants legally resident and working in Italy for at least six years – a proposal that was widely interpreted as a fresh move by him to redefine his image as a moderate leader who could even aspire to lead a government in the not-too-distant future. As was to be expected, Fini’s proposal sparked a fresh cycle of infighting, with the LN denouncing it as a betrayal of the centre-right electorate and threatening to bring down the government (Repubblica 2 March 2004). Unable to share the same vision about the direction the government should take, the parties of the CdL became more and more litigious as time went by, blaming each other for the erosion in voters’ support that successive surveys (Roncarolo 2005: 86) and, more importantly, successive elections were demonstrating. The main source of frustration among voters was indeed the economy, since growth remained well below the EU average in this period. To be fair, what some commentators called the ‘decline’ of Italy had started as far back as the 1970s; however, since the turn of the millennium it seemed ‘to have accelerated’ (De Cecco 2007: 764), with Italy going through one of the longest periods of slow growth of its recent history (Amato 2005; ISTAT 2006: XVII). These difficulties left the government, and particularly its Prime Minister, particularly vulnerable since Berlusconi had promised nothing short of an ‘economic miracle’, had his coalition won the elections (see Chapter 1). Facing growing criticism from influential newspapers (see Chapter 12), falling approval rates and increasingly litigious allies, Berlusconi did sometimes play the part of the broker between governing parties to try and patch up his coalition; however overall he proved himself unable to provide a much needed political synthesis between different cultures within government.

Forza Italia’s Own Lack of Identity To some extent, Berlusconi’s inability to give a clear sense of direction to the centre-right was caused in part by the fact that the fulcrum of the coalition itself, that is, the party created and led by the Prime Minister, also lacked a well-defined identity. At the time of its birth in 1993, FI had resorted to anti-political rhetoric and brandished a fierce anti-communism, however it had also made constant references to classical liberalism. Therefore, besides attracting the ‘orphans’ of the DC (both electors and middle-ranking leaders) the party had become a magnet for liberals, and even socialists. However, FI’s adoption of liberal principles has always been partial and inconsistent throughout its history, and the party has soon developed into a catch-all container of very heterogeneous conservative forces (Campus 2006), dithering between ‘Thatcherite’ individualism on the one hand and confessionally inspired traditional conservatism on the other. This is clearly shown by Berlusconi’s constant references to the social doctrine of the Church in his speeches, as well as his references to the words of recent popes, sitting alongside celebrations of Adam Smith and the virtues of Capitalism (Benedetti 2004: 75–7; Berlusconi 2001: 21–3, 122–3). Therefore, when it came to taking sides on sensitive moral issues, such as the use of stem cells in research, artificial insemination, abortion and the rights of non-married couples, FI never ran the risk of alienating its Catholic supporters by embracing those liberal and secular

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values that had theoretically provided the very foundation upon which the party had been created. When interviewed for this chapter, Maurizio Ronconi of the UDC in fact argued that on fundamental values such as the centrality of Christianity and the role of the family, the parties of the centre-right have always sung from the same hymn sheet.8 For instance, the centre-right passed restrictive legislation on medically assisted procreation in February 2004: a referendum was held in June 2005 to repeal this law, but with the president of the Italian Bishop’s Conference Cardinal Ruini having told Catholics to abstain, a quorum of votes was not attained and secular campaigning organizations were badly defeated (see Chapters 1 and 14). Although on this occasion Berlusconi had granted ‘a free vote’ to his electorate on the matter (sic!), very few people within his own party dared to speak up in support of secular values. Moreover, following the defeat of Berlusconi in 2006, the right was again able to find some unity and a sense of purpose in opposing the centre-left’s attempt to introduce a bill giving more rights to de facto couples, despite the fact that the proposed legislation had fallen much shorter of introducing ‘revolutionary’ measures such as, for instance, so-called ‘gay-marriage’. The instrumentality of Berlusconi’s ‘Catholic-oriented’, ‘family-friendly’ rhetoric is apparent: after all, as Ronconi has said to this author, as Berlusconi himself well knows (Berlusconi 2001: 171–82) and as electoral studies have shown (Diamanti 2007: 757–9; Segatti 2006a; Segatti 2006b), many supporters of the centre-right (and not only of the UDC) are the ‘orphans’ of the DC (a party still voted for by a third of the Italian electorate shortly before collapsing in 1992) and observant Catholics have tended to lean towards the right in recent years. In the absence of coherent ideological referents, vague references to liberal values, anti-communism, the promise of a ‘new economic miracle’ and a strategy of communication centred on the charismatic leader (Diamanti 2007) had provided the cement keeping the heterogeneous electorate of FI together, from the Alps down to Sicily. However, turning the centre-right as a whole into a more homogeneous alliance and providing a synthesis between the different cultures of its constituent parts was another matter – and in fact it was only achieved as far as ethical issues were concerned, and at the price of marginalizing its more liberal representatives.

The Return of the ‘Centre’ Following disastrous European elections in June 2004, calls for a ‘change of direction’ became irresistible within the centre-right. FI now looked weaker, as its share of the centre-right vote had fallen to 48 per cent (against 61 per cent in 2001), while the UDC had doubled its votes, reaching about 7 per cent, and the LN had also increased its vote share of a percentage point. The growth of minor parties had compensated the CdL for the haemorrhage of votes suffered by FI, but only partially; moreover, the local elections held on the same day had inflicted yet another humiliation on the alliance – a pattern that was to be repeated one year later in the regional elections (Vassallo 2006). With the 2006 general elections around the corner, it suddenly seemed possible, or even likely, that the Berlusconi years could soon come to an end – an assessment that Berlusconi’s third electoral victory in 2008 after two years in opposition has now shown to be very premature.9 Despite the crashing electoral defeats of the centre-right, both the AN and the LN would have found it very difficult to leave the government altogether, as this would have meant entering completely uncharted territory. These parties were thus likely to bark a lot while only inflicting small bites on Berlusconi, as there would have been no future for them outside the centre-right alliance.10 The UDC, however, was in a very different position: first, it was the party which, being closer to the ‘centre’ of the political spectrum, would have found it easier (although this is not to say unproblematic), even to switch sides had it wanted to; secondly, its strategy of

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distancing itself from the government (Hine, Hanretty 2006: 106), had already shown to have paid off anyway, as the party had benefited in electoral terms from moderate voters walking away from FI, while retaining the support of its own electorate; thirdly, it seemed finally to have become possible to imagine a centre-right alliance no longer dependent on the media entrepreneur who had put it together, and possibly even led by a centrist, given the recent poor electoral performance of FI. For all these reasons, the UDC embarked on a sustained campaign to weaken Berlusconi’s leadership towards the end of his second term in office. Following the local elections of June 2004, the then leader of the party Marco Follini kept telling journalists that the phase of the ‘monarchy’, as he then put it, had ended, openly questioning whether Berlusconi was still the leader who could take the alliance forward (e.g. Contu 2004). Making Follini the deputy Prime Minister did not make him any less vociferous, as less than a year later, in April 2005, the UDC and AN even went as far as forcing Berlusconi to form a new government – his third. This was very disappointing for him, as by then he had nearly managed to become the only postwar PM to lead the same government for a full parliamentary term. The change of government turned out to be merely a symbolic victory for AN and the UDC, as none of them benefited in terms of increased weight within the executive (Hine, Hanretty 2006); however, the UDC had exploited the occasion to nurture its image as the ‘odd one out’, maximizing future re-election prospects in a context in which Berlusconi’s own image had been tarnished by the poor economic performance of the country and the electoral debacle. Unexpectedly, having been a thorn in the side of the PM for a few more months, Follini was marginalized within his own party, stepped down as leader in October 2005 and finally left the UDC altogether. Even after his departure, however, the UDC did not abandon its confrontational stance vis à vis the CdL’s leader and persisted in refusing any concessions to FI. As Amyot and Verzichelli have remarked, They [the UDC] have not supported it [FI], for example, on the reform of the par condicio, on the correction of the financial manoeuvre [of 2005], and on the ex-Cirielli law, which without the UDC’s veto would probably have included clauses that were more helpful to the ex-minister of defense, Cesare Previti, in his trial. (2006: 33)11 The political strategy that has prevailed within the UDC ever since has remained that of pursuing the creation of a new political ‘centre’, that can be autonomous from Berlusconi. To understand this project fully, one needs to step back in time a few years and consider what the former Christian Democrats have actually lost because of the demise of the Democrazia Cristiana in the 1990s. Since the birth of the Italian Republic after World War II and until 1994 (when the party changed its name into the short-lived Partito Popolare), the DC had always been in government (at times on its own, but more often in coalition with smaller parties), and had occupied crucial positions of power within the state. Through this party, moderate Catholics had become the fulcrum of the political spectrum and, very much aided and supported by the Vatican and the United States, had provided a bulwark against the advance of what was then the largest Communist Party in the West, forcing the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) to play the role of the ‘permanent opposition’. The DC had led the modernization of Italy: while being in favour of the market (with reservations), the party had been very sensitive to the teaching of the Church on social issues and had never been an advocate of the small state. In a country very much split into ‘red’ (i.e. pro-Communist) and ‘white’ (i.e. pro-DC) areas, supporting the DC ‘took the form of a reflection of one’s social affiliation; an “act of faith”; a sign of social recognition; a token of membership in a world, along with the values and interests thereby expressed’ (Ceccarini, Diamanti 2007: 40). The presence of a strong left-wing faction within

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the party (open to dialogue with the Unions and ready to strike deals with the left on economic issues), as well as the need to secure widespread support in the underdeveloped south through the clientelistic allocation of resources, meant that the DC had always been attentive to the needs of the lower classes and had attracted considerable support from diverse sectors of society. Understandably, therefore, when interviewed many UDC politicians admitted that they were nostalgic for such a glorious past – although none of them went as far as arguing that a pure ‘refoundation’ of the DC would ever be possible. Nonetheless, in their interviews Mario Baccini and Luca Volontè argued that the fundamental problem of contemporary Italian politics was the bi-polar logic that had been imposed on the electorate by successive electoral reforms. The need to create large electoral alliances to win elections was said to have given radical parties such as Rifondazione Comunista (RC) (on the left) and the LN (on the right) the power to hold governments to ransom, thus producing a schizophrenic bi-polar system, in which the fear of the enemy was being exploited to gain power, at the expense of what politics should actually be: In order to fulfil their aspiration to govern, both coalitions have pushed their boundaries as far as they could, whether or not values and ideas were shared within a coalition. Therefore, the will to gain power has prevailed over the public interest (Mario Baccini). ‘Coalitions have always been created against someone, and not with a view to pursue constructive projects’ (Luca Volontè). In view of this, the strand of the UDC which has prevailed since 2004 has worked on the hypothesis of building a new centrist political formation that could at best grow strong enough to hold the balance of power once again in the formation of coalition governments, and at worst at least try to rebalance any future right-wing alliance towards ‘the centre’ of Catholic-inspired politics. This idea has forcefully been put forward by the UDC MP Bruno Tabacci (a harsh critic of Berlusconi), and by Mario Baccini, who defined this strategy in his interview with me as that of ‘reaching out to different political and social forces’. Among supporters of this strand of the UDC one could find scepticism about the power of the market to regulate itself, great attention to the teaching of the Church on social and economic matters and openly vented dissatisfaction with Berlusconi’s alleged populism and ‘Peronism’. Interestingly, however, this attempt to create a ‘large centre’ has been criticized from within the UDC itself, especially by the MP Carlo Giovanardi, the defeated candidate for the leadership of the party in 2007. In his interview, Giovanardi argued that Follini’s constant criticism of the government in 2004 and 2005 had been counterproductive, as it had diverted attention from what he felt were the considerable achievements of the executive. The extra votes gained by the UDC in 2004 and 2005 had thus not been worth the damage inflicted to the credibility of the centre-right as a whole. Leading a marginalized, pro-Berlusconi faction of the UDC, Giovanardi spoke to this author of the need to improve relations within the CdL. Mindful of the electoral strength of FI as well as Berlusconi’s ability as a campaigner, he argued that the parties of the CdL should have proceeded to unite in some sort of federation, or even merge once and for all.12 Criticizing the president of his own party, Giovanardi said that it had been totally absurd to question Berlusconi’s right to continue leading the CdL while he was PM: ‘We got 6 per cent [in 2004], he [Berlusconi] got 25 and I am told that he should have stepped aside, making room for us [. . .] Does this make any sense?’. According to Giovanardi, projects such as that of a ‘large centre’ have always disguised attempts to bring about alliances between the former DC and the left, something that, in his view, would not be understood by centrist voters. Not unexpectedly, therefore, while the UDC has kept distancing itself from the rest of the centre-right in recent years, shortly after being interviewed Giovanardi finally left the party, joining Berlusconi’s newly formed PdL.

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In ideological terms, the differences between the UDC and FI (now PdL) do not seem at all impossible to bridge, especially given Berlusconi’s willingness to appease Catholic voters (see above). When prompted to explain what kind of policies could be introduced by a more independent new ‘centre’ that have not been put forward already by the centre-right alliances Berlusconi has led so far, even prominent supporters of the majoritarian strand of the UDC seemed to have very little, if anything, to say. Baccini, for instance, limited himself to arguing that the ‘family’ and ‘education’ could finally be put at the top of the agenda by such a new political force, while Volontè said that the values of moderates might finally be given ‘a new emphasis’. In the end, it seems logical to conclude that the fundamental issue that has kept the UDC and Berlusconi apart between 2004 and 2006, and still does in more recent years, is indeed after all, first and foremost, the issue of leadership (as Giovanardi suggests). The elections of 2008, comfortably won by Berlusconi despite the lack of any electoral agreements between his party and the UDC, provide further proof that there indeed cannot be a centre-right in Italy, still nowadays, except one led by Berlusconi and put together on his own terms (Albertazzi, McDonnell forthcoming).

Conclusion The Italian political system has been radically simplified following the elections of 2008, as several small parties of both left and right failed to gain any parliamentary representation whatsoever (see the extensive analysis offered in Newell ed. forthcoming). This includes Socialists and Communists, both of which had held seats in parliament without exception since the end of World War II. Italy seems to be moving towards a bi-party (as opposed to ‘bi-polar’, but ‘multiparty’) system, in which the two largest organizations (the newly formed Partito Democratico on the left and the equally newly formed, Berlusconi-led, Popolo della Libertà on the right) hold the great majority of seats in parliament and compete with each other for government. Although these dramatic developments fall outside the remit of our book, in this context it is worth stressing that the only party which has managed to maintain a parliamentary presence (of thirty-five deputies and three senators), despite the fact that it had not made any preelectoral agreements with either the PD or the PdL before the election, is precisely the UDC. While it is unclear what role a ‘third pole’ can play in the new political system that appears to be developing at present, the survival of the UDC as an independent centrist force has been a considerable achievement, confirming the autonomist trajectory taken by the party in recent years. The UDC’s isolation at present may well have weakened the party in the immediate term – as it cannot play any role in the allocation of public funds to those southern constituencies that have provided faithful backing, since it is not in government; however, the party’s seclusion is also its force, as the UDC would find itself in a strong bargaining position should its support become essential to the electoral success of one of the two main parties – especially if Berlusconi starts encountering troubled electoral waters again, as he did after all not long after his 2001 victory. In the end, however, for all the talk in recent years of a post-Berlusconi era being about to start, both the assets and the liabilities of the centre-right (whether it is an alliance or, as it has now become, a unitary parliamentary list soon to turn into a unified party) continue to depend entirely on Berlusconi’s personality (Pasquino 2007: 43–4), not to mention his financial and mediatic power. As I write in August 2008, 15 years after Berlusconi’s decision to ‘take to the pitch’ of Italian politics and also several victories and defeats later (including being beaten twice by the very same opponent) Silvio Berlusconi remains at the forefront of Italian politics and at the head of a much simplified coalition of which he is more in control than ever.

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Notes 1. I am grateful to several politicians of the UDC for agreeing to be interviewed. Their names, as well as the roles they occupied in July 2007 when I met them, are as follows: Mario Baccini, vice-president of the Senate; Francesco D’Onofrio, senator and president of the party delegation in the Senate; Luca Volontè and Maurizio Ronconi, MPs and (respectively) president and vice-president of the party delegation in the Chamber of Deputies; Carlo Giovanardi, MP and defeated challenger to the leadership of the party at the congress of 2007. Unless otherwise stated, any references to the opinions of these politicians found in this chapter are references to these interviews, which took place in Rome. For an overview of all parties originating from the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) in the last 15 years (the UDC being the most important of them), see Donovan (2003: 104–11) and Ceccarini and Diamanti (2007: 44). 2. Following a referendum in 1993, Italy swapped a proportional with a mainly uninominal voting system, whereby 75 per cent of parliamentary seats were distributed according to the single-member, simple plurality system and only 25 per cent with a proportional one. The change contributed to fostering a strong bipolar logic among the electorate, as it made it problematic for parties that wished to remain outside large coalitions to gain more than a handful of seats, given how difficult it became for them to field candidates that could capture constituencies on their own. In 2005 the Casa delle Libertà (CdL) brought back a proportional system. This is such, however, that it still encourages bipolarism, due to a clause in the law guaranteeing at least 55 per cent of seats in the Chamber of Deputies to whatever party or alliance gains a relative majority of the vote. 3. The Italian political system has been revolutionized by the 2008 election (Donovan forthcoming). Although I make a passing reference to this development in the conclusions to this chapter, the focus here remains on the period 2001–06. 4. Carlo Giovanardi of the UDC told this author that the LN’s leader Umberto Bossi once ‘went mad’ during a cabinet meeting and started ‘shouting’ and ‘banging his fist on the table’, as UDC politicians were coming up with new conditions that had to be met in exchange for their green light to reforming the constitution. 5. I owe this suggestion to Mark Donovan. In 2006, the Italian electorate did indeed reject the proposed constitutional reform in a referendum. 6. The Corte dei Conti (the institution overseeing the expenditures of the public administration) estimated that in order to bring to completion the works it had planned, the government would have had to find about €200 million. By 2004 the relevant ministry had only about €20 million at its disposal. 7. Interviewed by this author on 25 June 2004, the leader of the Lombard branch of the LN Giancarlo Giorgetti asserted that even economic liberalism should no longer be seen as a ‘taboo’ by his party. 8. The partial exception to this rule has been the AN’s leader Fini who has embraced liberal positions on some issues (e.g. civil partnerships and IVF) often going against the tide of opinion within his own party. The reasons for this have been explained above. 9. Grant Amyot’s and Luca Verzichelli’s collection of essays on Italian politics published in 2006 is in fact subtitled: ‘The End of the Berlusconi Era?’. Not for the first time scholars seem to have been too quick in writing Berlusconi off. 10. It was Berlusconi’s decision to ally himself with the ex-Fascists in 1994 that turned them into a party of government, from the marginalized force they had been for about 50 years after the end of World War II. AN has promised it will join forces with FI in 2009, within the new, Berlusconi-led, PdL party, so its process of ‘normalization’ seems now to be coming

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to an end. As for the LN, the party did indeed spend the years between 1995 and 1999 in splendid isolation, opposing both coalitions, however it also found itself unable to influence government policy and bring about the federal reforms that the party craved (Albertazzi, McDonnell 2005). 11. Cesare Previti, a close associate of Berlusconi, was eventually found guilty of corrupting magistrates to allow the media entrepreneur to take control of the publishing house Mondadori. 12. Senator Francesco d’Onofrio has expressed similar views in his interview. On this, see also the articles by d’Onofrio (2004, 2005) published by Liberal and the motion presented by Giovanardi to the 2007 conference of the UDC (Ansa 2007).

References Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D. (2005), ‘The Lega Nord in the second Berlusconi government: In a league of its own’, West European Politics, 28, (5), pp. 952–72. — (2008), ‘La botte piena e il militante ubriaco: La Lega Nord al governo’, Trasgressioni, (46), January–April. — (forthcoming), ‘The parties of the centre-right: Many oppositions, one leader’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2008. London: Palgrave. Albertazzi, D., McDonnell, D. and Newell, J. (2007), ‘Di lotta e di governo: The Lega Nord and Rifondazione Comunista in coalition’, paper presented to the 57th Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Bath, 10–12 April. Amato, R. (2005), ‘Istat, la recessione viene da lontano: L’analisi di 10 anni di stagnazione’, available at: www.repubblica.it/2005/e/sezioni/economia/rapportistat/rapportistat/rapportistat.html. Accessed 25 May 2005. Amyot, G. and Verzichelli, L. (2006), ‘Introduction: End-of-term anxieties and improvisation’, in G. Amyot and L. Verzichelli (eds), Italian Politics – The End of the Berlusconi Era? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Ansa (2007), ‘UdC: Mozione Giovanardi, al di fuori CdL non c’è prospettiva’, ANSA, Rome, available at: www.carlogiovanardi.it/immagini/con3.doc. 14 April. Accessed 10 September 2007. Benedetti, A. (2004), Il linguaggio e la retorica della nuova politica italiana: Silvio Berlusconi e Forza Italia. Genova: Erga edizioni. Berlusconi, S. (2001), L’Italia che ho in mente. Milan: Mondadori. Calise, M. (2000), Il partito personale. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Campus, D. (2006), L’antipolitica al governo. De Gaulle, Reagan, Berlusconi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Caritas/Migrantes (2005), Immigrazione: Dossier statistico 2005. XV rapporto sull’immigrazione. Caritas: Rome. Ceccarini, L. and Diamanti, I. (2007), ‘Catholics and politics after the Christian Democrats: The influential minority’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 12, (1), pp. 37–59. Contu, L. (2004), ‘Finisce l’era della monarchia ora torniamo al proporzionale’, Repubblica, 29 June. de Cecco, M. (2007), ‘Italy’s dysfunctional political economy’, West European Politics, 30, (4), pp. 763–83. Diamanti, I. (2003), Bianco, rosso, verde . . . e azzurro: mappe e colori dell’Italia politica. Bologna: Il Mulino. — (2007), ‘The Italian centre-right and centre-left: Between parties and “the Party” ’, West European Politics, 30, (4), pp. 33–762. Diamanti, I. and Lello, E. (2005), ‘The Casa delle Libertà: A house of cards?’, Modern Italy, 10, (1), pp. 9–36. D’Onofrio, F. (2004), ‘Due errori da non commettere’, Liberal, Anno 5, (26), October–November. — (2005), ‘Il modello c’è: L’internazionale centrista’, Liberal, Anno 6, (30), June–July. Donovan, M. (2003), ‘The Italian state: No longer Catholic, no longer christian’, West European Politics, 26, (1), pp. 95–116.

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Donovan, M. (2004), ‘The governance of the centre-right coalition’, in S. Fabbrini and V. Della Sala (eds), Italy between Europeanization and Domestic Politics. Oxford: Berghahn Books. — (forthcoming), ‘The processes of alliance formation’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2008. London: Palgrave. Gentili, G. (2005), ‘Grandi promesse e piccole opere’, Il Sole 24-Ore, 6 July. Ginsborg, P. (2004), Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony. London and New York: Verso. Hallin, D. C. and Mancini, P. (2001), ‘Italy’s television, Italy’s democracy’, available at: www.opendemocracy. net/media-publicservice/article_59.jsp, 18 July. Accessed 12 August 2008. Hine, D. and Hanretty, C. (2006), ‘Games advanced democracies play: The coalition crisis of April 2005’, in G. Amyot and L. Verzichelli (eds), Italian Politics – The End of the Berlusconi Era? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. ISTAT (2006), Rapporto annuale – La situazione del paese nel 2005. Rome: ISTAT. Mannheimer, R. (2005), ‘Polo sconfitto, ma l’Unione non sfonda’, Corriere della Sera, 17 April. McDonnell, D. (2006), ‘A weekend in Padania: Regionalist populism and the Lega Nord’, Politics, (26), 2, pp. 126–32. Newell, J. (ed.) (forthcoming), The Italian General Election of 2008. London: Palgrave. Newell, J. and Bull, M. (2001), ‘The Italian general election of May 2001’, Keele European Parties Research Unit (KEPRU), Working Paper 4. Pasquino, G. (2007), ‘The five faces of Silvio Berlusconi: The knight of anti-politics’, Modern Italy, 12, (1), pp. 39–54. Repubblica (2004), ‘Voto agli immigrati, Fini va avanti: “La crisi di governo non ci sarà” ’, 2 March. Roncarolo, F. (2005), ‘Campaigning and governing: An analysis of Berlusconi’s rhetorical leadership’, Modern Italy, 10, (1), pp. 75–93. Sartori, G. (2000), Homo videns. Bari: Laterza. Segatti, P. (2006a), ‘Cattolici e voto’, in R. Mannheimer and P. Natale (eds), L’Italia a metà. Milan: Cairo Editore. — (2006b), ‘I cattolici al voto, tra valori e politiche dei valori’, in Itanes (ed.) Dov’è la vittoria? Il voto del 2006 raccontato dagli Italiani. Bologna: Il Mulino. Tarchi, M. (2008), ‘Alleati recalcitranti: Le confliggenti agende di politica estera di Alleanza Nazionale e della Lega Nord’, Trasgressioni, (46), January–April. Vassallo, S. (2006), ‘The regional elections: Winning too convincingly?’, in G. Amyot and L. Verzichelli (eds), Italian Politics – The End of the Berlusconi Era? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Defeated and Divided? The Left in Opposition Donatella Campus

Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold1 Few electoral outcomes have been as predictable as Berlusconi’s victory in 2001. The centre-right, in particular Forza Italia (FI), had triumphed both in the 1999 European elections and in the 2000 administrative elections. During the first months of 2001, all polls indicated Berlusconi in the lead. The victory of the Casa delle Libertà (CdL) was so widely predicted that one might wonder if it was not a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Political elites and public opinion were so convinced that Berlusconi would win that the centre-left itself did not really believe it was possible to defeat him. In any case, the centre-left had already seriously disappointed its electorate on three significant issues when they had been in government (i.e. between 1996 and 2001). Although it had promised one coalition, one government and one Prime Minister to last the whole parliamentary term, by the beginning of 2000, when the electoral campaign for the 2001 election began in earnest, it was clear that none of those promises had been kept. In 1998, the original governmental coalition collapsed, and had to be restructured with the help of several dozen parliamentarians coming from the ranks of the centre-right. Moreover, between 1996 and 2001 there had been four governments and three Prime Ministers: Romano Prodi, the university professor who had led the centre-left to victory in the 1996 election; Massimo D’Alema, a prominent leader of the Democratici di Sinistra (DS) and twice head of government in this period; and Giuliano Amato, a former Socialist politician and close collaborator of Bettino Craxi, the former Prime Minister. On the whole, therefore, the 1996–2001 parliamentary term was more or less characterized by political and coalitional dynamics not entirely different from those experienced throughout the first phase of the Italian Republic (1948–92) when the Christian Democrats were the dominant party but there were frequent replacements of Prime Ministers and governmental reshuffles. The state of disarray of the centre-left was reflected in their choice of electoral leader and prospective Prime Minister. Instead of retaining and launching the incumbent head of the government, Giuliano Amato, a competent leader, no longer identified with any party and, therefore, likely to attract ‘independent’, non-aligned voters, the choice fell on Francesco Rutelli, the incumbent mayor of Rome and one of the leaders of the Catholic centre-left party, La Margherita – Democrazia e Libertà (DL). Hence, the centre-left forfeited any possible advantage deriving from incumbency (Pasquino 2002). While Amato could have campaigned on the not-negligible achievements of the centre-left government, including Italy’s entry into the Euro, the only assets that Rutelli could exploit were his successful organization of the 2000 Jubilee in Rome and his relative youth.2 Pouncing on Rutelli’s limited experience as a leader, Berlusconi

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immediately underlined that Rutelli was not to be considered as a true opponent and he refused televised debates with him. Needless to say, Rutelli always trailed in the polls and went down in a predictable defeat. In addition to the leadership issue, however, the centre-left’s main failure was in its alliancemaking. As shown in the first column in Figure 5.1, in the 2001 election, the centre-left coalition included the DS, the Margherita, the Girasole (composed of Federazione dei Verdi and Socialisti Democratici Italiani [SDI]) and the Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI). The centre-left failed to reach an agreement with both Italia dei Valori (IDV) and the Lista Pannella-Partito Radicale. Given the programmatic difference between these parties, this would undoubtedly have been a difficult enterprise, but not, however, an impossible one: it was indeed accomplished in the 2006 elections a few years later. Democrazia Europea, too, the small centrist party founded by former trade union leader Sergio D’Antoni (who would subsequently become undersecretary in Prodi’s second centre-left government), at that time chose to stand alone. According to some scholars, the centre-left could also have done more to prevent the Lega Nord (LN) re-entering into an alliance with Berlusconi (Donovan 2002: 114). Above all, however, it was its inability to reach a reciprocal stand-down agreement with Rifondazione Comunista (RC), such as that established in 1996, that irredeemably blocked any chance of victory. In all likelihood, it would have been impossible to reach this, given the fresh scars: too many politicians within the centre-left could not forgive RC for having withdrawn its support in parliament for Prodi’s government, thereby provoking its fall in October 1998. Moreover, the centre-left had repeatedly distanced itself from the radical left on a number of issues, from the labour market to international policies, and did not want to spoil its freshly achieved image of unity and programmatic consistency during the electoral campaign. As a consequence, ‘the two lefts competed in the electoral arena’ and ‘competition advantaged the centre-right hugely’ (Donovan 2002: 117).

Figure 5.1: The Italian Left between 2001 and 2006 Elections 2001

Post-election parties

Elections 2006

RC

RC

RC

IDV

IDV

IDV

PdCI DS Girasole (Verdi + Sdi)

PdCI DS Verdi Sdi

PdCI Verdi

Margherita

Lista Pannella

Ulivo

Margherita

Udeur

Rosa nel pugno Udeur

Partito Radicale

Minor others

DE Note: Names of parties have been bold italicized to signal membership of the centre-left electoral alliance. Source: Adapted from Di Virgilio (2007: 191).

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In Search of a Leadership for the Ulivo While Berlusconi was enjoying his honeymoon as Prime Minister, the centre-left started to reorganize itself after its severe defeat. However, this process was slower and more difficult than expected. The clear incapacity of the whole centre-left to react in a prompt and effective way was not at all surprising, but it appeared so serious and striking that some observers described it as a sort of ‘coma’ (Ginsborg 2003: 74). This state of immobility and apparent malaise was determined by several related factors. Primarily, the centre-left’s share of seats in parliament (261 of the 630 seats in the Chamber and 134 of 315 in Senate) was too small to allow for the creation of serious obstacles to the government’s action. Secondly, the centre-right government would have survived even after the withdrawal of a part of its coalition (see Chapter 4), so no hope could be nourished for a repeat of the 1994 scenario, when Berlusconi resigned after the LN withdrew its support for his government. Such a possibility had become highly improbable as Berlusconi proved to be extremely generous in the distribution of spoils to minor parties precisely in order to prevent possible defections (Campus 2002). As a consequence, the government had no need to seek agreements with the opposition on any matter. Even taking into account some, inevitable, internal disagreements, especially between the LN and Alleanza Nazionale (AN) on the issue of federalism, and between the LN and the Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e di Centro (UDC) on the issue of the reform of the welfare state, the government was able to pass virtually all the legislation it wished. Only in April 2005, did the level of internal tension reach a climax. This led to a government crisis that ended with the formation of a new government comprising the same coalition of parties (Aymot, Verzichelli 2006). The image of Berlusconi as a strong leader was somewhat tarnished by the government crisis (Campus, Pasquino 2006), but actually both his allies, AN and UDC, obtained a distribution of spoils that was less rewarding than expected (Hine, Hanretty 2006). The third point is that the DS, the largest party and also the only one capable of acting as catalyst for the whole coalition, was in a condition of extreme weakness. Not only had their electoral performance plummeted to its lowest ebb ever in 2001, but their leadership was also in troubled waters. Walter Veltroni, the party leader who had to take the responsibility for the size of the defeat, suddenly resigned. He ran for the office of mayor of Rome and won. However, the leaderless party was engaged throughout the summer of 2001 in preparing its national convention and in finding a successor in this ill-defined scenario. The leading faction of the party was challenged by tough internal opposition, the so-called correntone (big faction). The correntone represented a more radical wing and openly accused the leaders of the DS of not having clear policies that would grant a central role to the ‘world of the workers’. It wanted to create a better relationship with RC and to shift the axis of the party to the left in order to establish a tougher opposition. To sum up, in the first months after the election, the DS were more focused on their internal conflicts than on their oppositional role. Eventually, in November 2001, Piero Fassino, who represented the incumbent ruling faction of the party, was elected as party leader. The correntone had been defeated, but it represented more than 30 per cent of party members and remained a thorn in the side of the new party leader and his entourage. As Newell (2003: 79) states in his analysis of the centre-left during the first two years of Berlusconi’s government, if a parliamentary opposition is to be successful, there are some basic conditions that must be met. Among them, the most important is an agreement on which leader would coordinate opposition to the government. Taking advantage of the internal turmoil in the DS and of the remarkable electoral success of the centrist Margherita, whose percentage of the vote came close to that of the DS, Rutelli succeeded in qualifying himself as the acting head of the opposition. However, it was soon clear that he did not have the political stature to act as a kind of shadow Prime Minister. Moreover, his political position was weak. In fact, the existing

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competition between the two largest parties of the coalition, the Margherita and DS, created an apparent political conflict for Rutelli, who was not only the leader of the coalition, but also of the Margherita. On several occasions, his declarations and decisions were interpreted by his allies as if he were speaking and acting solely on his party’s behalf. In the long term, this ambiguity transformed him from a possible leader into a sort of ‘caretaker’ of the centre-left (Newell 2003: 81–2). Thus, internal conflicts and the absence of leadership, an absence unanimously acknowledged by coalition members, provoked a kind of paralysis for the parties of the centre-left. It would be mistaken to suggest that the centre-left did not try to resist controversial legislation in parliament, but, since they did not have the parliamentary strength necessary for carrying out productive opposition, they appeared more passive than was actually the case. This apparent passivity is particularly striking in the case of the so-called ad personam legislation, that is to say those bills suspected of being proposed in order to advantage Berlusconi or someone in his entourage. For instance, the ‘Cirami law’ was intended to reintroduce legitimate suspicion as a cause for the transfer of a trial. The opposition regarded the bill as a tool for resolving the judicial problem of Senator Cesare Previti, the most important of Berlusconi’s lawyers. The whole process leading up to the approval of the bill was complex (Blondel, Segatti 2003) and led to several arguments between the majority and the opposition. When the Chamber of Deputies passed the bill, centre-left parties abstained from voting to underline their disapproval, but they were unable to stop, or effectively delay, its approval. The same happened with regard to the so-called Lodo Schifani-Maccanico (the Schifani-Maccanico Agreement), also known as the ‘Immunity law’, which allowed for the postponement of penal trials for those holding highest office, including the president of the Republic and the Prime Minister. In this case, too, the left objected that the Lodo was actually intended to freeze the SME trial in which Berlusconi was a defendant for the corruption of judges (Corriere della Sera 18 June 2003). At the moment in which the bill was approved, the opposition left the floor. It failed, however, to stop its approval. The bill was more fiercely opposed outside parliament: street demonstrations were promptly organized and signatures calling for a referendum were collected. Subsequently, the Lodo was revoked as unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court (Della Sala, Fabbrini 2004). In light of all this, as one might expect, opposition to Berlusconi’s government shifted away from Parliament, and, more generally, from institutional arenas, into different territories where a more vibrant and robust mobilization began to take place. In separate but parallel fashion, two different kinds of opposition arose that would challenge both the parties of the centre-left and Berlusconi’s government. It is not clear if, at least in the beginning, the aim of the centre-left social opposition was simply that of stimulating the centre-left parties to become more active and to block the path of the centre-right government, without in fact antagonizing the institutional left. However, as I will illustrate, in the end the impression is that there was real detachment and an absence of a proper channel of communication between such emerging external forces and the opposition parties in parliament. The first of these two oppositions was the girotondi movement (see Chapter 6). At the beginning of 2002, a group of intellectuals staged the so-called marcia dei professori (Professors’ march) in Florence to protest against Berlusconi. A few days later, during another demonstration in Rome, Nanni Moretti, the famous Italian film director, attacked the leaders of the Ulivo, directly accusing them of incapacity and ineptitude. In a memorable speech, he addressed them as losers, and invoked their replacement. Building on these examples, an increasing number of ordinary citizens organized street demonstrations in many Italian cities. At the core of their protests was the resistance against what they called ‘Berlusconi’s regime’, the defence of freedom of information and a plea for the independence of the judiciary in the face of government interference. The strategy of the girotondini (i.e. the demonstrators identifying with the aims of

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the movement) was to join hands and circle buildings of high symbolic importance (such as the Palace of Justice in Milan and the State broadcaster RAI headquarters in Rome) – a form of protest that, according to one of the intellectuals involved, originated from the French Revolution (Tranfaglia 2004: 186). The spontaneous character of this movement can probably be regarded as one of the things which the institutional left has most difficulty tackling. Such street demonstrations displayed new characteristics with respect to the traditional, large leftist demonstrations, which instead saw leaders on a podium addressing and galvanizing the people. The element of unpredictability encouraged the centre-left parties to consider the girotondi more as a challenge than as a profitable means for putting pressure on the Prime Minister, particularly as the challenge they posed was largely addressed to the leaders of the centre-left. The people in the streets were neither angry students, no-global activists, nor extremists. The girotondini represented a large slice of the centre-left electorate, namely white-collar workers and professionals; they were not asking for a revolution, nor for higher salaries, but were merely calling for a renewal of the left. It was apparent that the links between those voters and the centre-left parties was weakening (Newell 2003: 85). Neglecting or underestimating this protest could cost these parties a very high price in terms of votes and political support. However, the centre-left did not have a clear strategy either for taming, or for co-opting, this movement, which grew in the space of few months and continued its protests, organizing ‘do-it-yourself’ demonstrations. Instead of using extraparliamentary protest as a resource for reinforcing opposition to the government, the centreleft seemed to encounter great difficulty in dealing with such spontaneous and autonomous movements. In the meantime, a second source of opposition to Berlusconi came from the trade unions. In March 2002, Sergio Cofferati, the Secretary General of Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL) – the former Communist trade union, and also the largest trade union in the country with roughly 5,500,000 members – organized a huge demonstration against Berlusconi’s government. About three million people gathered in a square in Rome, making it one of the largest mass meetings of the postwar Second Republic. Successively, the three largest Italian trade unions called for strikes throughout Italy. Eventually, the government was able to divide the trade unions: while the Confederazione Italiana Sindacati dei Lavoratori (CISL) and the Unione Italiana del Lavoro (UIL) agreed to discuss employment and labour-market issues and regulations, finally coming to an agreement with the government, the CGIL refused to join negotiations. Overall, in the first two years of Berlusconi’s government, the trade unions appeared more active and more vocal in their opposition than the institutional left, which, while engaged in parliamentary battles to obstruct some of the government’s bills, were much less capable of giving voice to the dissatisfaction of large sections of the electorate. In particular, the CGIL leader, Cofferati, on several occasions appeared highly assertive and determined. He had become very popular, and was greeted everywhere with cheers and ovations by those people for whom he had become the hero who had successfully challenged Berlusconi and the centreright government. Broad support grew around him, and this was due too to the great exposure he was given by the mass media, which depicted him as the strong leader that could give a renewed impetus to a colourless and unimaginative centre-left (Salvadori 2004: 197–9). For a while, it seemed that the two most vocal opposition forces might be able to unite and fight together. On 10 January 2003, the man who symbolized the girotondi, Nanni Moretti, launched the candidature of Cofferati (who had retired as leader of the CGIL a few months previously) as the new leader of the political left. The move provoked an immediate reaction by the DS, as their most representative and powerful figure, the former PM Massimo D’Alema, intervened. A few days later, at the Fiera di Milano (the Milan Exhibition), D’Alema attacked Cofferati directly, thus showing that the DS intended to block his ascent. Driven by external

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forces, rather than by political negotiations among the established parties, Cofferati’s potential candidacy sounded an alarm bell for the whole centre-left, whose ruling élite was not enthusiastic about the possibility of an outsider running for leader. It was evident that the personalization of politics that had for some time been embodied principally by Berlusconi was also casting its spell over the opposite camp. A growing number of people seemed to be convinced that only a strong leader could be the keystone of the resurgence of the Italian left. Although Cofferati’s political project and vision were far from clear, he seemed to pose a concrete threat because of his charismatic appeal. As a consequence, finding a new, capable, popular leader became a matter of urgency for the centre-left.3 In such an uncertain situation, centre-left politicians began discussing a possible re-run of a Romano Prodi–Silvio Berlusconi contest, just like the one Prodi had won in 1996; the hope for was that Prodi, the founder of the Ulivo coalition in 1996, could act as a catalyst for the centre-left. In October 1998, however, after only two years in office, conflicts with RC – coupled, perhaps, with the DS’s ambition to lead the government – had provoked the fall of Prodi’s government. A few months later, in March 1999, a series of unpredictable and favourable circumstances – above all the unexpected resignation of the President of the European Commission, Jacque Santer, in the wake of a scandal – led to Prodi leaving Italian politics to take his place. Notwithstanding his new institutional role, however, Prodi never stopped being very interested in Italian politics, and his views continued to be consulted. While avoiding any participation in Italian political manoeuvring, he never hid his intention to come back to Italy in order to lead the centre-left coalition again. A conspicuous number of Margherita politicians and parliamentarians, led by his loyal political advisor, Arturo Parisi, worked consistently to pave the way for his return. As early as 2003, three years before the end of Berlusconi’s mandate, Prodi had started to make statements that left no doubt about his political intentions. First, in an interview to the Corriere della Sera in July 2003, he proposed the creation of a list which would unite Ulivo members for the European election of 2004. Then, in November 2003, he launched a manifesto entitled Europe: The Dream, The Choices that was to be used as the programmatic basis for the European elections. The DS were not enthusiastic about Prodi’s hyperactivism. However, they seemed incapable of finding a viable and convincing alternative within their own ranks. Gradually, the hypothesis of a repeat of the duel between Prodi and Berlusconi became more plausible. What remained completely open, however, was the problem of arranging an alliance with the radical left.

The Two Lefts In 2001, the decision made by the Ulivo and RC not to subscribe to an electoral agreement had reduced, if not extinguished, their chances of victory over Berlusconi. From this starting point, it was not very likely that in the post-electoral phase the so-called two lefts could easily coalesce and converge, giving birth to a joint opposition to the centre-right government. If the Ulivo was not in a good shape, RC had also not fully recovered from the split it suffered when the PdCI broke away from it, provoking the consequent loss of about 25 per cent of their electorate. All this had reduced its electoral showing to a modest 5.6 per cent. It took a long process, and two further unrewarding elections (for local government and the European Parliament), before RC realized that its isolation was neither splendid nor conducive to the interception of those voters who had been disappointed by moderate centre-left parties (Mantelli 2004: 134). The principal failure of the radical left can be found in its inability to take advantage of the crisis of the moderate left and to make a profitable alliance with the protest movements.

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It needs to be stressed that, if RC could easily find common ground with those who demonstrated against the war in Iraq and with the no-global movement, it proved much more difficult for them to gauge the mood of the generally middle-class/bourgeois girotondini and to share their viewpoints. While the girotondini opposed Berlusconi because they considered him a serious threat to the democratic functioning of the institutions, RC based its opposition on social grounds. In their narrative, Berlusconi’s history and ideals represented, on the one hand, the triumph of capitalistic forces over the working class, and, on the other, his position as Bush’s accomplice and as subordinate ally of American imperialism (ibid.: 137 onwards). Such different perspectives (and different concerns) prevented the radical left from enhancing their support among those voters of the centre-left who were highly dissatisfied with the centre-left’s opposition to the Berlusconi government. Rifondazione Comunista, together with the other most radical components of the Ulivo, such as the PdCI and the Federazione dei Verdi, approached the negotiations with the largest parties of the Ulivo – the DS and Margherita – with the objective of maintaining their political distinctiveness and visibility. The building of a common coalition was an outcome whose necessity all agreed upon, but the conditions of participation were a matter for heated discussion. Smaller parties and, in particular, the radical left, worried about the domination of the DS and the Margherita with regard to programmatic decisions and candidatures. Only a strong leader could guarantee all parties in the coalition and protect minor parties. In any case, that such a leader was vital had been the painful lesson learnt following Rutelli’s defeat in 2001 (Berlusconi, it should be remembered, never took Rutelli seriously). For this reason, the official return of Prodi to Italian politics in the summer of 2004 gave new impetus to the process of restructuring the centre-left (Hopkin 2006: 70). On the one hand, it opened up the discussion about a merger between the DS and the Margherita; on the other, it promoted and reinforced the formation of the Unione, a coalition that was to include all parties within the broad ideological spectrum of the left, extending from Fausto Bertinotti’s radical RC to Clemente Mastella’s Catholic and conservative Unione Democratici per l’Europa (UDEUR).

Primaries, the Creation of the Union and the Birth of the Partito Democratico4 Although Prodi was welcomed as the person able to guarantee electoral victory, neither the DS nor the leaders of Margherita were initially willing to recognize him as their leader and to give him carte blanche. Indeed, with the objective of remaining fully in command in the postelectoral phase, they tried to prevent Prodi from acquiring too strong a role. Following the significant victory for the centre-left in the regional elections of 2005, Prodi claimed that he had achieved a clear confirmation of his leadership. Thus, he decided that the best way both to strengthen his candidacy and to encourage the parties of the Unione to forge a closer coalition was to call primary elections open to all those willing to declare themselves, and to be identified as, voters of the centre-left (Rose 2008). The proposal to hold primaries in order to select the centre-left candidate might have appeared anomalous, since there were no plausible alternatives to Prodi. Clearly, the primaries were not called as a means of selection, but because Prodi wanted to avoid being entangled again in the same situation in which he had been in the post-1996 elections. On that occasion, he had experienced great difficulties in governing his own coalition because he was too weak, and this weakness was due to the simple fact that he did not belong to, and was not backed by, any party. In that respect, his position could not have been more different from that of Berlusconi

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in 2001–06: the PM was in full command of the largest party of his government coalition. This time, understandably, Prodi wanted to be recognized as the coalition maker and the coalition leader, not simply as the candidate selected by a number of party leaders to lead an electoral coalition. In other words, it was not that he needed to be chosen; what he required was popular legitimation to strengthen his position vis-à-vis the leaders of the centre-left parties. As Hopkin (2006: 74) has stressed, the centre-left parties had already made ‘occasional veiled threats’ about replacing Prodi as a leader of the centre-left electoral coalition. The former DC were suspicious of Prodi’s intentions, perceiving him as both too close to the DS and too independent from parties. On the other hand, the DS loyally supported him, and their leaders sacrificed their personal ambition on the altar of coalition unity. However, their loyalty could not be taken for granted after the election, just as it could not have been taken for granted in 1996. Most certainly, Prodi felt that he should not be identified either with the Margherita or with the DS. He wanted to be perceived as someone who stood beyond the individual parties of his coalition, representing not only the best, but also the only possible point of equilibrium. For all these reasons, he insisted on the necessity of holding primaries. He finally obtained a commitment from the centre-left to organize them for October 2005. The DS were all but obliged not to present the candidacy of any of their leaders for the primaries and to campaign for Prodi (who was also officially supported by the Margherita). After some hesitation, and following the decision of Fausto Bertinotti, secretary of RC, other candidates took the field: among them, the leader of IDV, Antonio Di Pietro, the leader of the Federazione dei Verdi, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio and the leader of the UDEUR, Clemente Mastella. While there was a lot of concern in the centre-left headquarters about turn out, and many political observers openly expressed their skepticism (see Pasquino 2005), electors showed more interest in the initiative, as it seemed to give them the opportunity to express their opinion and to have their preferences count. The girotondi, on the one hand, and the mass participation in the huge demonstrations organized by the trade unions, on the other, had already suggested that Italians on the centre-left were very positively inclined towards involvement in forms of protest and demonstration. Berlusconi’s government had created a deeply polarizing effect on Italian politics, and the need for change acted as a mobilizing factor for citizens of a centre-left persuasion. A survey held after the primaries supports this view: 26 per cent of voters selected the desire to protest against Berlusconi’s government as the primary motivation for voting, while all other motivations listed, such as the desire to support a candidate or to express oneself in favour of the unity of the centre-left, scored lower (Diamanti, Bordignon 2006: 81). In light of this, it can be argued that discontent with the government and, in particular, hostility towards the Prime Minister, were powerful motivating forces behind the turn out in the national primaries of the 16 October 2005. Much to everybody’s surprise, the turn out was massive. A significantly greater-than-expected number of citizens – 4,311,149 – came to the ballots. Most of them (more than three million) cast a vote for Prodi, thus confirming his leadership and giving him a better hand to play in the intra-coalitional negotiations. Participation was higher in the ‘Red-belt’ regions (Emilia-Romagna; Tuscany; Umbria; the Marches) where leftist parties, particularly the DS, are strong and well organized (Diamanti, Bordignon 2006). This suggests that, once the primaries had been agreed, the largest parties actually contributed to mobilizing their activist base and coordinating a grass-roots campaign. The primaries represented a major investment of time, energy and organizational resources for all the centre-left parties, but this was especially the case for the DS, the only remaining party capable of such sustained effort. Overall, studies have stressed that the primaries involved not only party activists, but also numerous ordinary citizens who were ideologically aligned with the centre-left or the left, but not active in a specific party (according to a poll, 86 per cent of voters were not party members

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[Morini et al. 2006: 206]). It is not too risky to suppose that what led many citizens to the ballot was the desire to express a view about the future of the Italian centre-left. After four years of a not particularly productive opposition, it was clear that the internal divisions of the centreleft and the divergences between the Ulivo and the radical left were hindrances to Berlusconi’s defeat. According to one poll, 74 per cent of primary voters were convinced of the importance of merging the centre-left forces in a unified political organization (Diamanti, Bordignon 2006: 84). The fact that Prodi gained about three-quarters of the vote can be interpreted as implicit approval of his efforts to unify the left, a ‘clear statement from the centre-left electorate in favor of a unified political movement in which the component parties of the Unione would play a secondary role’ (Hopkin 2006: 75). While circles around Prodi continued to push for the birth of a single political organization, later to be called Partito Democratico (PD), most parties on the centre-left were nevertheless quite reluctant to consider the possibility of any merger, even if only for electoral purposes. In the end, partly as a result of a new electoral law (a PR system with a majority bonus assigned to the winning party or coalition), the final decision was that the DS and the Margherita would present joint lists in elections to the House of Deputies under a unitary symbol, the Ulivo, receiving 31.3 per cent of votes. By contrast, in the Senate, as the majority bonus was attributed region by region, all the centre-left parties decided to run separately. The fact that, separately, the two parties received only 27.7 per cent of votes for the Senate may have some bearing on their subsequent decision to merge into a PD in the hope of reaching out to different sections of the population. The momentum acquired by the time of the October primaries was lost when the centreleft parties dropped any suggestion of holding selective primaries for the choice of at least some candidates to parliament in the run-up to the 2006 elections. Again, because of the electoral law – based on long lists of candidates elected according to their ranking in each list – party leaders could basically ‘appoint’ their most faithful followers to parliament. One may perhaps identify the lost momentum of the primaries as one of the factors which led to the almost wholesale disappearance of the centre-left’s advantage. Moreover, the Unione’s campaign was highly disappointing, incurring problems due to a lack of coordination between the coalition partners (Campus 2006). By contrast, Berlusconi was able to reduce the gap between the two coalitions in the polls with a very aggressive and effective campaign (Biorcio 2008). With the 2006 elections, it can be argued that the trajectory of the centre-left completed a full circle. The parties’ self-centred attitudes, which marked the centre-left’s inability to organize an effective opposition during the Berlusconi years, also produced their razor-thin victory of 2006 and created all the subsequent problems concerning the stability and the performance of the government led by Romano Prodi (which in fact fell after less than two years, opening the way to a return of Berlusconi in 2008). The rather slim victory of the centre-left in 2006 did not extinguish those forces that had been elicited in the previous months in the form of associations and popular support for the idea of a new centre-left party. Clearly, the most ambitious challenge for a party bringing together the DS and the Margherita was to keep together two traditional political cultures – one belonging to post-communism and the other to progressive Catholicism – that had long dominated the Italian scenario on opposing sides. While the two views could find a convergence on an economic policy inspired by values of solidarity, this marriage was more difficult where ethical issues such as abortion, artificial insemination and gay rights were concerned. Those internal contradictions have clearly come to the surface on several occasions: for instance, during the referendum on artificial insemination held in 2005. For this reason, those ethical issues were kept in the background during the 2006 campaign in order not to jeopardize the solidity of the alliance between Catholic and secular members (Campus 2008).

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However, it is evident that, sooner or later, moral issues need to come back to the centre of the political debate. For this reason, the project of a unitary party could not help but raise some internal opposition both in the DS and in the Margherita, although optimism about the possibility of a fruitful merger prevailed. In early 2007 the process of building the PD seemed to have become unstoppable and at subsequent party congresses both the Margherita and the DS decided to dissolve themselves with the view of merging their parties. The first difficulty to be faced was the election of the secretary of the new party; this was problematic as the PD was not yet in existence and had no card-carrying members. Therefore, the decision was taken to grant to all those who felt they might join the party the possibility of voting for its first secretary. The forthcoming elections were improperly called ‘primaries’ in order to exploit their similarity to Prodi’s triumph in October 2005. This time, the leaders of the DS launched one candidate, yet another mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni. While Veltroni immediately received the backing of very many within the party, other candidates entered the competition and their presence prevented what might have been a rather embarrassing outcome, that is a sort of plebiscitarian election with just one candidate. While the popularity of Prodi’s government plummeted, Veltroni was elected secretary of the PD, polling slightly less than 80 per cent of the more than 3,400,000 centre-left supporters who cast their vote. The problem of dual leadership in the centre-left, which had been totally underestimated, or perhaps even not foreseen, made its immediate appearance. On the one hand, there was a weak Prime Minister in office – Romano Prodi – who could not rely on any party of his unruly coalition, and, on the other, there was the leader of a large party to be considered at the same time Prodi’s heir apparent and the next candidate to the office of Prime Minister. A negative vote in the Senate signalled the end of Prodi’s agonized governmental experience on 24 January 2008. Parliament was quickly dissolved, as the president of the Republic had announced he would do in case of a crisis, while Prodi remained in office for a short period, but only as ‘care-taker’ PM. Veltroni immediately took upon himself the task of launching, guiding and implementing the strategy of the 2008 electoral campaign. Having decided to eschew any alliance and to run alone, he duly lost, and the way was open for the formation of a fourth Berlusconi government. The radical left (which had been renamed, in the meantime, as La Sinistra, l’Arcobaleno) almost disappeared and the distance between the electoral performance of the centre-left and the centre-right, approximately 9 percentage points, suggests that the centre-left will have a lot of catching up to do if it wants to close the gap and become competitive.

Conclusions The five years of Berlusconi’s governments (2001–06) proved to be a painful experience for the parties of the Italian left. First of all, the Ulivo coalition was affected by internal divisions due to the existence of sharp differences in values and political cultures between the two main components, the DS and the Margherita. From this point of view, the process of the formation of a unified party, the PD, which started in the pre-electoral phase in 2007 and concluded before the 2008 election, has indicated the willingness of both sides to overcome their differences and create a strong reformist party. However, many issues are still in the background and remain sources of potential conflict; for instance, the joining, by the entire PD, of the European Socialist party and the reform of the legislation concerning several ethical issues on which the secular and Catholic members of the PD are in open disagreement. The alliance between the centre-left and the radical left has become even more fragile. For most of the Berlusconi years, the two lefts were not able to collaborate fruitfully as opposition

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forces. Subsequently, as a result of Prodi’s efforts and the pressure imposed by the need to shape a large electoral alliance, the two lefts reached an agreement and formed the Unione in 2006. However, the political project of keeping the centre-left and the radical left together showed its shortcomings during Prodi’s government. Hence, after the creation of the PD, Walter Veltroni decided that the party had to run alone in the 2008 elections. In contrast with the internal turmoil of the centre-left and its consequent inefficacy in the role of opposition since the early 1990s, and in particular during the Berlusconi years (2001–06), so-called civil society has shown itself to be comparatively more active. Not only was the girotondi movement able to challenge the institutional left in several ways, but it was also ready to take advantage of every opportunity in order to express their desire for a change. This explains the massive participation in the 2005 primary election, substantially called to legitimate Prodi as the coalition leader, and in the 2007 election of Veltroni as the leader of the newborn PD. In both cases, the institutional left appeared not to be fully capable of exploiting the huge resource of popular participation (Pasquino 2008). As Rose observed, with respect to the 2006 election (2008: 93), valuable lessons still remained to be learned. The same can be repeated today: the future of the PD and of the Italian left depends on their ability to maintain an open channel with their electoral base and with those large sectors of the Italian population who still believe in the need for a strong, modern, centre-left party more in line with the left in the rest of Europe.

Notes 1. The facts and events reported in this chapter are based on the chronologies of yearly events found in Amyot, Verzichelli 2006; Borgognone 2004; Blondel, Segatti 2003; Della Sala, Fabbrini 2004; Guarnieri, Newell 2005. 2. At that time Rutelli was 47 years old, and therefore comparatively young with respect to the average age of Italian political leaders, and definitively younger than his adversary Berlusconi. 3. Later on, the DS offered Cofferati the opportunity to run as mayor of the city of Bologna. He succeeded in winning the election in the Spring of 2004 and ceased to be seen as a threat by other leaders at the national level. 4. Sources of data and events in this section are Pasquino (2005) and the special issue of Quaderni dell’osservatorio elettorale, see Giunta Regionale della Toscana 2006.

References Amyot, G. and Verzichelli, L. (eds) (2006), Italian Politics. The End of Berlusconi Era? New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books. Blondel, J. and Segatti, P. (eds) (2003), Italian Politics. The Second Berlusconi Government. New York: Berghahn Books. Biorcio, R. (2008), ‘The parties of the centre-right’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2006. Romano Prodi’s Victory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 98–114. Borgognone, G. (2004), ‘Cronologia dei fatti dal 13 maggio 2001 al 31 dicembre 2003’, in F. Tuccari, (ed.), L’opposizione al governo Berlusconi. Rome-Bari: Laterza, pp. 215–48. Campus, D. (2002), ‘La formazione del governo Berlusconi’, in G. Pasquino (ed.), Dall’Ulivo al governo Berlusconi. Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 275–95. — (2006), ‘The 2006 election: More than ever a Berlusconi-centred campaign’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 11, (4), pp. 515–30. — (2008), ‘Campaign issues and themes’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2006. Romano Prodi’s Victory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 139–55.

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Campus, D. and Pasquino, G. (2006), ‘Leadership in Italy. The changing role of leaders in elections and in government’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 14, (1), pp. 25–40. Corriere della Sera (2003), ‘Via alle immunità per le alte cariche’, 18 June. Della Sala, V. and Fabbrini, S. (eds) (2004), Italian Politics, Italy between Europeanization and Domestic Politics. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Diamanti, I. and Bordignon, F. (2006), ‘La mobilitazione inattesa. Le primarie del centrosinistra: Geografia, politica e sociologia’, Quaderni dell’osservatorio elettorale, June, (55), pp. 63–90. Di Virgilio, A. (2007), ‘Nuovo sistema elettorale e strategie di competizione: Quanto è cambiata l’offerta politica?’, in R. D’Alimonte and A. Chiaramonte (eds), Proporzionale, ma non solo. Le elezioni politiche del 2006. Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 191–242. Donovan, M. (2002), ‘The processes of alliance formation’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2001. Berlusconi’s Victory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 105–24. Ginsborg, P. (2003), Berlusconi. Ambizioni patrimoniali in una democrazia mediatica. Turin: Einaudi. Giunta Regionale della Toscana (2006), Quaderni dell’osservatorio elettorale. June, (55). Florence: Regione Toscana. Guarnieri, C. and Newell, J. (eds) (2005), Italian Politics. Quo Vadis? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Hine, D. and Hanretty, C. (2006), ‘Games advanced democracies play: The coalition crisis of April 2005’, in G. Amyot and L. Verzichelli (eds), Italian Politics. The End of the Berlusconi Era? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 105–22. Hopkin, J. (2006), ‘From federation to union, from parties to primaries: The search for unity in the centerleft’, in G. Amyot and L. Verzichelli (eds), Italian Politics. The End of Berlusconi Era? New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 67–84. Mantelli, B. (2004), ‘Un partito presbite: Rifondazione Comunista, 2001–2003’, in F. Tuccari (ed.), L’opposizione al governo Berlusconi. Rome-Bari: Laterza, pp. 130–48. Morini, M., Orzati, L. and Venturino, F. (2006), ‘Elettori e partecipazione nelle elezioni primarie del 2005’, Quaderni dell’osservatorio elettorale, June, (55), pp. 195–218. Newell, J. (2003), ‘The opposition role of the center-left party’, in J. Blondel and P. Segatti (eds), Italian Politics. The Second Berlusconi Government. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 78–94. Pasquino, G. (2002), ‘The political context 1996–2001’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2001. Berlusconi’s Victory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 29–46. — (2005), ‘Postfazione’, in M. Valbruzzi (ed.), Primarie. Partecipazione e Leadership. Bologna: Bononia University Press, pp. 279–93. — (2008), ‘The political context 2001–2006’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2006. Romano Prodi’s Victory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 15–32. Rose, S. (2008), ‘The parties of the centre-left’, in J. Newell (ed.), The Italian General Election of 2006. Romano Prodi’s Victory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 79–95. Salvadori, M. (2004), ‘Dove va la sinistra?’, in F. Tuccari (ed.), L’opposizione al governo Berlusconi. RomeBari: Laterza, pp. 192–204. Tranfaglia, N. (2004), ‘I girotondi’, in F. Tuccari (ed.), L’opposizione al governo Berlusconi. Rome-Bari: Laterza, pp. 183–91.

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CHAPTER SIX

Challenging from the Grass Roots: The Girotondi and the No Global Movement Paolo Ceri (Translated by Charlotte Ross)

Upon winning the general election in June 2001, Berlusconi’s second government found itself immediately confronted by a wave of social opposition, as trenchant as it was unexpected. Granted, if Berlusconi could have expected anything, in light of previous events, it was renewed political and social opposition, due both to the privatizing thrust of his politics and to his questionable legitimacy to govern as owner of a media and publishing empire. Besides an increase in demonstrations, the novelty of the opposition lay in its composition: the main actors driving it were the ‘No Global’ movement and the girotondi movement.

The No Global Movement: From Social Campaigns to Suppression As soon as it had been formed, the Berlusconi government replaced the Amato government in organizing the G8 summit of 2001. Even though many arrangements had already been made, this was considered a great opportunity. Berlusconi therefore strove to render it a media stage and a testing ground on which to align himself with the Bush administration. Besides the aesthetic aspects of the summit – personally overseen by the Premier – issues of security were much to the fore. The militarization of Genoa, the selected host city for the meeting, was justified through reference to the crescendo of violence and vandalism witnessed in previous global and continental summits: from Seattle to Washington, from Prague to Naples, from Quebec City to Gothenburg. The militarization was contested, not only on principle but also due to its consequences. Indeed, many people maintain that the armouring of the ‘red zone’ (the area of the city where the G8 meetings took place), was primarily intended not to protect the summit and the city, but to provoke violent opposition. Given the nature and international dimension of the G8, opposition to the Berlusconi government might seem a secondary concern. Indeed, the formation of the anti-globalization movement predates the second Berlusconi government, even when its origins are erroneously traced to the demonstrations in Seattle in November 2000, which sought to block the ‘Millennium Round’ talks promoted by the World Trade Organization (WTO).1 Moreover, the movement’s main targets are institutions such as the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, multinational organizations and the US administration. Nevertheless, even before Genoa, the movement had already staged demonstrations in Italy which unsettled the government on account of their violence and which were suppressed. These include the demonstrations

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in Naples, in March 2001, for the Third Global Forum on e-government (under a centre-left government). These circumstances predisposed the centre-right government to assume a particularly hostile stance towards a largely left-wing movement. In addition, demonstrating their tendency to divide the world into allies and enemies and to evoke the spectre of Communism, Berlusconi and the political and ideological powers surrounding him endeavoured to demonize the movement in advance, through alarmist media campaigns and an exceptionally large deployment of security forces (Andretta et al. 2002). Leaving aside the manipulations and extremism of the right, the stakes were certainly significant, on both a national and international level. After the protests in Seattle and the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (2001), the No Global movement had gained strength, credibility and influence, as demonstrated by the scope and structure of the protests organized alongside the G8 in Genoa, which included both a counter-summit and a march. Almost 300,000 people came together in the city; people of all ages, from many different countries and continents, affiliated to a variety of associations: environmental, trade union, civil rights, anticonsumerist, fair trade, free software, pacifist, religious, anarchic, Zapatista and many more. Some 700 associations from four continents, united in their shared opposition to neo-liberal globalization, had established contact and coordinated their strategies online: the first largescale internet movement. Despite the fact that the vast majority of protesters who participated in the march intended to demonstrate peacefully, the G8 in Genoa will be remembered for its excesses of violence, for the severity with which protesters were suppressed, and for the violations of human rights. The responsibility for provoking clashes that left one dead, 560 injured (including 73 police officers) and led to 219 arrests, falls on many shoulders. The event was planned in a climate of extreme tension, in which small-scale, provocative mobilizations proved damaging to the movement, and bellicose declarations by No Global spokespeople and negative press campaigns lent the movement a subversive and violent edge (Ceri 2002: 77–88). The reciprocal attribution of violent intentions by the movement, by security forces and by minority factions with media visibility, led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Both security forces and some No Global groups equipped themselves to confront violence but ended up provoking and resorting to violent actions. Moreover, a group of radical militants, the so-called ‘Black bloc’, were inexplicably left free to provoke destruction. The gravity of events and in particular of the police repression, followed by long and contentious legal proceedings, poisoned the political climate for some time, eventually turning Berlusconi and his government into major adversaries for the movement. This also caused divisions and misunderstandings between the left and the No Global community. Thus the government was opposed by a movement that was not only stronger but also radicalized. The subsequent period saw many social forums spontaneously springing up in several cities, large and small, which were modelled on the Genoa Social Forum; by April 2003 these numbered 170. However, in many of these social forums the more organized and ideologically focused groups quickly prevailed (such as Attac, Fiom, Cobas, CGIL); these groups are often linked to political parties, especially Rifondazione Comunista (RC).2 As a result, despite the many themes and objectives that had characterized the exceptionally plural character of the movement until then, it was the goals of the anti-capitalist left that took priority. Thus the movement opposed the Berlusconi government on issues of labour, immigration, education and intervention in Afghanistan in October 2001 and Iraq in March 2003. Labour policies were denounced, especially the Biagi law, which aimed to increase flexibility but left many in precarious positions. Educational policies, backed by the Education Minister Letizia Moratti, were contested on the grounds that they allegedly sought to privatize schools and to turn universities into businesses. As regards immigration policies, the Bossi-Fini law (see Chapter 13) elicited strong criticism for

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its attempts to regulate flows of migrants through repressive interventions, such as the extended segregation of ‘irregular’ individuals in Centri di permanenza temporanea (Temporary Detention Centres [CPTs]), and the expulsion of clandestine immigrants. But above all, No Global activists mobilized against Italy’s military intervention first in Afghanistan, and then in Iraq. Here one must distinguish between ‘internal’ developments (divisions between the political left and the movement), and ‘external’ developments (the conflict between the movement and government forces). During the initial intervention in Afghanistan and the first stages of military activity, both the movement and the left underwent a series of divisions and reformations. This is evident in the demonstration against the announcement of imminent military intervention in Afghanistan, which took place in Naples on 27 September 2001. Apart from a few Catholic groups and the Arci association (close to the Democratici di Sinistra), the procession of around 30,000 people was almost entirely composed of radical left-wing groups. More generally, divisions were provoked by the ideological anti-Americanism of those associations, often with a Marxist or third-worldist agenda which had already attempted to monopolize the social forums. When the movement re-formed, as it did for the fortieth Perugia-Assisi peace march in October 2001, its unsettling effect on the government was clear. Anxious not to lose support from such a transversal subject, the government decided to stage a ‘USA-day’ in Rome; a counter-demonstration launched by Il foglio, a newspaper aligned with Berlusconi’s right-wing politics, and supported by Forza Italia (FI). During the period between the parliamentary decision for military intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and the decision to intervene in Iraq in 2003, Berlusconi was concerned by the No Global activists’ criticisms, given the growing support they were finding among the broader population. This is apparent in the aggressive media campaign led by his political, journalistic and television emissaries during the first European Social Forum, held in Florence from 6 to 10 November 2002. Far beyond addressing justified concerns regarding potential violence caused by small groups, the campaign sought to portray the demonstration as the barbarous devastation of a fragile and precious city, home to one of the world’s richest collections of historical monuments and artistic works. In contrast, the forum, which culminated in an antiwar march in which almost half a million people participated, was entirely peaceful, not least because it did not coincide with any international summits, and constituted a moment of solidarity and debate of many core issues for the anti-globalization movement. The tendency of the government and of its supporters to make statements based on the formula ‘movement = violence = subversion’ reveals an ideological preference for order, typical of the right. However, it also paradoxically expresses a competitive dimension: that between support for a growing movement – defined vividly in the New York Times (Tyler 2003) as the ‘second superpower’ (after the United States) in terms of public opinion, represented in the largest anti-war demonstration of all time, against the invasion of Iraq (15 February 2003) – and Berlusconi’s policies, based on the use of television, surveys and more generally on political marketing. The political and cultural appeal of No Global activists at the time was merely an expression, albeit amplified, of that exercised by the movement on an international level. This was confirmed by the presence of 4,100 journalists, as well as numerous political figures from several countries – with France and Italy as the best represented countries – at the third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre at the end of January 2003. Dissent towards the government and its decision to send Italian troops into Iraq soon became widespread, as demonstrated by mass participation in the many peace marches. In particular, on the international anti-war day of action, 15 February 2003, when rallies were organized in at least 600 cities, from Washington to Okinawa, from Paris to Hyderabad, from Tübingen to Montreal, the Rome rally was the largest, with three million people marching behind the banner ‘No war, no ifs, no buts. Stop the war in Iraq’. At the time, opposition to the war was extremely

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widespread, and was signalled in a unique manner by the millions of rainbow peace flags displayed for many months from the windows of houses across Italy. No Global activists were discredited by media campaigns orchestrated thanks to a semi-monopoly of information, and, despite some extremist behaviour, they nevertheless enjoyed great public visibility and influence until 2003 (even if not sufficient to significantly alter the electoral balance). This was due not only to the movement’s actions per se, but also to its status as an expression of the general climate during this phase of the cycle of social mobilization and the desire for participation; both of which were heightened by the decisions and actions of the Berlusconi government and his parliamentary majority. We can see this in the case of the other movement which was active in roughly the same period: the girotondi.

The Girotondi: Embracing the Institutions of Democracy As one might have expected, No Global activists’ opposition to the Berlusconi government marked the arrival of a movement born to voice international issues, rather than national ones. In contrast, opposition to the government by civil society took Berlusconi and Berlusconismo as its principle targets from the outset. Although enmeshed in various ways and to varying degrees with political and party affiliations and concepts, this was essentially the autonomous expression of a civil society concerned by what it perceived as threats to the normal rule of law and the checks and balances of democracy. The defence of the rule of law and pluralism were the main issues at stake. From this perspective, it becomes clear how the opposition expressed after the elections of May 2001 represented a development of that expressed during the first Berlusconi government in 1994; although a rather unusual development, as will be shown. In this new phase, opposition was spurred on in particular by a series of legislative measures, such as the following: (a) The depenalization of accounting fraud (Legislative Decree 61/2002) (a crime of which Berlusconi stood accused at the time), which was altered from a penal offence to an administrative error punished by a fine; (b) The refusal of international Letters Rogatory (Law 367/2001): requests by a court to courts abroad for help, for example, in gathering evidence. This measure, which nullified evidence if not deemed properly authenticated, was invoked by Cesare Previti, Berlusconi’s lawyer and friend, to block Swiss records; (c) legislation allowing the legitimate repatriation of capital illegally transferred abroad (Law 409/ 2001); (d) the socalled ‘Cirami’ law (Law 248/2002), named after the proposing deputy, that allows the accused to ask for a change to the presiding magistrate on the grounds of ‘legitimate doubt’ as to his or her impartiality. These measures were seen by many citizens as a renewed confirmation of Berlusconi’s battle against the magistracy, in which not only did he embark on multiple attempts to extract himself personally from the justice system, but he also gave free reign to illegal activities, and encouraged those so inclined to interpret freedom as carte blanche. Moreover, the response in defence of the democratic institutions, by magistrates in particular, came to a head in the wake of disappointment at the lack of legislative measures that should have followed the Mani pulite judiciary action to ‘clean up’ the public administration and the political class; a lack for which left and left-leaning governments were also responsible. The other focus of opposition, which is linked in many ways, was Berlusconi’s conflict of interests in the absence of a regulatory law to prevent the concentration of economic, political and media power in the same hands. Again, a weak and uncertain left was also complicit in this absence. Berlusconi’s ascent to government allowed him to hold the monopoly on television, as owner of the Mediaset network and now as controller of the public network, RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana). What could be better for a man and a party (FI) that since their first appearance have made political

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marketing and television surveys the keys to their success? Understandably, many people see this as a serious threat to the plurality of information, and therefore to truth and to the expression of dissent: in a word, a threat to democracy. It was in this context that the first actions of what would establish itself in a few months as the girotondi (Ring a Ring o’ Roses) movement, took place. They were limited actions, but symptomatic of a phase of grass-roots mobilization, and of collective creativity. On 15 September 2001 in Rome, the group Sciarpe gialle (Yellow Scarves) – a small group of citizens – began organizing regular demonstrations to protest against the conflict of interests. In Milan, on 28 September, the association Società Civile (Civil Society) advertised via their website a demonstration in front of the law courts – the scene of the Mani pulite investigations – to criticize the government’s alleged attacks against the legal system: issues such as the conflict of interests, the depenalization of accounting fraud, Letters Rogatory, lack of escorts for front-line magistrates. Solidarity with magistrates whose escorts had been removed inspired one group of women, Le Girandole (The Weathercocks), to organize another demonstration in front of the same law courts on 26 October.3 The increasing unease among magistrates, whose very autonomy was in danger, manifested itself in the suspension of hearings and in the resignation of some of them. This unease was clearly articulated in the alarming but decisive words of the Milan judge and symbol of the Mani pulite era, Francesco Saverio Borrelli: ‘Resist, resist, resist!’. Pronounced on 11 January 2002 as he was concluding his speech to inaugurate the judicial year – an event marked by many protests by magistrates and lawyers – Borrelli’s words were received in civil society as an alarm bell for a democratic emergency, and as a call to action. This was not slow in coming; indeed within two weeks the relationship between the government and the opposition had undergone a significant shift. In Florence on 2 January 2002, in the rain, between ten and fifteen thousand people took part in the ‘Professors March’, a demonstration organized by a group of left-wing university lecturers, led by the geologist Francesco Pardi and the historian Paul Ginsborg. In Rome on 19 January, the ministry of justice was ‘protected’. In Milan on 26 January thousands of individual citizens formed a human chain under the banner ‘Hand in hand for democracy’, which encircled the law courts in a protective gesture. This was the first girotondo (i.e. a demonstration in which protesters held hands to encircle symbolic buildings or symbols which needed to be ‘protected’), whose innovative qualities would be imitated in many Italian towns and cities. In this political climate, characterized as much by lively, spontaneous action by civil society as by the deafness and uncertainty of the official parliamentary opposition, a decisive event occurred: the brief, spur-of-the-moment intervention by the well-known Film Director Nanni Moretti triggered a liberating crisis on the left (see Chapter 8). The meeting to discuss justice, called by ministers of the Ulivo coalition (largely consisting of left-wing politicians) on 2 February in Piazza Navona, a historical square in Rome, was drawing to an end without any particularly incisive interventions. Suddenly, Nanni Moretti who for many represents the left’s critical conscience, took the microphone and declared, ‘With these leaders we’ll never win!’. His biting remarks totally wrong-footed the leaders present, and gained the support of the crowd. Moretti gave voice to a double feeling of indignation and disappointment: first, indignation at Berlusconi’s ‘self-made laws’, also known as ad personam laws; second, disappointment at the Democratici di Sinistra (DS) and their coalition, who had proved utterly unable to react to their electoral defeat, and whose squabbles left them undecided and out of touch with public opinion (see Chapter 5). What would have remained a small event, marked by the usual political polemics, unleashed an unprecedented and original grass-roots mobilization, which also provoked a critical debate that for some time inspired a new campaign of action by the political opposition to Berlusconi. As a consequence, despite some internal divisions, the political left reconnected with civil

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society, which reaches well beyond those who always support left-wing parties. This explains a rather unusual development: politicians and their associations began to participate in initiatives and demonstrations organized by social groups and associations, without encountering hostility and without monopolizing them. Next came ‘Legality day’, the demonstration on 23 February in Milan’s Palavobis concert hall, organized by Paolo Flores d’Arcais (director of the magazine MicroMega), Nando dalla Chiesa and various social groups.4 Participation was unexpectedly high (around 40,000 people), which proved sufficiently worrying to Berlusconi and his entourage that they conducted a demagogic media campaign against a supposed threat of violence and subversion. Berlusconi appeared particularly worried by the support that the movement for legality was gaining, even beyond the electorate of the centre-left. At a meeting at the Quirino Theatre in Rome, Moretti himself commented on the results of a Eurisko survey (published in Repubblica 12 March 2002): ‘This is the first opposition campaign that has managed to gain the support of a quarter of the other side’s electorate’. This support strengthened the movement and inspired girotondi and other initiatives across the peninsula, often to mark the spontaneous founding of new associations. Some people organized girotondi parties (which saw the participation of entire families, children and pets) around schools and around branches of RAI, as on 10 March 2002 in Rome, Catania, Turin, Trieste, Florence, Bari, Naples and Pescara. Some others circulated petitions for signatures; some proposed a referendum for the abolition of the law on Letters Rogatory and the depenalization of accounting fraud; some organized telematic girotondi (e-mail chains and collective petitions on some emblematic websites). Others suggested a boycott of the Mediaset networks that would decimate its early evening audience, when most advertisements are shown. Interest in this possibility motivated Umberto Eco’s light-hearted but intelligent suggestion to go beyond the limits of the girotondi to protest against Berlusconi’s television monopoly: Those who do not accept the monopoly can penalize Mediaset by refusing to buy the merchandize advertised on its networks [. . .] When engaging with a government-business, you don’t need flags and ideas; instead you go for its weak point, money. (Eco 2002) This suggestion was taken up by several groups, but the results remained modest (see Chapter 10). However the debates it inspired revealed that Eco had touched a nerve. Publishers and adver tisers were divided. Some felt that advertising agencies were unfairly hit by this initiative; some withdrew support considering it impractical; others thought it was an excellent idea, a just and legitimate call for a critical consumerism. Like the first girotondi, many initiatives came about as a result of small-scale plans, often by groups of friends or colleagues, indignant at Berlusconi’s policies, who wanted to act. They reportedly came together by spreading the word via the internet and mobile phones (Rossi 2002). Often – and in the most interesting initiatives – women took a prominent, active role, demonstrating the extent to which women can be active in constructing networks and planning events outside organized political circles in a post-industrial context. To give a few examples, it was women – the ‘Girandole’ – who were behind the ‘pro-magistrates’ demonstration of 26 October 2001; women organized the first girotondo on 26 January 2002; women ran the Senza bandiere (No flags) committee which organized the ‘human train’ around the RAI in Pescara; women organized the demonstrations and girotondo ‘Hand in hand for democracy’ on 17 February at the law courts; it was a woman, Simona Peverelli, who was behind the huge demonstration at the Palavobis in Milan. A further innovative aspect of the girotondi movement is the fact that it was largely a middleclass movement, whose participants included well-known figures involved in culture, the arts,

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theatre and more generally the advanced third sector: a social group that Paul Ginsborg has called the ‘reflexive’ middle classes (2003: 43), as opposed to the other middle classes, who privilege self-interest and are keen to avoid paying taxes. Alongside translators, bankers, lawyers, IT professionals and students, were also film directors (Bernardo Bertolucci, Mario Monicelli and Nanni Moretti), actors (Roberto Benigni, Dario Fo and Ottavia Piccolo), musicians and singers (Francesco De Gregori, Fiorella Mannoia, Nicola Piovani, Roberto Vecchioni), authors (Andrea Camilleri, Umberto Eco, Fernanda Pivano and Antonio Tabucchi) and other cultural figures. If the issues of legality and the defence of the rule of law were unifying themes which even ensured the participation of No Global activists, a broader consensus was achieved on the issue of rights, especially those linked to work and welfare. In the general climate of collective action, the demonstration organized in Rome by CGIL, the largest Italian trade union, on 23 March 2002 marked a high point.5 Although overshadowed by the potential political consequences and the demagogical ploys that followed the murder of Marco Biagi – the professor of labour law who was behind law 30/2003 on employment and the labour market – ambushed near his home a few days earlier by the Nuove Brigate Rosse (New Red Brigades), the demonstration drew over two million people from across the peninsula, rendering it one of the largest Italian protests of all time.6 Protesters included trade unions, workers, the girotondi and No Global activists, immigrants and ordinary citizens. Moreover, an unusual inter-generational solidarity was evident, as indicated by a banner reading ‘Sons marching for our rights with our fathers’. The large ‘protest party’ held in Rome on 14 September 2002 enjoyed similar levels of success; with almost a million participants it is considered the largest autonomously assembled demonstration in the history of the Republic. It was launched by Moretti’s exhortation ‘Let’s stay in touch’, and developed into such a plural and choral event that Vittorio Foa, a founding father of the Constitution and the left, was moved to declare, in his speech on the stage: ‘Today you have taught me that unity does not mean everyone thinking in the same way, but to be united in diversity. Here, today, I see the future’. Government forces and their media supporters reacted to the massive participation in these actions by attempting to discredit the protagonists and their requests. Besides grouping the concepts of protest, subversion and violence under the some label, they – quite contradictorily – alleged that they fuelled ‘anti-political’ sentiments, were politically manipulated and were motivated by electoral ambitions. It is clear that the girotondi were anything but anti-politics since, besides their effect of renewing political opposition, girotondi groups came together for political demonstrations (not necessarily linked to a specific party), as discussed above. It is also evident that participants were not being exploited, since they took part as individuals, and not as flag-carrying representatives of political parties. Finally, accusations of political ambitions never held water, as proved by the transparency of internal debate, entirely focused on maintaining the movement as spontaneous, varied and not affiliated to political parties, in keeping with its ‘prepolitical, therefore foundational, non-negotiable’ (d’Arcais 2002) objectives. The same author (one of the protagonists) declared, ‘The new forms of collaboration should always act as a catalyst rather than as an organising principle [. . .] collaborations should be like movements: with a variable geometry’ (ibid.) Protests against the ad personam laws soon followed, as a parliamentary majority approved the Cirami law which reintroduced legitimate doubt as grounds to transfer a trial. A torchlight procession of several thousand people was held in front of the Quirinal Palace (the presidential residence), asking the President of the Republic not to pass the law. During 2003 and 2004 other girotondi followed, almost as numerous as the government’s policies that were considered to destroy civil liberties or as infringements of constitutional law. However, these initiatives showed signs of fatigue and stagnation.

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The Decline, Rebirth and Legacy of Social Movements For some time (from the end of 2001 until mid-2003), an unplanned ‘division of labour’ was in place between No Global and girotondi activists; while some mobilized principally for the defence and development of social rights, others mobilized to defend civil and political rights. For some time, the Berlusconi government and the Italian right were caught in this crossfire. However, it is known that not only do movements alter with time, but they may also decline; sometimes this is because they change direction, sometimes because they have fulfilled their function. After 2003, the No Global movement went into decline, especially as regards its innovative cultural capacity, because it had changed direction, transforming rapidly from an anti-globalization movement to an anti-war movement. One indicator of change suffices: it began to define its adversaries ever more in politico-military terms and less in economiccultural terms. Ideological anti-Americanism would do the rest. This metamorphosis also followed its own particular course, with the progressive weakening of anti-American protest and the internal tensions between anti-war and non-violent components of the movement. Nevertheless, the second half of the decade saw a modest rebirth of anti-globalization mobilization, particularly in the countries of Southern Europe. In Italy, this mobilization had a local flavour: there were local community protests against military bases (the enlargement of the American military base in Vicenza), against the construction of high-speed railways (in Val Susa in Piedmont), and against choices of sites for landfill and incinerators (in Basilicata and in the area surrounding Naples). These protests created irritating problems for the government (which alternated between centre-right and centre-left leadership – see below), but were much smaller and accompanied by less compelling publicity than earlier in the decade. In addition, Italian No Global activists were discredited in 2003 through media attention devoted almost entirely to their more extremist and politicized components. The girotondi movement declined because it had largely fulfilled its function, to kick-start a paralysed, bickering parliamentary opposition, and to drive it to the defence of democratic culture and institutions. As to how much these movements achieved, that is another story. The Italian case can be distinguished from other national cases in Europe in terms of its political system that is very permeable to and receptive of social demands, but ill-equipped to translate these into effective policies. This is largely due to the fragmentation of the party system, which has resulted in both political instability and the endemic practice of compromise. Nonetheless, when it is not deviated from its purpose by the imposition of old ideologies, social movement action can convey values and cultural orientations which continue to support the development of democracy. I believe this to be the case for the No Global and girotondi movements. At times movements are driven to attempt political representation, as happened in 2008, five years after the period of the girotondi – years in which the second and the third Berlusconi governments were followed by the second Prodi government (17 May 2006 to 6 May 2008), a centre-left coalition of nine parties, whose tendency to argue led to its downfall. Former girotondi activists were spurred back into action by measures announced at the start of the fourth Berlusconi government, which took office with a large majority on 8 May 2008, as well as by the timidity of the opposing Partito Democratico (PD) and its secretary. Alarmed by governmental initiatives on issues of justice, of telephone tapping and security aimed at restricting the autonomy of magistrates and freedom of information, some activists reactivated the network to give voice to civil society. Many were less enthusiastic and more cynical than in the past: ‘We didn’t want to start again, but we don’t want to give in’, admits Nando Dalla Chiesa, one of the main organizers of the girotondi of 2008 (Rampino 2008). Protests were provoked by Berlusconi’s attempts to extract himself from a trial near its conclusions, as well as from another three in preparation: he tried to bring in a law which would block 100,000

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trials alleged linked to ‘minor’ offences, and he was determined to drastically limit telephone surveillance (which led to his being charged), establishing heavy penalties for magistrates who order it and journalists who publish it.7 On 23 June 2008 a protest was held at the law courts in Milan, organized through word of mouth and web resources of the ‘Milanese Committee for Legality’ and the association ‘Article 21’ (the article of the Italian Constitution that protects freedom of thought). Given the nature of the democratic emergency, the mobilization grew rapidly; three days later, at the initiative of the magazine MicroMega and Di Pietro’s party Italia dei Valori (IDV), a demonstration against the ad personam laws was planned to take place in Rome on 8 July, in Piazza Navona, the same square in which Nanni Moretti had shaken up the leaders of the left some years earlier. Although participation was somewhat limited, the demonstration received the support of artists and intellectuals who had been involved in previous girotondi such as Umberto Eco, who declared, ‘When the majority claims to be right all the time, and the minority doesn’t react, democracy is in danger’ (Eco 2008). The event was strengthened by simultaneous demonstrations in other Italian cities, and in London and Athens. Rather unexpectedly, it proved politically disturbing in the sense that it unsettled some participants, sympathizers and onlookers. Many people wished to distance themselves from statements by Sabina Guzzanti (on stage) and Beppe Grillo (via video), two biting political comedians who are much loved (especially Guzzanti) by the left (see Chapters 7 and 10). Alongside irreverent, violent and scurrilous jokes that departed from the main issues, Flores d’Arcais launched a controversial attack on the President of the Republic, criticizing Giorgio Napolitano’s message to members of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura (Magistrates Governing Body [CSM]), to dissuade them from overstepping their limits by formulating views on laws proposed by the government (in this instance, relating to security). This convinced Walter Veltroni, secretary of the PD, to break ties with Di Pietro, after the electoral alliance with his IDV party. The most widely shared criticism of the organizers, especially of Di Pietro and Flores d’Arcais, was that they gave space and legitimacy to the extremism and anti-politics of Beppe Grillo, as well as privileging the careers of the two comedians.8 Their interventions can be considered anti-politics in that they attacked, mocked and discredited the entire political class, and with it the institutions of democracy, thanks to the facile appeal of demagogical populism. Some of the harshest criticism came from Nanni Moretti – considered by many as the movement’s conscience – who accused the organizers of having ‘spoiled everything’: ‘The performances of Grillo and Guzzanti have tarnished the aims of this event and even the previous actions by the movement in 2002’ (Poli 2008). Moretti considered the demonstration of 8 July 2008 as a ‘parody of the girotondi’, commenting further: ‘We were engaged in politics, not anti-politics. We were associations that developed outside the parties but that wanted to delegate to the parties of the left who were still in shock after their defeat in May 2001’ (Poli 2008). The whole story of the girotondi is a further demonstration – at first in a positive and later in a negative way – of both how in post-industrial societies the mobilization of civil society and public opinion can be decisive in defining the stakes and in demanding social and political change, and how much the outcome depends on the responsiveness of political forces, as well as on the autonomy of the movement. The Italian political anomaly consists of a Premier who, as the philosopher Norberto Bobbio was swift to remark, embodies economic, political, ideological and cultural (media) power, the division of which is a fundamental condition for democracy and the concentration of which is at the origin of regimes that political theory defines as despotic. Yet again, it is the director of Il caimano, Nanni Moretti, who denounces the gravity of the Italian situation: ‘The problem with this country is that there is by now a sort of addiction. Something has happened in people’s heads, as if the DNA of Italians has changed’.9

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This is a situation that requires a more determined reaction than hitherto. Is it possible? Moretti has commented bitterly: ‘Today in Italy public ethics are below zero [. . .] There is a general state of addiction. We consider normal, things that are not’ (Nigro 2008). If he is right, then no positive prognosis can reasonably be expected. If most of the population appears to be unaffected by or resigned to this as democracy’s destiny, what can stop the ‘triumph of the corrupt?’ (Bobbio 2008: 57). Given that, in my view, the protest movement will have to wait several years before entering another ascending phase of the social cycle, I am not sure that it is capable of this.[10] Perhaps what is required is for a flood of disappointment in Berlusconi and his coalition (particularly in its economic policies) to well up, in the face of the great expectations that these politicians themselves falsely raised.

Notes 1. Partly heir to multiple movements – the women’s, environmental, non-violent, consumer and fair-trade movements – and partly composed of new associative groups, the anti-globalization movement was established and began to develop in the 1990s. In 1995, its demonstrations (against the World Bank Meeting in Madrid; in support of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing; in Copenhagen for the UN World Summit for Social Development), began clearly to assume the unified and global character that distinguishes it from previous movements. However, it was with the protests in Seattle in 1999 that the movement gained global notoriety and influence. 2. See Glossary. 3. Justifying his actions as a better use of police resources, the minister of the interior removed the escort from several magistrates who had been involved in important anti-Mafia investigations, including Ilda Boccassini who was at risk after having persecuted the killers of the anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone. At the time, Boccassini was public prosecutor in the Toghe sporche (Dirty robes) trial which accused Berlusconi of having corrupted a judge. 4. MicroMega is a political and cultural magazine founded in 1986 that acts as a mouthpiece for intellectuals and groups in civil society, especially those of the liberal-radical left which are often critical of the institutional left. 5. The demonstration was to defend the rights of workers and the welfare state in general, against the liberal and anti-trade union policies of the Berlusconi government, which aimed to introduce more flexible forms of short-term employment contracts, to allow more flexibility in business and individual employment, less protection for employees and the liberalization of employment offices. In particular, demonstrations were provoked by renewed attempts to modify Article 18 of the ‘Workers’ Statute’, the 1970 law approved in the wake of trade union victories at the end of the 1960s which regulates working conditions, employees’ rights and forms of union representation. The changes would cancel the right of the individual employee dismissed without good reason (as confirmed by a judge) to be reinstated in his or her post, and to receive financial compensation. 6. It is not clear to what extent the Nuove Brigate Rosse, who are few in number and have almost no support, may be descendants of the Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades), a terrorist organization which operated throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, bloodying the country (70 dead and many others injured) and threatening democratic life, before being quashed at the end of the 1980s. They carried out two savage murders of university professors – Massimo D’Antona in 1999 and Marco Biagi in 2002 – both of whom were working as labour law consultants to the government, respectively the centre-left government of Massimo D’Alema and Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government.

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7. Obliged by protests from several directions to renounce the law intended to block or quash trials, Berlusconi nevertheless managed to stop his own trial thanks to a new law upholding the immunity of the President of the Republic, the head of government, and the presidents of the two Houses of Parliament for the duration of their mandates (Law 124/2008). 8. The comedian Beppe Grillo is famous for his monologues that have become ever more caustic and politically oriented over the years, ultimately spawning an opinion movement ‘grillismo’, which expresses the discontent and rage of many, outside or disappointed by the political parties, against Berlusconi or against the political class in general. On Grillo’s use of the internet see Chapter 10. 9. A statement made on the news bulletin of RAI 3 on 4 July 2008. 10. On the cycle of social participation see Ceri (2002: 52–61), and, in a more analytical vein, Hirschman 1982.

References Andretta, M., della Porta, D. and Mosca, L. (2002), Global, noglobal, newglobal. La protesta contro il G8 a Genova. Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza. Bobbio, N. (2008), Contro i nuovi dispotismi. Scritti sul berlusconismo. Bari: Edizioni Dedalo. Ceri, P. (2002), Movimenti globali. La protesta nel XXI secolo. Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza. — (2004), ‘I no global’, in F. Tuccari (ed.), L’opposizione al governo Berlusconi. Rome and Bari: Editori Laterza, pp. 169–82. — (2006), ‘Tecnopolitica e deocrazia’, in B. Consarelli (ed.), Spazio e politica nella modernità tecnologica. Florence: Florence University Press, pp. 1–13. — (2007), ‘How social movements have changed’, Annual Review of Italian Sociology, pp. 157–64. d’Arcais, P. (2002), ‘Undici riflessioni sui movimenti’, MicroMega, 2, available at: www.manipulite.it/ micromega/flores_0202.htm. Accessed 23 September 2008. — (2006), Il ventennio populista. Da Craxi a Berlusconi (passando per D’Alema). Rome: Fazi Editore. della Porta, D. and Piazza, G. (2008), Voices of the Valley, Voices of the Straits. How Protest Changes Communities (Protest, Culture & Society). Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books. Eco, U. (2002), ‘Lo sciopero dei consumatori della pasta Cunegonda’, Repubblica, 20 April. — (2008), ‘In Italia la democrazia è in pericolo’, Repubblica, 2 July. Fruci, G. L. (2003), ‘L’orizzonte irraggiungibile: L’identità dei social forum fra utopia e storia’, Quaderni di Sociologia, 47, (33), pp. 59–70. Ginsborg, P. (2003), Italy and its Discontents, 1980–2003. London: Penguin. Hibberd, M. (2004), ‘La Rai e il governo di centro-destra: Quale futuro per 50 anni di televisione pubblica?’, in V. Della Sala and S. Fabbrini (eds), Politica in Italia. I fatti dell’anno e le interpretazioni. Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 190–206. Hirschman, A. O. (1982), Shifting Involvements: Private Interest and Public Action. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Morlino, L. and Tarchi, M. (2006), Partiti e caso italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino. Nelken, D. (2003), ‘Berlusconi e i giudici: Legittimi sospetti?’, in J. Blondel and P. Segatti (eds), Politica in Italia. I fatti dell’anno e le interpretazioni. Bologna: Il Mulino. Nigro, L. (2008), ‘Moretti: “Il Caimano ci ha cambiati solo qui non si processa il premier” ’, Repubblica, 1 August. Poli, S. (2008), ‘Che disastro in Piazza Navona sporcata la storia dei movimenti’, Repubblica, 11 July. Rampino, A. (2008), ‘Pronti alla piazza, e a sinistra torna la voglia di girotondi’, Stampa, 23 June. Rossi, S. (2002), ‘Il popolo dei girotondi va ad assediare la Rai’, Repubblica, 8 March. Tarchi, M. (2003), L’Italia populista. Dal qualunquismo ai girotondi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Tranfaglia, N. (2003), La transizione italiana. Storia di un decennio. Milan: Garzanti. Tyler, P. (2003), ‘Threats and responses: News analysis; a new power in the streets’, New York Times, 17 February.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Silenced Humour on RAI TV: Daniele Luttazzi, Sabina Guzzanti & Co. Monica Boria

Introduction The system of administration of state TV has traditionally given incoming governments control of RAI. Soon after the victory of the centre-right in April 2001, Berlusconi’s plans to replace key figures in RAI, in order to consolidate his government’s control of the media, began. Despite assurances during the electoral campaign that he would not interfere with RAI, a week after his election, the press was already reporting cases of harassment of left-wing personalities, announcements of early resignations and a toning down of news reporting concerning the centre-right (Carroll 2001:11; Clarke 2003: 24). The efforts of the Berlusconi governments to curtail criticism and opposition within RAI have been widespread and have affected both illustrious artists, such as Nobel laureate Dario Fo, and respected (and politically moderate) journalists such as Enzo Biagi. The first major intervention in RAI occurred during Berlusconi’s state visit to Bulgaria as Italy’s Prime Minister in April 2002. Here, Berlusconi condemned the ‘criminal use’ of public television by renowned journalists Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro and comedian Daniele Luttazzi. After months of escalating pressures, this ‘Bulgarian edict’, as it has come to be known, led to the removal of their programmes from RAI schedules and the termination of their contracts (see Chapter 16). Media scholar and practitioner, Alberto Abruzzese, has talked of the unleashing of ‘a flood of censorship of a rather crude kind’ (2005: 182) by Berlusconi. This is in contrast with ‘the restrained and at times oblique methods of control and conditioning of RAI carried out by political parties before the 1990s’ (ibid.). Humorous and satirical programmes, in particular, were the recurrent target of Berlusconi’s governments (Gomez, Travaglio 2004) and it is for this reason that I focus on them in this chapter. Examples of silenced humour range from guest appearances truncated at short notice to the outright suspension of programmes and banning of the ‘incriminated’ artist. Paolo Rossi, stand-up comedian and theatre actor of the Fo school, was one of those to suffer (see Chapter 9). His case is symptomatic of a type of censorship which had been typical within RAI in previous decades. No ban fell on Rossi as an artist: it was his choice of texts which was deemed inappropriate for the political climate at that time. A case of censorship occurred when Rossi was due to make a guest appearance on a popular Sunday show, Domenica in (Sunday In), in November 2003: when he was told by RAI management that the piece he had chosen (i.e. Pericles’s monologue, written by Thucydides in the 5 BC) was considered too strong, he declined the invitation to appear (ibid.: 204–5). Pericles’ speech on good government, the respect for magistrates, and the separation of public and personal business must have sounded like a subtle anti-Berlusconian manifesto. The same could be said of the truly universal satires

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of Molière, which inspired Rossi’s (2002) theatrical pièce Questa sera si recita Molière (Tonight We Play Molière). Rossi’s play was included by RAI 2 in the long-standing late-night cultural programme Palcoscenico (The Stage), yet only Part 1 was broadcast in January 2005. Despite the excellent audience figures, Part 2 was never aired and RAI provided no reasons for this cancellation. In Rossi’s opinion, it was the parallels between the seventeenth-century satire and Italy’s current affairs which led to the censorship (Repubblica 14 January 2005). In this chapter I focus on two different comedians, Daniele Luttazzi and Sabina Guzzanti, as their cases best embody the effects of that ‘harsh’ censorship referred to by Abruzzese above. Their cases illustrate both the instrumental use of legal action to stop the broadcasting of sensitive information, and, on a discursive level, the mounting debate in the press on the boundaries of satire and comedy. The space of infotainment on public television was highly contested at this time, in the light of the par condicio law that demanded that political parties were given equal visibility on television during elections. Luttazzi was expelled from RAI in March 2001 and his late-night show Satyricon on RAI 2 was suspended, whereas Guzzanti’s Raiot. Armi di distrazione di massa (Raiot. Weapons of Mass Distraction), commissioned by RAI 3, was stopped after the first episode in November 2003. Officially, these instances of censorship have been justified on the grounds of strong language or defamation, but, in reality, libel law was used by the Prime Minister and his company, Mediaset, as a deterrent to prevent sensitive information about himself, his companies and his entourage being discussed or satirized on television. It is established thinking that it is in modern dictatorships and in times of socio-political change and turmoil that political humour finds fertile ground (Benton 1988; Keighron 1998; Wagg 1992). Italy has witnessed recurrent surges of satirical impetus in the last 40 years, and these have coincided precisely with times of social unrest or political scandals.1 The Berlusconi years mark yet another chapter in this story, one that follows similar patterns of protest and repression, but that stands out for the unprecedented power afforded to a media tycoon who was also Prime Minister. In this chapter I will try to tease out the reasons for the silencing of humour on RAI during the second and third Berlusconi governments. These reasons, I argue, were both political and cultural. In political terms, artists affiliated with the left or with left-wing values have generally been ostracized by the Berlusconi government, and, more importantly, it was the sensitive political content of certain programmes which provoked a purge or prevented broadcasting altogether. In cultural terms, the question of what constitutes political satire, its aesthetics and ethics, and the notion of freedom of expression, were also sites of debate among artists, intellectuals (notably journalists) and politicians. Before considering the case studies, I will provide an overview of the place of humour and comedy, as well as its censorship, in Italian state TV. In mentioning a few representative examples of past practices, I will point to the similarities with the cases in question but also to the differences from them.

Humour and Censorship on RAI TV A cursory glance at the history of humour on RAI reveals that humour, in the form of sketches in variety shows, made an early appearance on Italian television. Its popularity with audiences quickly made it a mainstay of broadcasting (Caprettini 2004: 346–50; Di Marco, Ortoleva 2004: 145–61). The humour that prevailed in early RAI broadcasts was of a ‘category-routinized conservative type’ (Paton 1988: 214), with ‘family jokes’ about wives, mothers-in-law, nagging children, jokes and sketches based on misunderstandings, comedy about Northerners and

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Southerners, and so on. This kind of humour came from a legacy of vaudeville and theatre variety shows, unsurprising perhaps given that the new TV-comedians were coming from this tradition. This type of humour was soon complemented by parodies of television itself: of its formats, its most popular programmes and of the stars it showcased. Until the late 1960s, the censorship regime within RAI was very restrictive and bigoted, and excluded not only references to sex, divorce and prostitution, but also to politics and civic institutions in general.2 The ruling Democrazia Cristiana party (DC) carried out regular scrutinies of RAI’s planning, production and scheduling activity, and subtle pressure was exercised to ensure compatibility with government policies and key party politics (Cesari 1982: 185–93; Roghi 2005: 151–4). If no TV genre has been spared from cuts, manipulations and outright cancellations since RAI started its regular broadcasts in 1954, the vicissitudes of the censorship of humour reveal a particularly ambiguous response by RAI management: comedy’s popularity among audiences has led the establishment to always endeavour to showcase comic talents; however, they have also invariably tried to contain its potential irreverence (see Abruzzese 2005; Caroli 2003; Cesari 1982: 185–93; D’Arcangeli 2005; Roghi 2005). One of the first cases of censorship of humour on RAI involved the duo Tognazzi and Vianello. Their double acts in the variety show Un due tre (1954–59) are among the most memorable and celebrated; they often parodied television, occasionally also gently mocking the establishment. The live broadcasting and last-minute scriptwriting left them scope for changes and improvization. This eventually, however, cost them their jobs and a few years’ ban from RAI.3 In the 1960s, when the less conservative strand of the DC became more powerful, a timid opening towards more topical social issues and current affairs became apparent. This was an important time of growth for RAI, with the launch of a new channel in 1961 and a new style of leadership. The role of censorship, however, remained unchanged, with politically sensitive issues remaining ostracized. The most notorious case in this period was that of Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame, compères of the 1962 edition of the popular show Canzonissima. The fact that the Fos were offered the role was a sign not just of their popularity but also of the changing political climate. It was in this year, in fact, that the increased political influence of the left-wing factions within the DC led the party into a coalition with the Socialists. However, the politicized content of the Fos’ sketches generated a mounting controversy among both politicians and the press, and this led to increasing pressures on the couple by RAI. Unwilling to give in to further cuts to their material, the Fos preferred to leave the show, which continued without them.4 The liberalization of the airwaves in 1976, marking the end of RAI’s monopoly and the arrival of commercial television, had a huge impact on RAI’s ethos and schedules. In order to compete with the commercial channels, RAI shifted to a consumer-oriented model. News and cultural programmes were downgraded in importance and confined to late-evening slots, whereas long entertainment programmes, with a mix of celebrities, music and sport, coupled with quiz shows and talk shows became predominant. The logic that informed the ‘neo-televisione’ (Eco 1983) – the kind of commercial television that emerged both on RAI and Mediaset following Berlusconi’s entry into television – was dominated by commercial concerns to secure competitive audience shares and thus advertising revenues. If the strict, prudish censorship code slowly broke down, as strong language and nudity gradually become a normal feature of television, political censorship continued unabashed. In 1986 Beppe Grillo’s jokes about the Socialists (then in power) resulted in a five-year ban from RAI. His rehabilitation in the 1990s was short lived, however: despite his popularity with audiences and critics, he suffered censorship again in 1996, and left state TV for good (Caroli 2003: 245–7; Grasso 2003: 317–8).5

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The more recent cases of censorship, like those of Guzzanti and Luttazzi, are very similar to those of the Fos, Grillo and others, as it is the politically sensitive content of the humour that has aroused the government’s anger, and this is then followed by pressure from political parties – usually backed by the press – to force RAI to remove the artists or programmes concerned. Controversial footage disappears and today’s artists, like their predecessors, move or return to alternative spaces: the stage, the book and other media.6 These cases differ, however, in an important way. Today, the intimidation posed by multimillion legal suits waged against RAI and the comedians themselves is hard to resist. Under Italian law, the notion of what is considered defamatory is flexible and the extent of the damage depends on many factors, among them the status and professional activity of the offended (Gavallotti 2006: 249). As a result of Berlusconi’s institutional roles, as leader of his party as well as Prime Minister, and his prominent position as a businessman, he and his company have made an aggressive use of libel law, and this has indeed achieved a ‘chilling effect’ (Barendt et al. 1997) on the Italian media, inducing a culture of self-censorship and caution. However, this bleak picture has a silver lining: in the case of Guzzanti, I will argue that the censorship and the legal action sparked a creative process and a mobilization that is perhaps the most accomplished and effective example of resistance of this kind in the period in question.

Luttazzi’s Satyricon Daniele Luttazzi’s reputation as a ‘troublemaker’ dates back to one of his first appearances on television.7 In 1987, on a popular talk show on one of Mediaset’s channels, his caustic remarks about a case of paedophilia turned him into a ‘silent host’ for the remaining contracted episodes. In 1989, on RAI 2 a joke against the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) cost him five years of exile from RAI. His return was on the innovative and alternative RAI 3, where he co-wrote and co-hosted a successful Saturday daytime magazine that made him known to a wider audience.8 Luttazzi’s real popularity, however, was established between 1996 and 1998 with Mai dire gol (Never Say Goal) (Italia 1, 1990–2001), a very successful programme that originated as a humorous commentary on the idiocies of the Italian football season and gradually turned into a revue of comedy sketches, with its slogans and catchphrases entering youth jargon and popular culture (Grasso 2003: 403–4). The success of Mai dire gol paved the way for his first solo show, Barracuda (Italia 1, 1999), a late-night talk show modelled on the famous David Letterman Show broadcast on American television. The show consisted of brief sketches, humorous commercials and video clips, and aimed to comment on current affairs, politics and society, and popular culture. As in the American show, Luttazzi sat at a desk, interviewing prominent artists, sportspeople and intellectuals. A similar format was followed for his next programme, Satyricon. Satyricon ran on RAI 2 from 10 January until 11 April 2001 with around 2.5 million viewers, almost 20 per cent of the share (Gomez, Travaglio 2004: 29). The decision to suspend the programme was taken on the basis of the controversies generated by one particular show. On 14 March Luttazzi invited journalist Marco Travaglio to talk about his latest book, an exposé of Berlusconi, his business fortunes, his alleged Mafia connections and his legal troubles.9 The interview lasted for about twenty-five minutes during which time Travaglio discussed the investigation carried out by judges in Palermo, in order to shed light on suspicious transfers of funds between Berlusconi’s holdings (Fininvest) in the early 1970s. Travaglio explained that some of the banks involved had been known to the judges as those which dealt with money laundering for the Mafia. Travaglio discussed Berlusconi’s alleged connections with the Mafia through Vittorio Mangano. Mangano had been employed by Berlusconi at his villa near Milan, but was later to receive a life sentence for Mafia crimes at the Maxi-trial in Palermo, when he was found

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to be part of that infiltration process of the Sicilian Mafia in the North in the 1970s, the period in which Cosa Nostra had started consolidating its activities in Italy’s financial capital, Milan (Cremagnani, Deaglio 2006: 32–3). As the programme proceeded, a few humorous remarks on Luttazzi’s part (‘Are you trying to say that we are both dead?’; ‘How many lawsuits can we expect?’) and the applause of the audience underlined the excitement and the tension in the studio. This intensified as the interview unfolded and more allegations of Mafia connections and political corruption were revealed. It was this interview that prompted the lawsuit against Luttazzi, Travaglio and RAI management, which in turn led to the suspension of the programme and the banning of Luttazzi from RAI.10 The day after the broadcast, Berlusconi himself announced legal action for defamation and in the weeks that followed, the media hype on the case was relentless, with Berlusconi and his party’s arguments taking the lion’s share of the coverage. The reaction of the institutional left, then in power, was mixed: Walter Veltroni, future leader of the Partito Democratico (PD), and some members of the Federazione dei Verdi defended the programme and the principles of freedom of information and the right to satire. Massimo D’Alema, the former Prime Minister, on the other hand, worried about the ‘boomerang’ effect on his party in view of the forthcoming elections. Other members of the Democratici di Sinistra (DS) distanced themselves, embracing the arguments of the centre-right and accusing Luttazzi, and RAI, of illegitimate use of the public service when the elections were just around the corner (Gomez, Travaglio 2004: 28–62). This reaction is perhaps revealing of the impasse to which the centre-left had gradually come. They were shown as incapable of mounting a serious opposition partly because intimidated by a powerful adversary and partly because they were themselves part of a system that the satirists were exposing. It is no surprise then that Luttazzi has not been invited back to host a programme on RAI, even after the return of the centre-left to power in 2006.11 Banned from television, Luttazzi has, however, continued his work and his ‘resistance’ in various ways: he has written monologues and sketches, toured Italy with his shows, released his first album, maintained a popular blog, and, of course, he has been busy dealing with the libel cases brought against him. In 2002, in one of his shows, he joked about his censorship case, explaining his commitment as follows: I have been sued for public defamation, because at the end of the interview with Travaglio I said: ‘You are a free journalist in a shit country’. In court, I explained to the judge that I did not mean the entire country: I love my country otherwise I wouldn’t be a satirist. I do this job because I care about my country. What I meant was the Italy as it had emerged from that interview: the country of false accounting, tax evasion, attacks against magistrates. In short, the country which won the election. (Luttazzi 2002: 13)12 In his shows Berlusconi and his entourage were a frequent butt of Luttazzi’s jokes: Berlusconi is very pleased with his first 100 days in government. I’m not surprised. He has practically decriminalized false accounting, stopped the Swiss letters rogatory, condoned illegal off-shore investment. I’ve never seen an innocent person being so busy getting away with it. The reality is Berlusconi is a creative guy. For him the penal code is a catalogue of options. (Luttazzi 2002: 14) But jokes on sex and trivia also feature large in his shows, because he believes that since Aristophanes’ times, satire has to do with politics, religion, sex and death. Luttazzi’s humour is cerebral, intellectual, often caustic, and it relies more on the rhythm and punch lines of his discourse than on the body, although his facial expressions and mimicry punctuate it effectively.

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In his work, including that of Satyricon, Luttazzi has used humour in order to try to uncover the fallacies of a system of political governance where the democratic process has gradually been infiltrated by illegality and malpractice. As it has been the political content of his humour which has caused him serious trouble on television, it would appear that in Italy when a comedian’s aim to entertain is combined with a political stance and a critique of the establishment, television humour becomes problematic and the axe of censorship falls. This serious side of Luttazzi (and Guzzanti’s) humour has been regarded as something of a problem in the public debate generated by the silencing of their voices, as if humour could not also make us think about serious issues. The most frequent objections in the press have been that their work is not really funny or that they are passing off political propaganda as entertainment. Without digressing into comparisons across countries, it is worth mentioning that comedians and satirical artists, from David Letterman to Michael Moore in the United States of America, and from Rory Bremner to Ian Hislop in Britain, have demonstrated that the educational or informative side of their work does not detract from the quality of their humour, nor does it prevent them from access to television. If it is accepted, outside of Italy, that ‘satire is not necessarily funny’ (Keighron 1998: 128), broadcasters everywhere are conscious of the implications of political humour. In the United Kingdom, for example, ‘broadcasting organisations are ultimately dependent on government [. . .] so while direct censorship is uncommon in Britain, television companies are reluctant to bring themselves into confrontation with government’ (Bignell 2004: 231). For Jon Plowman, head of entertainment at the BBC until 2007, the danger of broadcasting satire, that is to say ‘balancing politics and comedy, in the way that Bremner attempts, is not worth the risk’ (Keighron 1998: 129). As a consequence, one of Guzzanti’s sources of inspiration, Rory Bremner’s satirical show Bremner, Bird & Fortune, with its caustic remarks on British governments’ politics, has long been produced by Channel Four, rather than the BBC. The problem for Italian comedians is that if the doors of the public broadcaster, RAI, are closed to them, there are no other channels to go to since Berlusconi himself owns all major private terrestrial channels.

Guzzanti’s Raiot Sabina Guzzanti’s humour combines the art of impressionism with that of biting social and political satire. Guzzanti has been a familiar face among Italian audiences since the early 1990s, when the innovative satirical programme Avanzi (Leftovers 1991–93) launched her. This show by Serena Dandini (who also appeared as compère), broadcast on RAI 3, is by now a landmark of Italian television humour and satire and shaped Guzzanti’s status as an enfant terrible, long before the censorship case. One of her best-remembered impersonations was that of the porn star Moana Pozzi. That Moana had founded a political party at the time (1991) and was running for parliament, unbridled Guzzanti’s humorous imagination with clever and caustic results. With Berlusconi’s entry into the political scene in 1994, Guzzanti’s characters took on more political connotations, as she began to do impersonations of Berlusconi and other politicians. This politicization was a symptom, no doubt, of a process of personal and artistic growth, but also of a conscious choice to provide more committed political counter-information. The characters she creates have been seen as modern versions of the masks of the Commedia dell’Arte: the arrogant leader of the left, D’Alema, appeared as a modern-day Capitan Fracassa, the sly but foolish Berlusconi as a new Pantalone (Fano 2003). Guzzanti’s art of impersonation lies precisely in the creation of a stock figure, a mask, that helps reveal the ‘true’ nature of the character at once; at the same time the accurate make-up and costumes that contrast with the unrefined traits of the type, create a caricature effect that makes the send-up immediately effective.

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Guzzanti later made and took part in films, wrote books, and regularly toured Italy playing out her characters, commenting on current affairs, and deriding general categories of the human spirit. On television she has featured on Dandini’s satirical programmes, the Pippo Kennedy Show (1997) and L’ottavo nano (The Eight Dwarf 2001), both a sort of re-make of the previous Avanzi. These shows were broadcast on prime time on RAI 2 and L’ottavo nano was repeatedly the object of complaints by the centre-right, then in opposition, because of some hilarious but controversial parodies staged by Corrado Guzzanti, Sabina’s brother (Fiumarola 2001; Tonelli 2001). An important aspect of Dandini’s programmes was their appeal to a young, well-educated, left-leaning audience. Any account of Guzzanti’s recent work that fails to consider her texts’ ecstatic reception by the left-wing public and press would be missing an important point: the text inscribes the rhetorical appeal to this constituency in the text itself, as I will discuss below. Guzzanti’s late-night satirical television series Raiot was commissioned by RAI 3 and then cancelled after just one episode in November 2003. As the five episodes are not available I will have to focus only on the first one, which remains the only one broadcast to date. The show combined Guzzanti’s impersonations with other sketches, and linked them together with her own programmatically subversive commentary, a subversion reflected in the show’s title. ‘Raiot’, pronounced like the English ‘riot’, alludes to a rebellion against the gradual takeover of all terrestrial TV under Berlusconi, and this is also visually expressed in the title sequence, where the logo of the four private channels is incorporated in that of RAI. The sequence concludes with the image of an open mouth shouting the title of the programme, an open cry for an eighth alternative channel (RAI Otto), visually expressed with the number 8 on the backdrop of the set. The format of the programme and its contents were in effect conceived as an act of counterinformation and protest against controversial political issues, from Berlusconi’s conflict of interests to the war in Iraq. Guzzanti creates for herself the character of the comedian-warrior (Uma Thurman style). In this role she comes on stage looking circumspect and armed with a sword because, she declares, ‘it is up to comedians to inform about what’s going on in Italy today’. She then adds that ‘it is hard for satirists these days’. She then refers to Fo, Grillo, Luttazzi and others as examples of comedians providing serious information to the public, and in so doing positions her work alongside that of her colleagues. Aware of the possible consequences that her programme, like theirs, may incur, she concludes the show with a ‘See you next Sunday, maybe’. The sketch that led to the lawsuits by Mediaset and Berlusconi is a double act in which Guzzanti takes the role of a Spanish journalist who interviews Maurizio Gasparri, then minister for communications, impersonated by actor Neri Marcorè. The sketch revolves around the Gasparri law, one of the most controversial Bills presented during the Berlusconi governments: the long-awaited reform of television. This law has been seen as a sanction of the temporary waiver from the impositions of the Maccanico law put in place by the Berlusconi government in 2003. With the Gasparri law, in effect, both Rete 4 and RAI 3 could operate ‘legally’ again (Haraszti 2005: 7; and see Chapter 2). In the sketch, Guzzanti plays a journalist who presses Marcorè-Gasparri on this legislation, which would overturn the ruling of the Constitutional Court that would have led to Berlusconi moving his Rete 4 channel from terrestrial to satellite television. Marcorè’s impersonation is highly amusing in that, in exaggerating Gasparri’s Roman accent, it represents the minister as a cocky and dim Latin lover, who cracks bad jokes, is ignorant about the bill, but has no doubts about whose interests he is there to protect. The sketch, however, also shows us that Guzzanti can be seen as pursuing a one-sided agenda, a criticism often levelled against her. In the sketch, Guzzanti fails to point out that the ‘Maccanico law’, which envisaged the moving of Rete 4 to satellite, also proposed the transformation of RAI 3 into a publicity-free channel, and this could have had serious implications for its survival, due to the consequent loss of revenue.

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It is important to remember, however, that in her show Guzzanti exposes not just a specific piece of legislation, but the politics of the centre-right government, which has repeatedly put forward legislation to protect Berlusconi’s interests. In the sketch above, Marcorè’s impression, for instance, is not just the send-up of a right-wing politician (Gasparri belonged to the post-Fascist Alleanza Nazionale) but of the unsophisticated and rude neo-con politician, who lacks manners as much as convincing arguments (and argumentative skills). In her role as cheeky Spanish reporter, Guzzanti also implicitly criticizes the Italian press, too intimidated by Berlusconi’s power to ask certain questions. Guzzanti however does not spare the left either. In a role she assumes repeatedly in the episode, she brilliantly impersonates Lucia Annunziata, then president of RAI and seen as left-leaning. Through Annunziata, she also mocks those who, in the wake of Luttazzi’s case, advocated restraint towards comedy and satire. Distorting Annunziata’s Southern accent, Guzzanti-Annunziata talks about establishing thresholds of satire, and lays bare the stalemate of the centre-left within RAI’s Board of Management, which was dominated by the centre-right. After initial doubts, Paolo Ruffini, the director of RAI 3, eventually decided to let Guzzanti’s programme go ahead. However, when he became the subject of a lawsuit from Mediaset, RAI caved in after the first broadcast, notwithstanding an average audience of 1.8 million. Mediaset’s action for libel was against Guzzanti’s allegation that its Rete 4 channel was on air without proper authorization, as discussed above. The remaining five shows have still not been shown, despite a court ruling in January 2004 which stated that Mediaset’s concerns had been unfounded, and that what Guzzanti had claimed in her satirical work was actually true (Gomez, Travaglio, 2004: 165–203). The removal of Raiot did not prevent Guzzanti from pursuing her protest agenda. Banned from television, she decided to adapt the core of her programme for the stage and renamed it Reperto Raiot. This show touched over thirty Italian cities. The first show at the Auditorium in Rome turned into a protest event against television censorship, attracting over 5,000 people (Repubblica 23 November 2003). Interestingly, the first fifteen minutes of the show are set in a ‘Museum of Resistance’ of the distant future. The narrow-minded and highly politicized media brouhaha surrounding the Raiot case led Guzzanti to make a documentary – Michael Moore style – on the censorship of her programme. In Viva Zapatero! (2005) Guzzanti takes the closure of Raiot as a platform to compare attitudes to satire, freedom of information and political influence in Italy and Europe. She lays bare Berlusconi’s stranglehold on the Italian media and the complacency of politicians and RAI’s executives, and manages to keep the tone of her denunciation upbeat and entertaining. Presented out of competition at the 2005 Venice film festival it received a 15-minute standing ovation and its subsequent release was equally popular at the box office (Bonsaver 2006: 24). In the book that accompanies the DVD release of the documentary, Guzzanti explains how and why the film was made and one of her statements well sums up, I believe, what drives her commitment: The problem of the lack of information (on television) has unthinkable consequences. It is linked to ignorance, superstition, and the exploitation of people’s gullibility, the worst of manipulations. The interference of the Catholic Church in our life, which is not directly addressed in the film, is a consequence of the lack of information. Given more freedom, our news broadcasters would not devote so much space to the Pope and the Vatican, and to the comments of people whose opinions are simply backward, dangerous, not educational and ultimately uninteresting. Above all, in relation to all that happens in the world, what they are broadcasting is not news [. . .] just weapons of mass distraction. (Guzzanti 2005: 14)

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Conclusion Keeping at bay dissenting voices has been a constant concern for Berlusconi and his government, especially if those voices happened to be heard on television. The debate among scholars about the degree to which television influences people’s political allegiance is still open: some are sceptical about the actual benefits that controlling a media empire can have in terms of votes; others see this empire as the key to Berlusconi’s electoral victories (Ginsborg 2004: 115). Despite the difficulty in quantifying the influence, it is worth noting that Berlusconi’s efforts to curtail criticism have understandably focused on television, partly because of direct and indirect control and partly for obvious number crunching – the small number of readers and theatregoers in Italy as opposed to television audiences. As Luttazzi remarks in his interview with Enzo Biagi, also censored in this period, ‘it would take me a century of stage tours to reach the seven million viewers who watched Satyricon on TV’ (Corriere della Sera 29 April 2007).13 In this sense it is probably correct to talk of a ‘telecracy’, a ‘media-populistic regime’, as Umberto Eco, among others, has stated.14 Sabina Guzzanti’s initiative to take an edited version of her programme to a live audience at the Auditorium in Rome and, by way of a satellite link, to audiences in other parts of Italy, resulted in a threat of legal action by RAI itself.15 The fate of Guzzanti’s play mirrors that of Dario Fo’s. Fo’s L’anomalo bicefalo (The Two-Headed Anomaly 2003), a scathing satire and exposé of Berlusconi’s power, which toured Italian theatres, was then broadcast in January 2004 by a satellite channel carried by Sky Italia. Following legal action by Berlusconi’s second in chief, Marcello dell’Utri, the broadcast of Fo’s play could go ahead but only without sound (Abruzzese 2005: 179). The censorship of Luttazzi and Guzzanti’s programmes and the broad repercussions this had in the press and the internet, in Italy and beyond, has given them a resonance that they would probably not have had otherwise. The censorship has created a case and has enhanced the value of the comedians’ work as opposition and counter-information. Their silencing also put in motion a counter-reaction that involved some journalists, like Marco Travaglio, artists like Dario Fo and comedians like Beppe Grillo. Their public expression of solidarity, their mutual and public acknowledgement of being professionals who share the same anti-Berlusconian values, has placed them in a ‘resisting’ pantheon, where each operates independently but can come together on new initiatives. Judging by the popularity of their tours, and the involvement and participation of audiences, it is clear that these artists voice the concerns of a section of society, mainly the well-educated, students and professionals, who are disenchanted with traditional politics, tired of its scandals, and in search of an alternative. The assessment of the impact of comedy on social change is, however, a difficult task. Scholars in the field of humour theory have traditionally been divided on the question of the role of humour in society. Some types of humour, like that contained in many television sitcoms, are regarded as reinforcing hegemonic ideologies, and thus considered as a negative social phenomenon (Marc 1989: 118). But humour also functions, socially and psychologically, as a way of letting off steam (and breaking out of repression) and, by extension, has been viewed as both a form of questioning social norms and as a safety valve for popular resentment (Mills 2001: 63). It is possible that Italian audiences protested against the ban of Raiot because it deprived them of the opportunity for good comedy at the expense of the government. It seems more likely, however, that these audiences were rather enraged by the infringement of their rights as free citizens, having suddenly been deprived of a form of political and artistic expression which is safeguarded by the constitution and has been available on RAI (especially RAI 2 and RAI 3) over many years. Protests similar to those against the censorship of the Fos in the 1960s and of Grillo in the 1990s have again been voiced in support of Luttazzi and Guzzanti

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in the new millennium: it is a constituency that has spelled out yet another infringement of their rights on the part of a political class that is unwilling to face, and weary of facing, any criticism. I subscribe to the view that ‘jokes are an important thermometer of social change; they are not a thermostat regulating such changes’ (Davies 1996: 52). In the specific cases discussed here, however, George Orwell’s view that ‘every joke is a tiny revolution’ (Orwell 1945) also seems fitting. These comedians’ political humour has played a role in raising awareness and in mobilizing public sentiment. Luttazzi, Guzzanti, Rossi and others have not just diminished those in power and made them a subject of laughter: by conveying serious information through the medium of satire and ridicule they have pursued an oppositional practice that was against the neo-conservative values of the Berlusconi governments, while remaining critical of the institutional left.

Notes 1. The satirical magazines from the 1970s, such as Il male (Evil 1978–82), were produced in the wake of the student movements, while updated versions from a decade later, such as Cuore (Heart 1989–94), picked up on the political scandals that were to lead to Tangentopoli and to the demise of an entire political class. A similar stance was expressed by landmark satirical programmes such as Blob (RAI 3, 1989– ) and Avanzi (RAI 3, 1991–93), whose intelligence and irony have made an important point about the potential of television for more sophisticated entertainment as well as political commentary. 2. Words were banned for their obvious sexual reference, such as amplesso (intercourse), others simply on the grounds of their potential for humorous exploitation, such as membro (member/phallus). A very similar code of practice had been in use in the BBC since 1948 (Davies 1996). 3. Their fatal act, to our eyes today quite innocent, hinted at a soirée, in 1959, when the Italian President Giovanni Gronchi inadvertently fell off a chair. In one of their standard routines, the comedians added a short extra act involving Tognazzi falling from a chair and Vianello saying, ‘Who do you think you are?’ (Buffagni 2006: 78–82). 4. As D’Arcangeli reminds us (2005: 161): [T]he legal aftermath of the breach of contract lasted over ten years and spanned several appeals, and the couple had to pay substantial damages. [. . .] The couple was to be exiled from television and would only return in 1977. Censorship was so complete that all RAI material featuring Fo and Rame that predates the seventies, other than advertisements, has been destroyed. 5. Grillo has since been touring Italy with his shows, has released DVDs, created his own blog, and has been able to mobilize millions of Italians. On his ‘resistance’ see various reports in the press, such as Popham (2007) and Fisher (2007). 6. Luttazzi’s interview with Travaglio has been erased from the contested episode of Satyricon, which is available from RAI’s archive, whereas Guzzanti’s Raiot is nowhere to be found (Gomez, Travaglio 2004: 62). 7. See Grasso (2003: 394–5) and the biographical note accompanying the DVD, Luttazzi contro, part of the Comicollection series published by RCS and Corriere della Sera in 2006. 8. RAI 3 was created in 1979 but gained national coverage slowly and retained a regional character until its decisive renewal in 1987 under the direction of intellectual Angelo Guglielmi. With its satirical programmes such as Blob (1989– ), La Tv delle ragazze (Girls’ TV 1988),

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9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

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Avanzi (1991–93), Tunnel (1994), which by now had achieved cult status, RAI 3 launched many caustic comedians, notably Sabina Guzzanti and her brother Corrado Guzzanti. Politically close to the left, it has endeavoured to remain so. However, it has had less success in doing so under the centre-right government. The book referred to is Travaglio and Veltri (2001). The interview with Travaglio is available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N6sjk-HiAQ. Accessed 23 October 2008. As Gomez and Travaglio state (2004: 30), Luttazzi and Travaglio did not have time to agree in advance on the format and content of the interview, and Carlo Freccero, then director of RAI 2, deliberately kept quiet about Travaglio’s guest appearance and his book during the routine check with RAI management before the broadcasting of Satyricon. Eager to show a return to normality, RAI invited Luttazzi for a brief guest appearance in November 2003, from which, however, harder hitting material was cut. Luttazzi declined later invitations, refusing to be part of a game of pretence (Corriere della Sera, 18 October 2005). Luttazzi hosted his own show on the commercial channel, La7, which however was stopped after the fifth episode. Quotations from texts in Italian have been translated by the author. The interview, broadcast on RAI 3, can be seen on YouTube, available at: www.uk.youtube. com/watch?v=BkhVJCqEEe8&feature=related. Accessed 23 October 2008. Eco’s thoughts on this subject originally appeared in the press (i.e. Espresso and Repubblica) between 2000 and 2005. Together with other essays, they were later collected in the volume A passo di gambero (see Eco 2007). One of the articles (‘Sul regime di populismo mediatico’) is available at: http://espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio-archivio/877410, Accessed 23 October 2008. RAI’s legal warning was issued on the grounds that Guzzanti had used material with RAI copyright, and had it broadcast by a satellite channel that was a competitor of RAI (Repubblica 25 November 2003). The matter was not taken further (Gomez, Travaglio 2004: 189).

References Abruzzese, A. (2005), ‘Censorship in the time of Berlusconi’, in G. Bonsaver, R. S. C. Gordon (eds), Culture Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy. Oxford: Legenda, pp. 179–90. Barendt, E., Lustgarten, L., Norrie, K. and Stephenson, H. (1997), Libel and the Media. The ‘Chilling Effect’. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Benton, G. (1988), ‘The origins of the political joke’, in C. Powell and G. E. C. Paton (eds), Humour in Society. Resistance and Control. London: Macmillan, pp. 33–55. Bignell, J. (2004), ‘Television you can’t see’, in J. Bignell (ed.), An Introduction to Television Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 230–51. Bonsaver, G. (2006), ‘Viva Zapatero! Berlusconi burlesque’, Sight and Sound, XVI, (6): 24. Buffagni, R. (ed.), (2006), La supercazzola. Istruzioni per l’Ugo. Milan: Mondadori/Raitrade. Caprettini, G. P. (2004), ‘Schermi a parte. La comicità socializzata e i confini del mezzo’, in M. T. Di Marco and P. Ortoleva (eds), Luci del teleschermo. Televisione e cultura in Italia. Milan: Mondadori/Electa, pp. 346–50. Caroli, M. (2003), Proibitissimo. Censori e censurati della radiotelevisione italiana. Milan: Garzanti. Carroll, R. (2001), ‘Berlusconi to purge state TV’, Guardian, 22 May. Clarke, H. (2003), ‘To war over a bald patch’, New Statesman, 9 June. Cesari, M. (1982), La censura in Italia oggi (1944–1980). Naples: Liguori. Corriere della Sera (2005), ‘Anche Luttazzi lascia solo Celentano’, 18 October, available at: www.corriere.it/ Primo_Piano/Spettacoli/2005/10_Ottobre/17/celentano.html. Accessed 20 October 2008. — (2007), ‘Luttazzi torna in TV ospite da Biagi’, 29 April.

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Cremagnani, B. and Deaglio E. (2006), Berlusconeide cinque anni dopo. Milan: Editoriale Diaro. D’Arcangeli, L. (2005), ‘Dario Fo, Franca Rame and the censors’, in G. Bonsaver and R. S. C. Gordon (eds), Culture Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy. Oxford: Legenda, pp. 158–67. Davies, C. (1996), ‘Puritanical and politically correct? A critical historical account of changes in the censorship of comedy by the BBC’, in G. E. C. Paton and C. Powell (eds), The Social Faces of Humour. Practices and Issues. Aldershot: Arena, pp. 29–61. Di Marco, M. T. and Ortoleva P. (eds) (2004), Luci del teleschermo. Televisione e cultura in Italia. Milan: Mondadori/Electa. Eco, U. (1983), ‘Tv, la trasparenza perduta’, in U. Eco (ed.), Sette anni di desiderio. Rome: Bompiani, pp. 163–80. — (2007) A passo di gambero. Guerre calde e populismo mediatico. Milan: Bompiani. Fano, N. (2003), ‘Arlecchini, Berlusconi, Pantaloni’, Introduction to S. Guzzanti, Il diario di Sabna Guzz. Turin: Einaudi, pp. v–x. Fisher, I. (2007), ‘In a funk, Italy sings an air of disappointment’, New York Times 13 December. Fiumarola, S. (2001), ‘Lo sketch di Padre Pio offende gli italiani’, Repubblica, 1 February. Forgacs, D. (2005), ‘How exceptional were culture-state relations in twentieth-century Italy?’, in G. Bonsaver and R. S. C. Gordon (eds), Culture Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy. Oxford: Legenda, pp. 9–20. Gavallotti, M. (2006), ‘Italy’, in C. J. Glasser Jr. (ed.), International Libel and Privacy Handbook. New York: Bloomberg, pp. 248–65. Ginsborg, P. (2004), Silvio Berlusconi. Television Power and Patrimony. London/New York: Verso. Gomez, P. and Travaglio, M. (2004), Regime. Milan: Bur. — (2005), Inciucio. Milan: Bur. Grasso, A. (2003), Enciclopedia della televisione. Milan: Garzanti. Guzzanti, S. (2003), Il diario di Sabna Guzz. Turin: Einaudi. — (2005), Viva Zapatero! Milan: Bur. Haraszti, M. (2005), OSCE Report. Visit to Italy. The Gasparri Law. Observations and Recommendations, 7 June. Hooper, J. (2003), ‘Watch what we tell you’, Guardian, 27 November, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/ world/2003/nov/27/worlddispatch.italy. Accessed 23 October 2008. Keighron, P. (1998), ‘The politics of ridicule: Satire and television’, in M. Wayne (ed.), Dissident Voices. The Politics of Television and Cultural Change. London: Pluto Press, pp. 127–44. Kington, M. (2006), ‘Sabina Guzzanti’, BBC Radio 4, 24 August. Little, L. E. (2009), ‘Regulating funny: Humor and the law’, Cornell Law Review, (94), available at: www. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1124627. Accessed 23 October 2008. Luttazzi, D. (2002), Benvenuti in Italia. Milan: Feltrinelli. — (2006), Luttazzi Contro. Milan: RCS/Corriere della Sera. Marc, D. (1989), Comic Visions. Television Comedy and American Culture. Oxford: Blackwell. Mills, B. (2001), ‘Studying Comedy’, in G. Creeber (ed.), The Television Genre Book. London: BFI, pp. 61–3. Orwell, G. (1945), ‘Funny but not vulgar’, Leader, 28 July 1945 (reprinted in S. Orwell and I. Angus [eds] [1970]), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, available at: orwell.ru/library/ articles/funny/english/e_funny. Accessed 23 October 2008. Paton, G. E. C. (1988), ‘The comedian as portrayer of social morality’, in C. Powell and G. E. C. Paton (eds), Humour in Society. Resistance and Control. London: Macmillan, pp. 206–33. Popham, P. (2007), ‘The New Clown Prince of Italy’, Independent, 18 September. Repubblica (2003), ‘Sabina Guzzanti all’Auditorium. Solidarietà e tifo da stadio’, 23 November. — (2003), ‘Mediaset chiede 20 milioni di danni per Raiot’, 25 November, available at: www.repubblica. it/2003/k/sezioni/spettacoli_e_cultura/guzzantiraiot/pubblico/pubblico.html. Accessed 20 October 2008. — (2005), ‘Paolo Rossi bloccato dalla RAI’, 14 January. Roghi, V. (2005), ‘Television and censorship: Preliminary research notes’, in G. Bonsaver and R. S. C. Gordon (eds), Culture, Censorship and the State in Twentieth-Century Italy. Oxford: Legenda, pp. 150–7.

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Tonelli, M. (2001), ‘L’ottavo Nano fa arrabbiare Bossi’, Repubblica, 15 January. Travaglio, M. and Veltri, E. (2001), L’odore dei soldi. Origini e misteri delle fortune di Silvio Berlusconi. Rome: Editori Riuniti. Wagg, S. (1992), ‘You’ve never had it so silly. The politics of British comedy from Beyond the Fringe to Spitting Image’, in D. Strinati and S. Wagg (eds), Come on Down? Popular Media Culture in Postwar Britain. London: Routledge, pp. 255–84.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The Cinema of Resistance: Nanni Moretti’s Il caimano and the Italian Film Industry Clodagh Brook

Thanks, but a film about Berlusconi, no, honestly. We already know all about him. Those who want to know, know. Those who don’t . . . There’s nothing more to tell. We know everything! (Nanni Moretti [playing himself] in Il caimano) If Berlusconi’s grip on Italian television networks offered little space to voices of opposition, cinema seems to have provided a small haven for them, opening a parallel space in which such voices could be heard. In this chapter, I will be exploring Italy’s filmic production under the second and third Berlusconi governments, assessing its response. My focus is on Nanni Moretti’s high-profile Il caimano (The Caiman 2006), the only feature film on Berlusconi to be released during this period. However, this chapter will also deal with other filmic outputs in Italy during these years, in particular a number of significant political documentaries. It appears that despite the pervasive presence of RAI, Mediaset, and Berlusconi’s own powerful Medusa Film1 in the production and distribution of Italian cinema, the existence of independent film producers in Italy, coupled with alternative distributive solutions, and backing – financial and distributive – from abroad, has allowed voices of opposition, often silenced elsewhere, to use this medium for political messages.2 In Italy, the art-house circuit is well developed – at least in Italy’s larger cities – and tends to be sympathetic to the left.3 Although this circuit attracts far fewer spectators than mainstream circuit, it nevertheless allows a space to remain open for films of a more challenging or oppositional nature.4 Nowhere is this truer than in Nanni Moretti’s Nuovo Sacher Cinema in Rome, which regularly promotes films – often Italian and of a politically engaged nature – which have failed to gain an airing, or much of an airing, elsewhere. While getting oppositional material accepted on Italian TV became highly fraught in the Berlusconi years, film thus continued to provide a channel for such material, however limited. This opening has led to TV personalities shifting to this medium when they find TV blocked. Sabina Guzzanti, having been taken off air for her anti-Berlusconi satirical programme, Raiot, made a film about freedom of speech in the Italian media, Viva Zapatero! (2006), which she had distributed through the cinemas in Italy and abroad, creating international shockwaves at the illiberal nature of Italian television. TV journalists Beppe Cremagnani and Enrico Deaglio had tried to get a documentary on Berlusconi made for Italian television. When their idea failed to gain the support of RAI, they made the film anyway, and in 2005 distributed the DVD, Quando c’era Silvio: Storia del periodo berlusconiano (When Silvio was There: A History of the Berlusconian Period), in Deaglio’s weekly magazine, Diario. The film sold 100,000 copies. This

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latter case is a sign of the increasingly varied and direct distribution for films: they can be made into DVDs sold alongside magazines (Quando c’era Silvio), and/or released on the internet, or once released elsewhere imported into internet blogs. The Italo-American documentary film Citizen Berlusconi (2003) by Andrea Cairola and Susan Gray, never accepted by Italian TV but broadcast on American television, could be seen by Italians only on the internet. Since the fall of Berlusconi’s third government, Berardo Carboni’s Shooting Silvio (2007), a low-budget independent film, was circulated with the aid of Cinedance, an independent distributor which organizes dance parties where the entrance ticket allows party-goers to watch the film free. These alternative methods of distribution are important in creating political space. However, it is worth remembering that a filmic product distributed by these alternative means does not have the same kind of visibility as it would, had it been released on mainstream Italian TV. ISTAT statistics for 2006 find that it is still TV that provides the main source of information (93 per cent watch it regularly), while only 9 per cent go to the cinema regularly, and, although internet usage is rapidly growing at 35.6 per cent, it is not yet competing with television. Films attacking Berlusconi launched on oppositional websites and in DVDs attached to left-wing magazines like Diario do not easily reach into the domestic world of the average centre-right or apolitical Italian citizen, but are seen mainly by those who have had to actively search them out, spectators, therefore already likely to be politically engaged on the left. Such forms of distribution imply a preaching to the converted, with the hope, presumably, that the converted will thus be goaded into direct action. They are unlikely to reach the centre-right voter, whom Moretti sees as a key interlocutor if the political battle is to be won. The relative, if restricted, freedom that cinema provides has been availed of largely by documentary-makers: Cairola and Gray’s Citizen Berlusconi was released in 2003, Caterina Borelli’s Lilli e il cavaliere (Lilli and the Knight) in 2004, and, in 2005, no less than three documentaries were released (Cremagnani and Deaglio’s aforementioned Quando c’era Silvio, Fulvia Alberti’s Grazie Berlusconi! [Thanks Berlusconi!] and Guzzanti’s Viva Zapatero!).5 In 2005, Marco Turco’s documentary, In un altro paese (Excellent Cadavers), explores links between the Mafia and Italian politicians, arguing that Berlusconi’s period in power was useful for the Mafia (hence their support of his party). It is only in 2006 that Nanni Moretti’s Il caimano takes Berlusconi from documentary into fiction.6 Il caimano is the only feature film made by a member of the Italian cinema industry to address the subject of Berlusconi head on during Berlusconi’s second and third governments, and Moretti sees himself as something of a prophet figure in the cinematic desert. Although there have been numerous documentaries made, their directors have mostly come from beyond the world of cinema: usually from journalism and television. Compared to the many recent films made attacking Bush and the Iraq war, Italian cinema has produced surprisingly little that foregrounds the attack on its leader. This is not to say that films have not been made which hint at opposition to Berlusconi. Roberto Benigni’s La tigre e la neve (The Tiger and the Snow 2005) is set against the backdrop of the Iraq war, which the film implicitly criticizes (although the war is very much only a backdrop, and the target ultimately seems to be Bush rather than Berlusconi); Gabriele Muccino’s Ricordati di me (Remember Me 2003) portrays Italy during the Berlusconi years, complete with Mediaset showgirls (Uva and Picchi 2006: 184). In the ironic ending of Davide Ferrario’s Dopo mezzanotte (After Midnight 2004), a huge campaign poster of a smiling Berlusconi is the last thing to pass before the protagonist’s eyes as he lies dying on the pavement outside the Turin museum of cinema: the film suggests perhaps an ironic contrast between the illustrious cinema history harboured within the museum and Berlusconi’s brand of light TV entertainment. Recently, in Mimmo Calopresti’s L’abbuffata (The Feast 2007), actor Gerard Depardieu’s death in front of a TV transmitting images of Berlusconi and his friend, the TV host Bruno Vespa, also ironically posits Berlusconi as a cause of the death of real cinema. Finally,

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director Paolo Virzì has claimed that his ‘Napoleon’ in N (io e Napoleone 2006) (Napoleon & Me) is an allegory for Berlusconi. However, none of these films transmit a strong politically committed message, and there is no sense of a critical mass of filmmakers engaged in a common cause. Burns’ (2001) analysis of impegno as fragmented, lacking an overarching social agenda, seems once again to hold here. While fragmented forms of commitment remain, commitment to particular political parties plays only a minor role in contemporary cinema, being only one of the concerns among many others (such as immigration, gay rights and prostitution) to be aired by Italian film. Although a number of filmmakers do show opposition to Berlusconi in their films, they have not come together to show it. Moretti, Guzzanti, Bernardo Bertolucci and Gabriele Salvatores, together with representatives from the Italian union of actors did become involved, mainly independently, in the centre-left oppositional movement of the girotondi. However, it was only in April 2008 that cinema-makers finally made a collective political stand, protesting outside the parliament in Rome: somewhat ironically, their attack was not on Berlusconi, but the centre-left government for its cuts to cinema funding.7 Nevertheless, in his anti-Berlusconian Il caimano Moretti seems to try to show that he is not alone among filmmakers in his attack. His casting of a number of high-profile Italian film directors and producers, including Antonello Grimaldi and Paolo Sorrentino, in acting roles is easy to read as small show of force within the Italian cinema industry.8 Although Moretti has denied deliberately inserting these people into his film for political motives (Gili 2006: 119), their presence nonetheless is political, and suggests a certain (limited) solidarity among Italian directors in the face of Berlusconi.

Direct Political Action: Moretti Before and Beyond Il caimano I don’t have the time or concentration now to think of my films. This is the moment for being committed in other ways . . . . This situation is exceptional and one can’t just stand by and watch. (Moretti, in Bernardi 2006: 22) Of the films and documentaries produced during the second Berlusconi government, it is Nanni Moretti’s Il caimano that had the greatest impact, especially nationally, but also internationally. The film’s significance lies in several places. First, it succeeded in creating political tension and controversy within Italy in the run-up to the 2006 elections. Its release, two weeks before the nation went to the polls, threatened to swing the elections, just as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 had threatened to do in the United States, and politicians on both left and right were seriously concerned.9 The presentation of Il caimano to the Italian press on 23 March 2006 was a huge media event, with 500 members of the media – national and international – invited to attend.10 The film made a substantial impact, despite the problems in television circulation and publicity which had immediately arisen (Mediaset did not talk about it that evening; RAI 2 news refused to, claiming that it would violate the par condicio law as no similar film had been made on the centre-left leader, and Sky Television pulled out of screening it for similar reasons). It gained instant box-office success in Italy,11 won prestigious awards, created political debate, and enabled the caiman metaphor of its title to quickly move into common parlance. Berlusconi immediately referred to himself (‘with irony’) as the Caiman, and laughingly said that he would eat the opposition (Anon 2006). The film’s impact is not, however, the sole reason for its importance. A second reason is that Il caimano is the only fiction film made in Italy against Berlusconi during his period of office (2001–2006), and it is more radical in its representation of the Premier and its questioning of such representation than were any of the preceding

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documentaries. Finally, its director, Nanni Moretti, is a leading intellectual and oppositional figure in contemporary Italy: his role as political critic, campaigning against both Berlusconi and the centre-left, has left a significant mark in the recent history of Italian politics. Filmic and extra-filmic concerns therefore combine to make this film the cinematic anti-Berlusconi event of the 2001–2006 period. Moretti’s films, since his feature debut in 1976, have provided sharp, often cutting, analyses of contemporary society, and since Berlusconi’s entry into politics in 1994, Moretti has been a leading figure in voicing criticism of the Cavaliere. Even before the elections of 1994, he had joined with a group of Italian filmmakers (Francesca Archibugi, Daniele Luchetti, Carlo Mazzacurati and others) to make a 20-minute electoral short, L’unico paese al mondo (The Only Country in the World), which attacked Forza Italia and its leader for his excessive media control. Four years later, in 1998, the feature-length film Aprile (April) – which weaved together documentary footage of Berlusconi, the Lega Nord, the sinking of an Albanian immigrant ship, and the personal story of the birth of his own son – provided a more high-profile critique of the first Berlusconi government (and it did not spare the left either).12 With the second Berlusconi government, Moretti became involved in politics once again, but this time he intervened directly, temporarily eschewing film as a means of protest. On 2 February 2002, he became spokesperson for a certain disillusioned left, when, at the end of a centre-left political rally in Rome’s Piazza Navona, he got up on stage and expressed his anger at the unsatisfactory traditional interventions of centre-left politicians. His speech hit a chord with many, and sparked widespread discussions in the press. In this speech, he declared, ‘With these leaders, we will never win!’, a phrase that would circulate well beyond the sphere of its utterance. Moretti’s attack in Piazza Navona was rooted in his concern that the left had to stand up and halt Berlusconi’s undermining of the institutions of Italy, and that it seemed incapable, in its current guise, of achieving this. Immediately subsequent to his important speech in Piazza Navona, Moretti took up a leading role within Italy’s emerging girotondi movement. Moretti quickly became an organizer of the Roman girotondi, holding meetings at his cinema, the Nuovo Sacher, and attending protests throughout the first-half of 2002 (see Chapter 6, and Gili 2006: 114–15; Tranfaglia 2004: 183–91). On 14 September 2002, the movement reached its apex when the Roman girotondi, headed by Moretti among others, organized a huge demonstration in defence of justice and the legal system in Rome’s capacious Piazza San Giovanni. Moretti made the introductory speech. Essentially, his theme this time was democracy and its defence. He stressed the need for democracy as a value important to all voters, including those of the centre-right, claiming that ‘Berlusconi is not against democracy [ . . . ]. He is an intimate stranger to it, because it is something that he doesn’t know and doesn’t understand’ (Moretti 2002). Democracy, and the threat posed to it by Berlusconi, would later stand at the heart of Il caimano. However, throughout his political action, Moretti remained aware of himself as an intellectual rather than a politician. In Italy, the committed intellectual, as theorized by Gramsci, has a precise role in leading the development of political ideas, acting ‘as a transmitter of ideas within civil society and between government and civil society’ (Adamson 1980: 143). This is a role that Moretti, Guzzanti and others assumed during this period, although in Viva Zapatero!, Guzzanti’s critics seem deliberately to forget the Gramscian model, repeatedly suggesting that she should either make non-political satire or get herself democratically elected as a politician. Moretti claims that he never wanted to give up his position as a politically engaged intellectual in order to become a politician in yet another left-wing splinter group (Gili 2006: 114). He therefore stepped back from the girotondi movement as soon as it was put under pressure to take on a national character, and slowly returned to his various roles within the Italian cinema world which he had neglected during the nine months in which he was most deeply involved in

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the movement: as producer (Sacher Film), as promoter of committed Italian cinema through the film festival, Bimbi belli, and as director. Moretti’s concerns about Berlusconi, however, had not been assuaged, and a few years later he announced that his new film would be on the Premier.

The Crisis of Representation: Il caimano and Berlusconi Il caimano narrates the story of Bruno Bonomo (Silvio Orlando), a downtrodden film producer who in his heyday had produced trash b-movies. Problems beset him: he makes so few films that he is forced to rent out his studio for telemarketing ads; he can afford only a small toy ship for his production of a costume drama on Christopher Columbus. His personal life offers no retreat, as he is in denial about the decision made by his wife (Margherita Buy) that they should separate. A screenplay put into his hand at the beginning of the film by a young female director, Teresa (Jasmine Trinca), gives him hope and a new impetus. However, he soon finds that he, a Berlusconi voter, has duped himself into accepting a ‘lefty’ film against the head of government. Nevertheless, he is drawn in by the project, and somewhat ambiguously champions Teresa’s cause, while continuing to play down its political content in favour of an apolitical ‘action movie’. Bruno’s new project slowly grinds to a halt, however, as problems multiply. Finding an actor to play Berlusconi proves difficult, and his star (Michele Placido) soon deserts him. Finding funding for a film on Berlusconi is even trickier. Meanwhile, his private life worsens, and he has to face the reality of separation from his wife. In the end, he somehow manages to put together enough money to shoot just one scene from Teresa’s film: the final one. As Teresa pronounces the magic word, ‘Action!’, this scene, occupying the final seven and a half minutes of Il caimano, rolls before our eyes. In it, a defiant Berlusconi (now played by Nanni Moretti) stands trial for corruption. The court finds him guilty and sentences him to eight years imprisonment. An apocalyptical and funereal tone sets in as Berlusconi-Moretti, having first incited Italians to rise against the judges, slowly drives away in a powerful black car, while behind him the law courts burn. Implied in this finale is a democracy in tatters. This is a film that shifts between levels of public and private, personal and political, its political content constituting no more than one-third of the total. When it was first released, it disappointed many who had expected a more sustained and direct attack on Berlusconi. The hype, driven in part by Moretti who had deliberately mystified the film, had had politicians from both left and right asking for its release to be postponed until after the elections (the right feared a propagandistic attack on Berlusconi; the left a boomerang effect that would give Berlusconi an alibi).13 However, once the film was released, it became clear that instead this film was in part the domestic tale of a man separating from his wife, and in part a metacinematic comment on Italian cinema and on making films. Morgoglione’s (2006) sardonic review in La Repubblica on 24 March 2006 in fact recommends the film not for the politically committed, but for ‘militant cinephiles’. Despite the surprise de-centering of political material, Il caimano does transmit clear and significant political messages. Its positioning of Berlusconi within the narrative frame of the film-within-the-film enables Moretti to tackle issues of representation head on, and to avoid some of its pitfalls. It allows him to talk not only about Berlusconi, but also to talk about how artists and intellectuals can talk about this figure, and what obstacles to such talk there may be. Representability is right at the core of Italy’s cultural opposition to Berlusconi, implicated as it is in discussions of the place of humour, satire and irony in representation, the problems surrounding saying something new about a figure so ubiquitous, and the difficulties of getting one’s voice heard and reaching an audience, particularly an audience on the centre-right. This

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film’s tackling of the representation of Berlusconi is thus central to the cultural debate surrounding opposition to this figure. The issue of representability comes to structure the whole film, which becomes, metacinematically, not so much a film on Berlusconi, but a film on filming Berlusconi, one in which the place of the cinematic apparatus in the representation of politics and power – with all its strengths and weaknesses – is laid bare. In Il caimano, Berlusconi is played by three actors.14 First, there is Elio De Capitani, who plays a likeness of the Premier, complete with Milanese accent, Berlusconi’s gesturality and smile. Then, there is well-known actor Michele Placido, who plays a dynamic, charming and confident Berlusconi, but one who lacks physical likeness. Finally, in the film’s apocalyptical finale, Nanni Moretti appears, eschewing simulacra to play the Premier as a dangerous and grave man, a man who threatens the very fabric of Italian society. De Capitani’s likeness of Berlusconi is closest to the norms of visual representations during Berlusconi’s years of office. This Berlusconi arises from Bruno’s slant reading of a screenplay given to him by a young director Teresa, and allows him to visualize a new action film with as its protagonist a Milanese businessman who mysteriously has received a lot of money (Bruno takes a while to be aware that this is Berlusconi). We first see the Berlusconi look-alike at his office desk when two huge suitcases of cash crash through the ceiling, showering banknotes in slow motion around him. A somewhat predictable and hyperbolic summary of Berlusconi’s life follows, intercut into Il caimano’s ongoing narrative. Throughout, De Capitani’s mimicry captures Berlusconi’s physical presence wonderfully. De Capitani’s Berlusconi allows Moretti to provide audiences – particularly foreign ones – with a brief, rather humorous, biopic of the Premier, centred on the key question, ‘Where did he get his money?’, and providing audiences with key moments from Berlusconi’s biography. However, De Capitani’s Berlusconi is a decoy: this is what spectators expect to see: a caricature of Berlusconi, one whose ridiculousness makes us laugh. To an extent, it reflects Sabina Guzzanti’s parody of Berlusconi in her TV programme Raiot and in Viva Zapatero!, which relies for its humour on a grotesque caricature of Berlusconi’s physical characteristics. It seems no surprise that part of Viva Zapatero! focuses on the wigs, false teeth and tricks that enable the female comedienne to resemble Berlusconi. Gags about Berlusconi’s facelift, hair implant, and height have abounded on TV. Even documentaries such as Quando c’era Silvio, while not fictionalizing Berlusconi, still tend towards grotesque or comic caricature. In Quando c’era Silvio, we are shown an art gallery exhibit of a bar of soap entitled Mani pulite, the Italian for ‘clean hands’, a reference to the nationwide judicial investigations into political corruption in the 1990s. This soap claims to be made from fat removed from Berlusconi in liposuction. We also meet the man who organized Berlusconi’s hair transplant. Satire, and in particular satirical caricature, has been one of the greatest weapons used against Berlusconi in representations of the man in the visual media (TV, film – including documentaries – and internet). In an interview with Sabina Guzzanti, Rory Bremner says that ‘the only way to attack a big character is with humour; it makes them look small’ (Guzzanti 2006: extras), and one of the key propositions of Viva Zapatero! is Guzzanti’s defence of the need for satire in a healthy democracy. She brings in important figures, such as the Nobel Prize winner, Dario Fo (himself a political satirist), and Luciano Canfora, a respected historian and classicist, to discuss how satire and politics can be elided. However, as Viva Zapatero! argues, the relationship between politics and satire is fraught. Although the presence of satire is a sign of a properly functioning democracy, of a democracy mature enough to accept and absorb criticism, it is a tool which is not without its share of problems. The laughter induced by satire may become an end in itself, rather than a catalyst for change. The figure familiarized by satire, by being ‘made smaller’, as Bremner argues, may also seem less powerful and important, so masking – through familiarization and making-small – the

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real danger that he or she may possess. The hyperbole in satire and the repetition of tics can often end up attacking surfaces and avoiding real questions. In Viva Zapatero! satirical dramatist Dario Fo wisely makes a distinction between satire and ‘sfottò’ (‘making fun’), assigning the mimicry of tics to the latter category. The problem with using sfottò for Berlusconi is that Berlusconi’s body and his gaffs, rather than his policies, become targets of laughter. In Il caimano the comic hyperbole of outsize suitcases, a giant football, and showgirls’ bottoms is rejected as representation. Five years of satirical derision had not succeeded in undermining Berlusconi’s power base. Moretti believes that a different approach is necessary. In Il caimano Moretti’s next stab at representation comes in the guise of Michele Placido. Placido, who plays a charming, distracted, and womanizing actor, initially accepts the role of Berlusconi. However, he then walks out on Bruno to take the lead in Caspio’s The Return of Christopher Columbus. The actor’s betrayal is a dig, on Moretti’s part, at the lack of political commitment in mainstream Italian cinema. The costume drama implies a harsh criticism by Moretti of cinema’s evasion of current political events, a criticism repeated in the film when Moretti, approached by Teresa to play Berlusconi, rejects the proposition out of hand, saying that he is currently writing a comedy, to which Teresa retorts, ‘Does this seem the moment to be making comedies?’ Placido’s Berlusconi, a fully rounded character in place of De Capitani’s two-dimensional comic one, brings to light issues regarding the need to appeal to the spectator. These problems come to the fore now in the wake of the film’s rejection of the appealing satire embodied in the first incarnation of Berlusconi. As Bruno points out, the audience has to take to Berlusconi. This is a key problem in cinema: how do you make a film about a character you want to criticize without making your protagonist too human and too likeable? The very medium of cinema tends towards creating high levels of identification between spectators and on-screen protagonists. Moretti gets round this difficulty by having Placido’s likeable Berlusconi quickly dismissed from the film, and constructing a film where Berlusconi, while being at the film’s centre, is not the protagonist, and therefore does not need to be likeable for the film to work. Moretti instead takes the charming everyman, Bruno Bonomo, and puts him at the emotional centre of the film. The presence of Bruno, as an (apparently) positive character with which the audience can identify, is crucial to the film’s success and to its potential for drawing in a wider audience. In casting the likeable Silvio Orlando, not as centre-left sympathizer but as a rather apolitical Berlusconi voter, Moretti opens up a way to address apolitical and centre-right voters, who may be drawn to the film for its private domestic story, but who will nevertheless be confronted by the end of the film with the serious implication of their vote. For many years Moretti has believed that it is important for the centre-left ‘to communicate with the centre-right electorate that the problems of democracy are everyone’s problems, even theirs [. . .]’ (Moretti quoted in Mascia 2002: 73). Bruno’s character and story, reflecting many of the uncertainties felt by Italians generally – especially job and relationship insecurities – promised to give Moretti a way of attracting an audience who does not necessarily share the director’s political views. Bonomo solves one of the problems of screening the Premier: the audience has someone to like, and it is not Berlusconi. Hence, paradoxically, the film-within-the film, by de-centering Berlusconi, breaks identification and allows him to be challenged. This brings us to the final seven and a half minutes of the film, and the third incarnation of Berlusconi. This finale presents Moretti as Premier, and was a deliberate shock to audiences on its release (Moretti, who has always taken the role of protagonist in his films, had claimed prior to the film’s release that he would not be playing the protagonist). Moretti makes no effort to resemble Berlusconi physically: his facial hair inverts Berlusconi’s hairless, smooth exterior (Cremonini 2006: 7); and the make-up and costumes team have done little more than spruce up his look and provide him with a quality suit. Nor does Moretti opt for Berlusconi’s

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gesturality, his smile, his accent or his humour. The simulacrum of Berlusconi is dismissed. In a case of Brechtian distancing (ibid.: 6), Moretti does not act Berlusconi at all. Instead, his face is a stony and serious mask, allowing attention to focus not on Berlusconi as a visual (TV) representation, but on his words and, specifically, on the content of these words. This kind of distanced performance is not new to Moretti – his acting style tends towards it, especially in films like Il portaborse (The Yes Man, Daniele Luchetti, 1991), where his performance is cold and detached. These final minutes present Moretti’s decision with regard to representing Berlusconi. The comic exterior, and, almost literally, the body of Berlusconi is stripped away to reveal a ruthless politician who will stop at nothing – neither Italy’s law courts nor her constitution – to get his way. A director known for his sardonic wit and satire has made a film in which he ultimately advocates only seriousness for the representation of Berlusconi. The finale of Il caimano, the point at which the film and the film-within-the-film fuse, strips Berlusconi of his own humour (often in very poor taste, as the real footage of the Kapò joke made in Strasburg and included in Il caimano, demonstrates)15 and the satirist’s wit, and becomes the embodiment of negativity. The sombre colours of the costumes, the dark walls in the courtroom, the car receding into the night, the long defiant look Berlusconi – caught in still close-up – gives to the female magistrate who challenges him, his incitement of the people to rise against the judiciary, and the images of flames licking around the courthouse as Berlusconi leaves are a far cry from Guzzanti’s parody of Berlusconi. Instead, it brings us back to the seriousness of Moretti’s speech in San Giovanni in 2002: ‘Italians voted for Berlusconi, following a dream, and they have awoken in a nightmare! Darkness is the dominant tone of this government’ (quoted in Bernardi 2006: 19). Moretti seems to suggest that if representation of Berlusconi has to find an appropriate mode, it is not comedy but an apocalyptical mode, with a diabolic Berlusconi driving away from ‘the ruins that he will leave behind him: constitutional, psychological, ethical, cultural ruins, and ruins of custom’ (Moretti quoted in Gili 2006: 117). Although apocalyptical, the point of this final scene is to focus attention on reality, a reality that Moretti argues Italy has underestimated and undervalued: Berlusconi’s very serious and damaging aggression towards the country’s institutions, and, through this, to the very fabric of its society. To do this, Moretti has chosen one emblematic moment in Berlusconi’s history: Berlusconi’s attack on the law courts, ‘a very serious act for a head of government’ (Gili 2006: 119). The final scene is based on the 2003 trial in which Berlusconi was accused of bribing two judges (Renato Squillante and Filippo Verde) in his attempt to gain control of the SME food company. The female magistrate Boccassini, who led the trial (played by Anna Bonaiuto), wanted Berlusconi to be jailed and forbidden from taking up political office for the rest of his life. Instead, Berlusconi evaded the courtroom, and soon afterwards, the case had to be dropped due to ‘extenuating circumstances’, that is, his role as Prime Minister. Moretti imagines an ending in which Boccassini gets her way and succeeds in condemning Berlusconi to imprisonment. Even this victory, however, is shown to be futile in defeating the invincible Premier. In Moretti’s finale, representation shifts into an apocalyptical and almost oneiric key, which shocks not only because it comes as a surprise after the rest of the film, but also because it is alien to the dominant mode of cinematic representation of politics in Italy, a cinema which is deeply rooted in realism, from neorealism and its long legacy, to the political cinema of Francesco Rosi. This finale is split between two modes of representation – real and allegoricalapocalyptical – with the first coming to occupy the dialogue track and the second lodging in the visual field. While the visual field takes us into the world of apocalyptical movies and is dominated by images of fire and darkness as the law courts burn, the dialogue track is sewn together from various speeches which Berlusconi had himself made, and thus is based in documentary realism. At the end of the SME trial in 2003, Berlusconi had indeed made a speech in

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which he said the following: In a liberal democracy, only his equals, those elected by the people, may judge whoever governs by the sovereign will of the electorate when he is in office and heads the affairs of State [. . .]. The government is of the people and of he who represents them. It is not of those who have successfully attained a post and put on the judicial gown. (reported in Ginsborg 2003: 34) This same speech re-appears in the mouth of Moretti-Berlusconi as he stands on the steps of the law courts after receiving his sentence, and with it, he incites the crowd of citizens (and us as spectators) to attack the courts. If the documentaries take realism and temper it with satire, Moretti’s decision is ultimately to temper it with an alarming dose of apocalypse. When The Observer accuses Moretti’s film of presenting an ‘unfocused attack’ (French 2007), it fails to see how Moretti’s film-within-a-film approach allows the director to present a critical history of Berlusconi (through De Capitani’s character), while at the same time focusing determinedly on one core problem – Berlusconi’s threat to democracy – and simultaneously discussing, and overcoming, problems of representation, including the problem of identification.

Caimani: Or Italian Citizen as Alligator The image of the caiman, a South-American reptile related to the alligator, derives from the description of Berlusconi found in Franco Cordero’s article in La Repubblica newspaper: The crocodile is an eminent beast. In fact, Yahweh indicates him to poor Job as the masterpiece of creation: he has invulnerable scales; he spits fire; when he lifts his head from the water, the angels weep. Leviathan depicts an infrahuman force. Berlusconi exhibits analogous measures: through the hypnosis of television he commands stupefied masses; strengthened by the forty thousand billion multiplied in five years of government, he buys everything that is on sale, from publishing houses to judicial favours. He grows gigantic just by repeating two or three basic moves: snarling, snapping his jaws, and digesting. (Cordero 2004) Moretti’s Berlusconi appears in the first-half of the film (in De Capitani’s incarnation of him) as voraciously buying and growing in line with this description. His viciousness then appears when he opens his jaws at the end of the film. However, Moretti’s message goes beyond a simple equation of politician and reptile. As Bernardi (2006: 185) notes, it is the film’s publicity poster which provides a key to another level of allegorical meaning. This poster, on which the words ‘Il caimano’ are etched in a bold red typeface, shows not Berlusconi emerging, reptilian, from Italy’s waters, but Bruno Bonomo’s head bobbing up from a swimming pool. Bruno, whose smooth head with its dark-slicked back hair bears a resemblance to Berlusconi, is caiman too. This is the second political message to emerge from this film. Some critics have read Bonomo as an alter-ego for Moretti. Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006: 179–80) argue that this character should be aligned with previous incarnations of the director, especially Nanni in Aprile. They claim that Bonomo, in his lack of success, rather than being part of the Berlusconi phenomenon, is an exact opposite of Berlusconi (ibid.: 180). It is certainly true that there are elements of ‘Nanni’ or even of a previous alter ego, Apicella, in Bonomo: Mazierska and Rascaroli (ibid.: 180) mention his monogamy, vulnerability and lack of success. However, it is difficult to imagine Moretti really sympathizing with a character like this. Bruno makes the kind of trash films which Moretti cuttingly criticized in Caro diario (Dear

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Diary 1993); he is a Berlusconi-voter; he is blind and opportunistic; he shows infantile selfcenteredness in his cutting up of his wife’s jumper; his views are conservative and he is morally horrified at the idea of Teresa and her female partner making a baby together. Moreover, as Bernardi (2006: 188) notes, Bruno reflects the ‘affability, institutional innocence, and likeableness’ that Italian comic actors such as Manfredi, Gassman and Sordi have portrayed, and Moretti has repeatedly criticized this kind of comedy.16 Despite his likeableness, Bruno is therefore, as the publicity poster suggests, an alligator too. He is a ‘prisoner of his conventional culture’ (Cremonini 2006: 5), who, ‘as his name suggests, is the good man who only asks to have his own part of the swampy river, his part of the jungle, so that he can hunt and grow a little fatter. It is the golden Berlusconian dream that flashes in the eyes of the sleeping Italian’ (Bernardi 2006: 185). Unlike the satirical attacks on Berlusconi by Guzzanti, Deaglio and Cremagnani, Moretti uses Bonomo to present Berlusconi not as a hyperbolic anomaly which appears from nowhere, a two-dimensional character who is fundamentally ‘different to us’, but as ever-present in the society and in the heads of Italians. While traditional portrayals of Berlusconi in television satires and on film show Berlusconi as removed from us as spectator, a hyperbolic character whose weaknesses cause us to laugh, Moretti warns us that Berlusconi, far from being an anomaly, is instead both a product of society and, especially, a producer of it. This is one of the reasons why the finale, which refutes the simulacrum of Berlusconi, is so powerful. Moretti’s stepping into the role of Berlusconi, while continuing ultimately to play himself, is a sign that not only are centre-right voters like Bonomo aligned with Berlusconi, but that the Berlusconi phenomenon has also reached into the souls of those who think they have avoided it – those who may even protest against it, those on the centre-left. Berlusconi’s damage, suggests Moretti, is not just to the Constitution or the law courts, but is also to something fundamental in the way Italians – all Italians – think. The ruins left behind in the rear windscreen of a departing Berlusconi will be there whether or not he is voted in the following elections. The damage to Italy has already been done. Since his appearance as an entrepreneur in the 1970s, Berlusconi has penetrated the fabric of Italy and dominated it, through his control of some of the key areas of mass entertainment (especially football and television) and communication (three television stations, a publishing house, newspapers). This is what Teresa means when she says to Bruno, ‘the Italy of the last thirty years . . . is Berlusconi’, a sentiment reiterated in Moretti’s rebuff of her in the car, when he announces that ‘Berlusconi has already won! Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, with his television stations he changed our way of thinking, do you understand?’ One of the central philosophical issues in this film is how the promulgation of a set of neo-conservative values over an extended period has created a deep problem in terms of being able to get outside these values in order to resist them. This is a conclusion to which Carboni’s Shooting Silvio also came, less than a year after Il caimano’s release. Here too, Berlusconi’s image, initially presented literally up-side-down during a party as if strange and anomalous, is quickly shown instead to be a symbol for an era whose values have come to condition a generation of Italians. In the film’s finale, the porous nature of the relationship between Prime Minister and citizen become explicit in camerawork which dissolves from the protagonist Kurtz’s face to Berlusconi’s. In the scene in which Kurtz interrogates the kidnapped Premier, three identities become one: Kurtz as part of a generation which has lost its sense of value, Berlusconi as ultimate symbol and source of this loss of value, and Kurtz of Apocalypse Now (1979), referenced through the protagonist’s name, a symbol of the horror and absent heart of all moral value. The problem not of Berlusconi ‘in se’, but of Berlusconi ‘in me’, as Carboni (2007: extras) puts it, is important therefore not just to Il caimano, but also to this later feature film. Both ultimately deal with the problem of talking about Berlusconi from the standpoint of someone who is already immersed in a media saturated by values promulgated by Berlusconi. The ability

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to step outside a society soaked in plurimediated images of Berlusconi is in part what the metacinematic representation in Il caimano, and in Shooting Silvio (whose title deliberately refers to the cinematic apparatus), is all about.

Conclusion It is feasible, I argue, to talk about Italian cinema opposing Berlusconi in these years. Despite serious issues around the control by Berlusconi of the production and distribution of films, a small number of filmmakers and documentary-makers have engaged in oppositional practice in the period from 2001–06. If we take the isolated anti-Berlusconi inserts in certain films, coupled with the significant presence of documentaries, and the presence of a number of directors appearing alongside Moretti in Il caimano, what we have, if not a movement, certainly does imply momentum, the sense of an urgency to speak, and the sense that cinema, which fosters a level of independent production and distribution, might be able to offer a vehicle for a voice opposing Berlusconi and the values he is seen to embody. While documentary-makers have aimed primarily to bring information about Berlusconi to the public eye, using documents, interviews and satire, cinema-makers have taken other paths, although satire remains a key approach: those films, like Calopresti’s or Ferrario’s, that insert brief references to Berlusconi into their own films’ diegesis, are tendentially satirical, interpellating a centre-left audience, both implying and requesting its complicity. However, Moretti stands against this trend and ultimately rejects the kind of satire that presents Berlusconi as an odd anomaly, opting instead to highlight issues surrounding the representation of Berlusconi through a visual medium already saturated by his image. Moretti, and Carboni after him, prefers to concentrate on the seriousness of Berlusconi’s impact on Italian society, and on the selfhood of individual Italian citizens who have absorbed Berlusconi and have in some way become him.

Notes 1. After television (RAI and Mediaset), Medusa Film is one of Italy’s most important producers and distributors. It was acquired by Fininvest in 1987. In 2002, Variety claimed it was the second biggest production company in Italy, owning a 14 per cent share of the market (Zecchinelli 2002), and since then it has been steadily growing. 2. Moretti says that one of his main reasons for setting up his own production company, Sacher Film (together with Angelo Barbagallo), was because directors nearly always needed financing from TV, but he did not want to work with Berlusconi’s networks (Mascia 2002: 90). Il caimano marks the first time that he does not use RAI, and he claims that this is in order to remain independent (Radman 2005). He worked instead with Bac, a French production company. The film was distributed in Italy by his own Sacher Distribuzione (ibid.: 60). 3. Ward (2001: 91) documents the hegemony of the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) over ‘high’ culture, mentioning its networks of film clubs. This domination continues through the art-house circuit. 4. The art-house circuit consists, almost without exception, of cinemas of only one or two screens, the vast majority being single-screen cinemas. These cinemas bring in substantially less revenue from ticket sales than do Italy’s multiplexes. Statistics provided by the national cinematographic association, ANICA, show that for 2005, for instance, single-screen cinemas gained only 16.4 per cent of annual takings, whereas multiplexes took 46.8 per cent (ANICA 2006). 5. Since the fall of the third Berlusconi government, further films on Berlusconi have been released, notably a second documentary by Cremagnani and Deaglio, Uccidete la

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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

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15.

16.

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democrazia: Memorandum sulle elezioni di Aprile (Kill Democracy: Memorandum on the April Elections), released on DVD in November 2006, the fiction film, Shooting Silvio by Bernardo Carboni, mentioned above and Gian Luca Rossi’s Ho ammazzato Berlusconi. Cinema interest abroad has drawn attention to Berlusconi too, making him the subject of further films and documentaries: Berlusconi’s Mousetrap (2001), an Irish-made documentary on the G8 in Genoa; Jan Henrick Stahlberg’s feature film, Bye Bye Berlusconi (Germany 2006). Directors Nanni Moretti, Marco Bellocchio, the Taviani brothers, Ettore Scola, Gabriele Muccino, Sergio Rubini and Ferdinand Ozpetek were all present at what was termed a return of the girotondo (Bechis 2008: 1–2). Directors/screenwriters Paolo Sorrentino, Stefano Rulli, Matteo Garrone, Carlo Mazzacurati, Paolo Virzì, Antonello Grimaldi and Giuliano Montaldo all take minor acting roles in the film. The analogy with Michael Moore, whose anti-Bush film Fahrenheit 9/11, released just before the US elections in 2004 in which Bush was re-elected, fueled anxiety on the part of the centre-left that the film might not have a positive effect (Bernardi 2006: 230). Critics, both in Italy and internationally, would continue to link these films (see Booth 2006; Cremononi 2006: 8; Mazierska and Rascaroli 2006: 168). The following weekend the film opened in 380 cinemas nationwide. To get an idea of how colossal this opening was, one only need compare it with Moretti’s previous film, La stanza del figlio (The Son’s Room 2001), which had opened in only 68 (Bernardi 2006: 230). In Italy Il caimano grossed more than €2,000,000 in the first weekend after its release, shooting into top position. It remained up in the top 10 in Italy for 6 weeks after its release (Source: Variety 28 March 2006: 12 and Variety 1–7 May 2006: 12). For a detailed discussion of Moretti’s career in political filmmaking, see Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006). In the television programme, Settanta in Due (Seventy in Two), the then secretary of the Partito Radicale (PR), Daniele Capezzone, called for the film to be postponed until after the elections because of the danger of a boomerang effect. Subsequently, this was debated in parliament, with some politicians such as the centrist Clemente Mastella agreeing, and others, especially of the far-left, disagreeing, saying that Capezzone’s recommendation amounted to ‘self-censorship’ (Stampa 26 February 2006). In exploring the three incarnations of Berlusconi, I am following on from critics such as Chiesi (2006: 454) and Mazierska and Rascaroli (2006: 178–9), who have previously drawn attention to the presence of different versions of the Premier. Berlusconi, having found himself under attack by German MEP, Martin Schulz, while assuming the rotating presidency of the EU in July 2003, retorted by suggesting that Schulz take the role of a concentration camp guard in a holocaust film. Footage from this famous gaff-turned-diplomatic-incident reappears in many of the documentaries about him (including Citizen Berlusconi and Quando c’era Silvio). Moretti’s attacks on commedia all’italiana are common, from the use of Alberto Sordi’s name in order to put an end to his acquaintance’s pronouncements in Ecce bombo (‘What?’, Moretti says, ‘Are we in a film by Alberto Sordi . . . You deserve Alberto Sordi!’), to his repeated comments in interviews (see de Bernardinis 1993: 6).

Filmography Alberti, F. Grazie, Berlusconi! (Article Z, Italy 2005) Benigni, R. La tigre e la neve (Melampo; Post Media, Italy 2005) Borelli, C. Lilli e il cavaliere (Anonymous Productions, Italy 2004)

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Cairola, A. and Gray, S. Citizen Berlusconi (Arte; PBS; Stefilm; Thirteen/WNET Communications Group; YLE, Italy/America 2003) Calopresti, M. L’abbuffata (Dania Film; Gagè Produzioni; Istituto Luce, Italy 2007) Carboni, B. Shooting Silvio (Mork & Berry; Kubla Khan, Italy 2007) Coppola, F. F. Apocalypse Now (Zoetrope Studies, US 1979) Cremagnani, B. and Deaglio, E. Quando c’era Silvio: Storia del periodo berlusconiano (Luben Production; Diario, Italy 2005) — Uccidete la democrazia: Memorandum sulle elezioni di Aprile (Luben Production; Diario, Italy 2006) Crudden, E. Berlusconi’s Mousetrap (Indymedia, Ireland 2001) Ferrario, D. Dopo mezzanotte (Rossofuoco, Italy 2004) Guzzanti, S. Viva Zapatero! (Lucky Red; Sciocco Produzione; Secol Superbo; Studio Uno, Italy 2005) Luchetti, D. Il portaborse (Banfilm; Canal+; Ciné Cinq; Conexión Films; Eidoscope Pruductions; Pyramide Productions; Sacher Film, Italy, France, Spain 1991) Moore, M. Farenheit 9/11 (Lions Gate Films; IFC Films; Fellowship Adventure Group; Dog Eat Dog Films; Westside Production Services; Miramax Films, USA 2004) Moretti, N. Ecce bombo (Filmalpha; Ministero del Turismo e dello Spettacolo; Alphabetafilm, Italy 1978) — Aprile (Bac Films; Canal+; La Sept Cinéma; Les Films Alain Sarde; Radiotelevisione Italiana; Sacher Film, Italy 1998) — La stanza del figlio (Bac Films; Canal+; Rai Cinemafiction; Sacher Film; Telepiù, Italy 2001) — Il caimano (Sacher Film, Bac Film, Stéphan Films, France 3 Cinéma, Italy, France 2006) Muccino, G. Ricordati di me (Fandango; Medusa Produzione; Telepiù; Vice Versa Film, Italy, France, UK 2003) Stahlberg, J. H. Bye Bye Berlusconi (Schiwago Film, Germany 2006) Turco, M. In un altro paese (Artline Films; BBC; Doclab S.r.l.; Rai Tre Radiotelevisione Italiana; SBS Television; Sveriges Television; YLE Teema, Italy 2005) Virzì, P. N (io e Napoleone) (Cattleya; Babe Film; Alquimia Cinema; Medusa Film; Sky; Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Italy, Spain, France 2006)

References Adamson, W. L. (1980), Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. ANICA (2006), available at: www.anica.it/datipercent20cinema/datipercent20cinemapercent202006.ppt. Accessed 12 April 2008. Anon (2006), ‘Il caimano sono io, li sbrano tutti’. Berlusconi contro magistrati e Unione’, Stampa, 27 March. Bechis, F. (2008), ‘Un girotondo da 7 stelle’, Italia Oggi, 8 April, pp. 1–2. Bernardi, S. (2006), Nanni Moretti (5th Edition). Milan: Il Castoro. Booth, W. (2006), ‘If Michael Moore helped tip an election, he’d be Nanni Moretti’, Washington Post, 26 May, available at: www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052502246. htl. Accessed 2 November 2007. Burns, J. (2001), Fragments of Impegno: Interpretations of Commitment in Contemporary Italian Narrative 1980–2000. Leeds: Northern Universities Press. Chiesi, R. (2006), ‘Nel tumore italiano’, Cineforum, 454, pp. 9–12. Cordero, F. (2004), ‘Il caimano’, Repubblica, 11 April. Cremonini, G. (2006), ‘E questa casa diede alle fiamme’, Cineforum, 454, pp. 2–8. de Bernardinis, F. (1993), Nanni Moretti. Pavia: Il Castoro. French, P. (2007), ‘See you later alligator . . . bring on the skaters: Nanni Moretti’s allegory on Italian politics disappoints, while Will Ferrell’s spoof on ice is surprisingly funny’, Observer, 8 April. Gili, Jean A. (2006), Nanni Moretti. Rome: Gremese. Ginsborg, P. (2003), Berlusconi: Ambizioni patrimoniali in una democrazia mediatica (translated by Emilia Benghi). Turin: Einaudi.

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Mazierska, E. and Rascaroli, L. (2004), The Cinema of Nanni Moretti: Dreams and Diaries. London: Wallflower. — (2006), Il cinema di Nanni Moretti: Sogni e diari. Gremese: Rome (a translation of the English edition, with an additional chapter on Il caimano). Mascia, G. (2002), Intervista a Nanni Moretti: Qualcosa di sinistra. Genoa: Fratelli Frilli Editore. Moretti, N. (2002), Speech at San Giovanni, available at: www.societacivile.it/primopiano/articoli_ pp/moretti_14settembre.html. Accessed 16 October 2008. Morgoglione, C. (2006), ‘Caimano e pantere (rosa) nel week end al cinema’, Repubblica, 24 March. Radman, S. (2005), ‘Vi racconto Il caimano’, L’Espresso, 18 August. Tranfaglia, N. (2004), ‘I girotondi’, in Tuccari (ed.), L’opposizione al Governo Berlusconi. Rome and Bari: Laterza, pp. 183–91. Uva, C. and Picchi, M. (2006), Destra e sinistra nel cinema italiano: Film e immaginario politico dagli anni ’60 al nuovo millennio. Rome: Edizioni Interculturali. Ward, D. (2001), ‘Intellectuals, culture and power in modern Italy’, in Z. G. Baranski and R. J. West (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 81–96. Zecchinelli, C. (2002), ‘Berlusconi turns competish to Stone’, in Variety, 18 February, available at: www. variety.com/article/VR1117860794. Accessed 22 April 2002.

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CHAPTER NINE

Staging Opposition: Il Signor Rossi e La Costituzione Stefania Taviano

This chapter focuses on the resistance strategies employed by the actor and performer Paolo Rossi in order to oppose Silvio Berlusconi during his second and third governments (2001–06). The uniqueness of Rossi’s approach is due to his reversing of roles between theatre and politics whereby the performer paradoxically plays the role of the politician and turns the stage into a political arena. The focus of this chapter will be Rossi’s play, Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione (Mr Rossi and the Constitution), a perfect example of Rossi’s theatre of resistance. It has a precise strategy aimed at reproducing the delirium of the political context through audience participation. This allows Rossi to make the contradictions of Italy’s political system apparent, affording spectators a unique opportunity to reflect on the Italian Constitution while being entertained by the play’s humour. The role and significance of Rossi’s theatrical satire is analysed in relation to, and in contrast with, television satire, which, unlike theatre, has been subject to censorship. The effects of a significant process of censorship which affected Rossi, together with other performers, such as the Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo and his wife Franca Rame, Daniele Luttazzi and Sabina Guzzanti, will also be explored. This chapter looks too at the alternative circuit consequently adopted by the above-mentioned performers. All this aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of the strategies put in place by Italian theatre resisting neo-conservatism.

The Context of Resistance Paolo Rossi’s theatre positions itself within the context of Italian actors/playwrights who write and stage original performances closely related to contemporary political and social issues relevant to Italian audiences. Some of these artists are more specifically known for their so-called ‘teatro di impegno civile’, a socially committed theatre. This is the case of Beppe Rosso who has staged performances on a variety of themes, such as immigration, integration, cultural difference in relation to the controversial presence of Roma people in Italy and the importance of memory as an integral part of civil awareness. Others, such as Luttazzi and Guzzanti, tend to adopt a more political approach and turn their theatre into a disturbing critique of the political establishment. Luttazzi’s Satyricon, for example, based on his television programme censored in 2001, is a one-man show, mixing political satire aimed at Berlusconi and left-wing politicians, with gags about sex and violence, while Guzzanti’s Reperto Raiot offers a critique of the Italian media and political system through the caricature of a series of public figures, including Berlusconi, giving the audience advice on how to live happily and best interpret the laws

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approved during his leadership. Fo and Rame, who have been the protagonists of Italian alternative theatre since the late 1960s (see Behan 2000; Farrell and Scuderi 2000; Mitchell 1999), continue to devote their theatre both to significant social as well as political causes, including the fight against Berlusconi’s government, as testified by their surreal satire, L’anomalo bicefalo (The Two-Headed Anomaly).1 Rossi, Luttazzi, Guzzanti, Fo and Rame all use political satire, one of the most powerful forms of classical theatre, as a weapon against neo-conservatism, and through their work have contributed to the debate on the lack of freedom of expression in Italy. What sets Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione apart from the above-mentioned performances, as I hope to demonstrate, is its political effectiveness, due not only, and not so much, to its contents, but above all to its highly interactive form, and its function in contributing to the formation of public opinion. In other words, the fact that Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione focuses on a political element, such as the Constitution, is only one among a number of factors which make it politically disturbing. The political nature of the performance lies primarily in the interaction with the audience and in the debate that it generates in the society at large. Rossi has been defined as being ‘irreverent’, to say the least, for his anticonformist views, and has been compared to Fo and to Lenny Bruce. Since he started his career with Fo in L’Histoire du soldat (The Story of the Soldier) in the late 1970s, he has acted not only in traditional theatres, but also in a variety of performance spaces, including television and even a circus tent. In the last 30 years he has made himself known to Italian, and international, audiences for his commitment to contemporary political and social issues often addressed through his reinterpretation of classic playwrights, such as Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht, and on the basis of theatrical traditions, such as Commedia dell’Arte. In 1995 Rossi created his own theatre company, Lesitaliens, together with Lucia Vasini and Giampiero Solari. Among other things, they staged Il circo di Paolo Rossi (Paolo Rossi’s Circus) a touring performance on which 18 artists, including musicians and mimes, collaborated, and which toured throughout Italy for two consecutive seasons, becoming the theatrical event of the time. Since then he has created and staged a series of performances based on classic texts, such as Rabelais in 1996 (an adaptation of François Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel) and Romeo & Juliet ‘Serata di delirio organizzato’ (Romeo & Juliet ‘An Evening of Organized Delirium’) marked by audience involvement, in 1998. In 2001 he made the active participation of the audience a key element again in Storie per un delirio organizzato (Stories for an Organized Delirium) through the narration of a variety of stories (as indicated in the title), from the Israeli–Palestinian war to key events of past and contemporary Italian history. Rossi also appeared in television programmes and presented the satirical programme Scatafascio (Total Destruction), set in a hypermarket as a symbol of our capitalist society: spectators, including those watching at home, could exchange products. The history of Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione has been affected by the same censorship process that influenced other previously mentioned performers. In November 2003, right at the time when Guzzanti’s satirical programme Raiot was censored (see Chapter 7) and while Rossi was performing Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione at the Ambra Jovinelli Theatre in Rome, the television presenter Paolo Bonolis invited Rossi as a guest on Domenica In (Sunday In), a six-hour-long Sunday variety programme. Rossi decided to perform a short piece taken from Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione and provided the text to RAI managers ahead of the show. The text, consisting of a defence of democracy, was part of Pericles’s funeral oration included in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. RAI managers found the piece too strong and censored it. The following extract illustrates its provocative nature: This is how we do things here in Athens. Our government supports the majority, instead of a minority, because this is what is called democracy. [. . .] An Athenian citizen does not neglect

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public matters when he looks after his own private issues. But he never ever deals with public matters to solve private issues. This is how we do things here in Athens, we have been taught like this and we have been taught to respect judges and we have been taught to respect the law, even unwritten laws whose sanction has to do with a universal feeling of what is right and common sense. Our city is open and this is why we never send foreigners away. This is how we do things here in Athens. Rossi’s choice of such a text, later distributed during the tour, reflects a traditional theatrical strategy, often used by Fo and Rame in their performances, whereby a play is set in, or refers to, a foreign context and, as a consequence, the author and/or performer claims the foreign and therefore distant nature of the events put on stage to emphasize their relevance to the local context. To this end, while performing Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione, Rossi asks the audience to use their imagination to transform themselves into Greek spectators of 400 BC, standing in an agora, or public square, and smelling the moussaka. He ironically argues that Pericles was a Greek comedian, rather than a democratic statesman, and that democracy was born in cabarets in Athens. Despite the Greek origin of the text, its definition of democracy and democratic behaviour in fact targets some of the crucial contradictory elements of Berlusconi’s governments, such as his dictatorial leadership, his dishonesty in using his political power to defend his own personal interests, and his constant attacks against Italian magistrates. Particularly threatening to the essence of democracy is the fact that all sentences against Berlusconi – which range from convictions for perjury, false financial records, tax evasion, bribing of politicians and judges and alleged Mafia connections – have been lifted as a result of a series of ad personam laws approved under Berlusconi’s governments. The motivation for the Mediaset compensation lawsuit against Guzzanti, Marco Travaglio and RAI is fascinating in its attempt to deny the political and social significance of satire.2 By arguing that satire is nothing more than a desecrating form of expression and that as such it is not supposed to inform, Mediaset minimizes its disturbing function in relation to the establishment. Rather than being confined within the realm of pure entertainment, aimed soley at provoking laughter, as Mediaset suggests, satire’s primary role is that of contributing to the formation of public opinion. Such a role is even more vital, and at the same time more difficult to exercize, in a country such as contemporary Italy, where the Prime Minister controls the majority of the media. In this sense, satire on television can have the merit of bringing to the audience’s attention facts and events that are rarely disclosed, as Rossi has emphasized during the interview broadcast on Nessuno TV (Rossi 2004).

An Interactive Delirant Performance The subtitle of Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione is ‘a popular rally of organized delirium’. As opposed to theatre marked by a fourth wall, which separates the scene from spectators, Rossi brings on stage the delirium of the outside world, and, by participating in it, the audience becomes fully aware of its inherent chaos and paradox. At the beginning of the performance, Rossi sits centre stage at a table and recites a kind of prologue telling the story of a partisan who finds the book of the Constitution and tries to preserve it. He is accompanied by an ‘usher’ with a megaphone and three musicians. ‘The People are Sovereign’ is blazoned across the backdrop. From the beginning, Rossi starts interacting with the audience by taking advantage of the fact that there are often spectators arriving late while he is reciting the prologue. He talks to them, apologizing and ironically arguing that it is his fault since he has arrived early on stage. At this point he recites the prologue again, but explains

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that for a change he will do it in a different language, Slavic. Like Fo, who used an onomatopeic invented language in Mistero buffo (Comic Mysteries), known as grammelot, Rossi likewise pretends to be speaking Slavic, by using sounds that appear Slavic and combining them with a few real words, the key words of the prologue, which the audience can recognize. He then reinforces the leitmotiv of the performance – role reversal – beginning with the provocative suggestion that the Italian Parliament is sold to a television network. After all, we live in a spectacle society and the parliament represents the most comic show in Italy. Throughout the performance Rossi mixes together a reading of a series of articles from the Constitution, including the most central ones (Articles 1–12), anecdotes, personal stories, and songs which refer to past and contemporary Italian politics, while also reacting to audience provocations and turning the show into a happening. For example, at one point he sings a powerful song in which he looks at the most crucial moments in the last 50 years of Italian history, imagining a landlords’ meeting headed by Andrea Giuliotti, alias the politician Giulio Andreotti. At times, he extends his public role by doing things like informally ‘marrying’ a couple in the audience. In the second act Rossi reads out spectators’ ideas and continues to focus on randomly chosen articles of the Constitution. Rossi concludes by singing the song Unforgettable (supposedly voted as an alternative to the national anthem) and while he sings the usher proclaims that the Constitution is unforgettable. He reminds the audience of some of its key principles, such as the repudiation of war, and the most important principle of all, constantly present through the writing upstage: ‘The People are Sovereign’. Rossi explains the delirium of the subtitle as follows: I would like to define it as an evening of legislative delirium. A theatre that puts on stage the life of our Republic based on work (Art. 1) and on our Constitution. I have worked on theatre classics for a long time – Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Molière – now I am dealing with the law text par eccellence. I have never found a classic text that is more classic than the Constitution. It is so well made that each time you read it you forget who the killer is. (Anon 2004) Such delirium is directly related to the chaos of the current political and social context in Italy. During an interview broadcast on the independent web-based Italian television network, Nessuno TV, Rossi ironically argues that while, historically, there were two distinct figures, the King and the Fool, Berlusconi plays the role of both (Rossi 2004).3 It is by reproducing such delirium and reversing it that the stage becomes the place to perform politics by encouraging active audience participation. From beginning to end, Rossi makes continuous references to the paradoxical nature of contemporary Italy and to its role reversal. When introducing the performance he emphasizes that, ‘Given that the parliament stages shows and plays, we will try to make laws in this theatre’. In other words, since the parliament fails to perform its primary role – that is, making laws – Rossi then becomes a legislator elected by the audience, and replacing Gigetto, alias Berlusconi. During an interview broadcast on Radio NBC, Bolzano, he reiterated this point by arguing that, ‘We comedians are useful in our time because we know the art of paradox, and the time we live in is even more paradoxical because power has mimicked the language of the comedian’ (Rossi 2006b). The ‘rally of organized delirium’ is actually the result of a precise and well-defined strategy that takes its premises from the Constitution itself, more specifically Articles 17 and 18 which recognize the right to a popular rally as long as the latter is announced with due notice and no weapons are used. As Rossi has explained (2004), it is clearly stated in the Constitution that its articles can be modified as long as it is done only in the interests of the community and of the weak parts of the population, rather than in the interests of a single person, who, in this case,

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is the killer because he goes against the spirit of the Constitution. On the contrary, Rossi in his show encourages his audience to reflect on one of the highly debated pillars of Italian politics, because of the reform carried out under Berlusconi’s government, and to actively participate by discussing changes to the Constitution. The strategy, as Rossi has argued in more than one interview (2004, 2006b), is to show the contradiction between the law, the Constitution as a set of rules, and the reality surrounding us. He goes through the Constitution with the audience ‘to understand it, to focus on the gap between what is written in the Constitution and what we experience in life. The gap between, the so-called “comic black hole”, is basically my show’ (Rossi 2006b). For example, as soon as he reads out Articles 9 and 10 – the first providing that the Italian Republic promotes the development of culture and scientific and technical research, as well as protecting the nation’s historical and artistic landscape and heritage; the second recognizing immigrants’ rights, as provided for by international treaties, and their right to political asylum4 – the dichotomy between the Constitution and reality becomes obvious, immediately provoking laughter. Contradiction is also inherent in the concept of preventive and humanitarian war, which violates Article 11 of the Constitution in which Italy repudiates war. In this sense, the performance relies on the essence of comedy, that is to say the contradiction between what is said and what is done, between appearances and reality.

The Unique Nature of Theatrical Satire The interactive nature of Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione becomes even more prominent because of the relevance of the Constitution to Italian citizens. In Rossi’s words, It is never the same. It depends with whom I am interacting. The Constitution is not a neutral text; it triggers different debates depending on where you are: in Bolzano people are interested in the problem of language minorities, in Naples people have a strong interest in the article proclaiming the right to work. Unemployed people have a lot to say about the fact that that article of the Constitution is not applied. (Manin 2004) The fact that every night a number of articles are randomly chosen makes the performance, and the debate it generates, even more lively and intense. The Constitution appears as the ideal point of departure for a truly political, and actively involving, theatre performance, giving Italian citizens a unique opportunity to reflect on the legislation of their own country. This should enable them to carefully consider their civil rights, and, more specifically, issues of their personal and professional life that are particularly relevant to them. The result is a dialogue between Rossi and his spectators, and among the spectators, that is constantly changing, a work in progress, which renews itself thanks to the new ideas that the audience brings to every performance. When asked how he manages to identify issues that are so dear to the Italians, Rossi emphasizes his theatrical background as well as his personal approach: This is what popular theatre teaches you. You get used to different kinds of interaction with the audience, a constant exchange. [. . .] I spend a lot of time in the streets, I am a gypsy and I feel which way things are going. I like to be with everyday people; I like going to social centres, meeting students and workers. This is where you get a feeling of what the country is like, certainly not in salons. (Mallozzi 2004) The theatre then becomes the place par excellence where citizens can responsibly share their opinions and carefully consider the political and social life of their country. The distinctive

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nature of theatre, particularly Rossi’s theatre, which sets it apart from television, is constantly brought to the spectators’ attention. The performance is marked by continuous metareferences to the act of performing itself, to the mise en scène, often by emphasizing the contrast with television. For example, the audience is encouraged to hand in suggestions and comments so as to guarantee the collective nature of what takes place on stage and in the theatre. When Rossi jokes that the theatre director, like the director of RAI, will not allow the staging of the second Act if swear words are used too often, or when he encourages a spectator to interact with the actor because ‘this is not television’, he amplifies the divergence between television on the one hand and theatre on the other. Rossi’s insistence on such divergence is strictly linked to the censorship to which his work was subject and represents at the same time an aspect of his strategy against Berlusconi’s mediatic regime and in defense of theatre. Rossi (2004) has emphasized that if a comedian’s performance is censored on television, spectators are then encouraged to go and see him or her at the theatre. The same happened for Fo and Rame’s L’anomalo bicefalo in 2004 since, as Rame argued – when I interviewed her for the ninth issue of the international theatre journal Open Page – the Piccolo theatre’s attempts to censor the play turned out to be a form of publicity and the play sold out (Rame 2004: 21). Maltese (2003) and Rossi (2004), among others, have also pointed out that this is particularly true in Italy. In other countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France, the presence of satire on television is much more significant in qualitative, as well as quantitative terms; in Italy satire tends to be censored and therefore confined in large part to the theatre. But there is a key aspect which makes satire politically effective and that is its ability to go well beyond a superficial caricature of public figures. Rather than limiting itself to making people laugh, true satire should ridicule politicians. And this is where, in Rossi’s opinion, the distinction between stand-up comedy television programmes and his theatre lies (2004). For this reason, during the performance, imitations are limited to a minimum (there are just some references to Berlusconi’s delusions of grandeur). Before focusing on the Constitution, Rossi asks the audience if they want him to talk about him (Rossi never mentions Berlusconi’s name) and since the audience’s reply is always positive, at this point he explains that he is much better than Rossi as a comedian and then ironically refers to Berlusconi’s well-known embarrassing statements, defining them as excellent funny lines that, as an actor, he likes to steal from time to time. Rather than simply imitating Berlusconi, Rossi ridicules him by depriving him of his official political role and attributing him the role of a comedian, a jester, on the basis of those lines which have made, and continue to make, Berlusconi ridiculous on a national and international level. The disturbing function of satire on television is by definition limited to its content, whatever the social or political issues upon which it touches. Theatre, on the other hand, can be politically effective if it challenges the dominant ideology not only in terms of content, but especially if it does so through its form and function, as Graham Holderness argues (1992). This applies to performances which, by subverting the dynamics typical of traditional theatre, have a bearing on the surrounding social and political context. This was so, for example, for the 2002 joint Scottish–Italian production of The Odyssey, funded by the Scottish Arts Council: the play was based on the active involvement of local community members and visual artists, and staged throughout the Tramway Theatre in Glasgow, including its backstage spaces and corridors. In the case of Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione, Rossi (2004) has pointed out a growing awareness among the audience regarding the Constitution, an awareness that might have been favoured by the initiative of some local governments who distributed copies of the Constitution at the time of the performance. The participation of local governments in encouraging Italian citizens to familiarize themselves with the text of the Constitution testifies to the political impact that the

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show had during the tour. In other words, it indicates that Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione has had an influence not only on individual spectators, who went to the theatre, but also on a wider reality, particularly political institutions, which paralleled and reinforced the social aim of the performance. Political satire of this kind provokes bitter laughter, as Alex Mallozzi claims in his review of Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione: Imitations are forbidden; in the end it is bitter laughter, it is a show that reminds you of jazz, with the thrill that only unforeseen events and improvization can provoke in transforming a work in progress. [. . .] All this gave us two hours of pure and healthy spectacle, which makes you think with grace and intelligence, even though you might not share his opinions. A pity that television audiences cannot enjoy such irony on prime time, but this is Italy, a country where the word Censorship still exists. (Mallozzi 2004) Bitter laughter becomes inevitable in the fight against the cultural regime created by Berlusconi through his media empire. As Rossi argues: In Italy the problem is more cultural than political: the election campaign of the governing political party started much earlier, I would say in the 1980s when television imposed models of hedonism, consumerism, and arrogance and this created the current situtation. The regime was born first on the cultural level; it affected values, historical memory, and then everything else. And political satire was not the only thing to lose. (Rossi 2004) Rossi’s theatre, particularly Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione, aims to awaken Italians from the soporific condition created by Berlusconi’s cultural, as well as political, propaganda, and to help them recover their memory and their political consciousness of past and present. As Rossi claims (2006b), his political views cannot be reduced to a specific party since he likes to be critical of the left as well, and Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione was not necessarily aimed at those who share his opinions; on the contrary the performance tried to fight the dominant aggressiveness and individualism which are the result of a cultural strategy created by Berlusconi and his media empire. In such a context, Rossi’s theatre represents ‘a comforting genre’, as he has defined it on the backcover of the book and in the DVD, which means ‘bringing food to those who are stuck on a motorway because it has snowed, it means bringing food to a party. It keeps up your spirit and mood’ (Rossi 2006a).

On Stage and Beyond The target of Rossi’s theatre in this sense is much harder to fight than a political enemy and the impact that his performances can have is equally difficult to pin down, but there are a number of elements, together with those previously analysed, which can help us understand to what extent Italian audiences have been influenced by Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione and Rossi’s theatre in general. The performance was well received (see Amaduzzi 2004; Rota 2003) and the figures indicate that it made a strong impact. Rossi performed it with incredible success throughout Italy for two consecutive theatre seasons, 2002–03 and 2003–04, for a total of 120 shows and to approximately 150,000 spectators, a significant number of spectators for a theatre performance. Although one can argue that its relevance is limited if compared to the number of people watching a television programme, the numerically restricted impact of the show is compensated

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in qualitative terms by the emotional intensity of the experience and above all by the series of initiatives it generated. On several occasions Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione was performed two or three times in the same day: in a school in the morning, in a theatre in the evening and then Rossi and his performers could be asked to take part in a political or social event and extend the analysis of the Constitution. This happened not only during the two years of the tour, but even later, and it continues to the present day. For example, Rossi performed Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione during the 25 April celebration of the liberation from Fascism in 2005 in Milan, and the performance video was shown during the same celebration in Trento in 2008 at the Torre Vanga Gallery. The video was also shown during meetings and protests against Constitutional reform and its impact in terms of health, education and job opportunities; for example, it was shown during the event organized by students and professors of the University of Basilicata on 21 June 2006, with the participation of left-wing politicians. Rossi’s commitment to a civil and political journey across contemporary Italy is a constant element throughout his career, emerging from the performances that preceded and followed Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione. Following on its heels, Il Signor Rossi contro l’impero del male (Mr Rossi against the Evil Empire), for example, was a multicultural project, created together with various international artists. Among other things, it again addressed the status of Italy as a country currently dominated by the overwhelming presence of television programmes. Such coherence, which surely contributes to the impact that his theatre can have, should be considered within the wider context of socially and politically committed theatre. Together with the previously mentioned practitioners, sharing oppositional strategies in a fight which subverts traditional categories of theatre, Rossi contributes to eliminating any clear distinction between the realm of politics and the art world. At this point, to fully understand the impact of such theatre of resistance, it might be necessary to take our analysis beyond the theatre itself and consider how it extends its presence through alternative publishers and through an alternative television circuit. The book and DVD of Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione belongs to the widespread and incredibly successful category of anti-Berlusconian printed and visual materials, including documentaries, films, theatre texts and books. Just to give an example, Guzzanti’s Viva Zapatero! DVD sold 300,000 copies in a month. According to De Feo, the journalist Marco Travaglio did even better, hitting the record of one million copies for his entire works, which indicates that ‘opposition against the Prime Minister is not simply a political leitmotiv, it is also a profitable trend’ (De Feo 2006). The interesting thing is that, as the editor Alessandro Dalai puts it, ‘the potential market is actually huge: the 50 percent of Italians who do not vote Berlusconi’ (De Feo 2006). Oliviero Ponte Di Pino, Garzanti’s editorial director who has published Travaglio’s books, confirms such success, ‘Titles on Berlusconi sell like hot cakes. It is an audience of people who are not satisfied with the television and media information that is currently offered and which independent publishers have prepared to satisfy them’ (ibid.). Such a large readership seems to indicate that, thanks to books and, above all, DVDs, the audience for Rossi, as well as Guzzanti and others, extends well beyond the figures provided above for spectators who went to see the live performance. Moreover, the book of Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione includes the records of an imaginary interrogation of Rossi by a ‘Committee for Unconstitutional Activities’ for his alleged crime of ‘defence of the Constitution’. The Committee notes that he carried this crime out with a large number of people, and focuses on Rossi’s ‘career as a theatre subversive’ and on ‘his extremist activities’ (Rossi 2006b: 10). Above all, it includes an introduction by Judge Livio Pepino explaining the profound changes to the Constitution carried out by the Berlusconi government, such as the strong powers conferred on the Prime Minister and the significant weakening of

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other political institutions, such as the parliament and the President of the Republic, arguing that this led to a serious imbalance in the distribution of powers. A detailed table comparing the previous version of each article in the second part of the Constitution with the new version follows this introduction. The DVD includes extras in which Rossi introduces and concludes the performance, making ironic comments on the fact that, after the Pericles piece was censored, all recordings were lost except for one. There is also a section entitled lavori in corso (Work in progress), which is a sort of backstage footage and includes an interview with Rossi (broadcast on Radio NBC, Bolzano) and with the other actors and musicians. There is a clip, too, of the performance, with Rossi singing an extract from Vittorio Alfieri’s Della Tirannide (About Tyranny) while marrying a couple from the audience. There is a further element that might be useful to consider: the phenomenon of political theatre, which, as Ponte di Pino claims (2004), has sparked off ‘new television’, whereby shows and performances which have been censored on mainstream television are instead broadcast on alternative channels. Fo and Rame have been actively involved in this theatre-television contamination. Their performance dealing with the contradictions of the Iraq war, Ubù Bas va alla Guerra (Ubù Bas Goes to War), with Jacopo Fo and the participation of Luttazzi, was broadcast on 27 March 2003 on Atlantide.tv, as well as on the internet, satellite TV and 27 local television channels. After a week it had reached an audience of 2,000,000 people. Later L’anomalo bicefalo, which was supposed to be broadcast on Atlantide.tv at the end of the tour, was aired on 23 January 2004, but without the audio. This was because the Forza Italia senator, Marcello Dell’Utri, sued Fo and Rame for defamation, demanding compensation of €1,000,000 because of the play’s references to his alleged links with the Mafia. He called for the performance not to be broadcast on television.5 The figures discussed above seem to indicate that this ‘new television’, influenced by theatre, has a relatively large audience, an audience made up of ‘spectators who want to hear a different opinion, who want to identify themselves with a message which is different from the dominant one’, as Ponte di Pino puts it (2004). While this might be a useful factor in revealing the number of people reached by the theatre of resistance through alternative forms of communication, the strength of such a theatre, as shown in this chapter, mainly relies on the here and now of each live performance and in its politically relevant role in the formation of Italian consciousness. Although the results of the 2008 elections would seem to indicate that the quantitative superiority, and pervasive presence, of Berlusconi’s mediatic régime remains a winning factor which overcomes the revolutionary nature of theatre, such an analysis would be limiting, since the impact of theatre performances of this kind, in social and civic terms, cannot be assessed in the short run and on the basis of election results. It is in time that future generations will be able to judge the true extent of such impact and retrospectively fully understand if it contributed or not to the long-term fight against the cultural vacuum created by Berlusconi. The theatre, nevertheless, with its inherent political and democratic nature, has historically always been, and remains, a unique form of art through which we can express our cultural freedom and rediscover the dialogue with the Other.6

Notes 1. The title is indicative of a surreal story in which Berlusconi and Putin are subject to a terrorist attack during a conference on organ transplants in Sicily. Putin dies, but the Italian tycoon survives after a transplant of the ‘sane parts’ of Putin’s brain into Berlusconi’s brain. The latter becomes the ‘anomalous’ protagonist, a dwarf played by Fo together with an invisible mime. Berlusconi’s wife, played by Rame, helps him to recover his memory. Apart from

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2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

Berlusconi and his wife, a number of Italian politicians, including the left-wing politician Massimo D’Alema, are ridiculed on stage. Here is the motivation: ‘It is well known, to tell the truth, that satire satisfies an innate need to mock famous and powerful figures and, unlike news and critique, does not have any informative aims. The law has more than once made clear that “the right to satire, as opposed to the right to be informed, does not have information as its objective (either primary or secondary)” (Decree Law 1989: 520). It cannot, therefore, be argued that satire contributes to public opinion, and this is because its means of expression is inherently desecrating. This is why, if we want to identify satire’s role, it can be seen as relying on a social form of control associated with power; through satire, in other words, the weapon of laughter has the role of “moderating powerful people”, bringing famous people down to earth and humanizing them, humiliating the arrogant, encouraging tolerance, and therefore minimizing social tensions. The difference in relation to other forms of thought becomes clear then, given that satire, by definition, cannot aim to contribute to the formation of public opinion’ (Ponte di Pino 2004). On the journalist Marco Travaglio, fiercely critical of Berlusconi, see Chapter 7. As it is commonly known, Rossi here is referring to the Shakespearian Fool and to his key role in plays such as King Lear. See, for example, Mullini 1983. It is important to note that Italy is the only country in the European Union (EU) that does not have a comprehensive law on political asylum. Although two decrees issued in November 2007 and March 2008, in response to EU directives, have better specified the procedures for applying for refugee status, a comprehensive law fully recognizing refugees’ rights is still lacking to this day. Sabina Guzzanti’s performances were also broadcast on alternative channels. For example, a ‘pro-Raiot’ event was staged in Naples on 25 January 2004 via videotelephone. It was shown by Televisione del Mugello Tele Iride and it was seen through mobile phones with an internet connection. This was apparently the first experiment of this kind. On the political essence of theatre and its role in the twenty-first century, see Ricordi (2008).

References Anon (2004), ‘Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione’, available at: www.envers.it/scenariosensibile/ scenariosensibile5/01.html. Accessed 20 June 2008. Amaduzzi M. (2004), ‘La Costituzione del Signor Rossi sei serate di delirio organizzato’, Repubblica, 16 March. Behan, T. (2000), Dario Fo: Revolutionary Theatre. London: Pluto Press. De Feo, F. (2006), ‘Quel business chiamato antiberlusconismo’, Giornale, 24 March. Farrell, J. and Scuderi, A. (eds) (2000), Dario Fo: Stage, Text and Tradition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Holderness, G. (ed.) (1992), The Politics of Theatre and Drama. London: Macmillan. Mallozzi A. (2004), ‘Paolo Rossi: Arriva anche a Parma la Costituzione e si sente . . .’, Alicespettacolo a cura di Fabio Amadeo e Alex Mallozzi, available at: www.alicenonlosa.it/spettacolo/musica.asp?ID=65 Accessed 15 June 2008. Maltese, C. (2003), ‘La Rai censura anche Pericle’, Repubblica, 24 November. Manin, G. (2004), ‘Paolo Rossi: “Io, se fossi sindaco . . .” ’, Corriere delle Sera, 14 April, available at: www. corriere.it/vivimilano/speciali/2004/04_Aprile/14/rossi.shtml. Accessed 2 July 2008. Mitchell, T. (1999), Dario Fo, People’s Court Jester (rev. and exp. edn). London: Routledge. Mullini, R. (1983), Corruttore di parole. Il fool nel teatro di Shakespeare. Bologna: CLUEB. Ponte di Pino, O. (2004), ‘La neo-televisione può nascere dal teatro?’, in Riccione TTV 2004 Expanded Theatre, 15 May, pp. 109–14. available at: www.trax.it/olivieropdp/mostranotizie2. asp?num=69&ord=15. Accessed 4 June 2008.

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Rame, F. (2004), ‘I am Ready’, The Open Page, 9 March. Ricordi, F. (2008), Le mani sulla cultura. Rome: Gremese. Rossi, P. (2004), ‘Paolo Rossi sul dittatore Berlusconi’, Schiena Dritta, Nessuno TV, 26 May, available at: www.arcoiris.tv/modules.php?name=Search&testo=Paolo+Rossi&tipo=testo. Accessed 15 June 2008. — (2006a), Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione. Milan: Bur. — (2006b), ‘Intervista a Paolo Rossi. Radio NBC Bolzano’, in P. Rossi (ed.), (2006a), Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione. Milan: Bur. Rota, A. (2003), ‘Metto a nudo la Costituzione con un happening’, Repubblica, 11 November.

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CHAPTER TEN

Web Challenges to Berlusconi: An Analysis of Oppositional Sites Cristian Vaccari

Introduction Since Silvio Berlusconi became a central player in Italian politics, media ownership and the control of public information have turned into a lively political battlefield.1 Within this scenario, the internet is acquiring a significant role as an oppositional terrain, both on a symbolic level, as a medium open to bottom-up initiatives, user control, and peer-to-peer relationships, and on a practical level, as a public space less affected by direct and indirect censorship, less colonized by business, and uncontrolled by Berlusconi.2 Institutional actors, however, have not been particularly active online (Bentivegna 2002: 112–20, 2006: 36–67). This is hardly surprising given the historical elective affinities between the mainstream media and politics in Italy (Mancini 2002: 15–57; Mazzoleni 2000: 159–61; Murialdi 2006: 269–302, 311–12): the parliamentary opposition to Berlusconi could rely on newspapers and visibility on television to voice its contentions. Furthermore, the diffusion of internet technology and its use in Italy has lagged behind most European countries. According to Eurostat (2008), in 2002 only 34 per cent of Italian households were connected to the internet and in 2003 just 25 per cent of Italians accessed the web at least once a week. By 2007, significant improvements had taken place, as 43 per cent of households were connected to the internet, 25 per cent of households had a broadband connection and 34 per cent of the population used the internet weekly. All figures, however, are still significantly lower than European Union averages, which are 54 per cent for household access, 42 per cent for broadband connection, and 51 per cent for weekly users. Other research (Censis 2007) found that in 2007 internet users amounted to 45.3 per cent of the population, and habitual users, classified as accessing the internet at least three times a week, went from 28.5 per cent in 2006 to 38.3 per cent in 2007. Moreover, various inequalities in internet access, frequency of use, and computer literacy persist between men and women, more and less educated citizens, younger and older generations, and Northern and Southern parts of the country (Sartori 2006). The relatively low level of internet penetration and the fact that the online public is still quite unrepresentative of the voting population has probably reduced the incentives for parties to invest in the new media. Seen through the logic of modern campaigning (see Chapter 3), the internet lacks the mass-scale, catch-all potential that Italian parties have increasingly come to depend on for delivering their messages. Just as, in general, social movements tend to embrace the internet more wholeheartedly than parties (Bentivegna 2002: 66–96), online challenges to Berlusconi were mostly conducted by non-institutional political actors and movements. These subjects could not rely on

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the same mass-media resources as parties and could only afford to target narrower publics, as they embraced more specific causes and generated more limited endeavours than institutional actors. As is typical of the medium’s non-hierarchical, decentralized milieu, a plethora of oppositional websites and initiatives came into being, often as independent ventures by individuals or small groups. There was little coordination among these efforts and the sites achieved varying degrees of success. In order to comprehend the features and dynamics of such a complex scenario, this chapter presents the results of case-study research designed to (a) describe the most relevant aspects of online challenges to Berlusconi and (b) explain which factors were related to the success of webbased oppositional efforts. My research is based on four case studies, which were selected after a preliminary exploration, conducted by researching newspaper archives and internet search engines. This chapter also relies on historical knowledge of the main online challenges that entered public discourse in the Berlusconi era. A dozen oppositional endeavours involving the new media were identified, which included: the websites of actress and comedian Sabina Guzzanti,3 who promoted a series of artists’ performances in theatres to protest against RAI’s cancelling of her show due to alleged anti-Berlusconi bias in her political jokes (see Chapter 7); Articolo 21, an association set up to protect freedom of information and media pluralism, which launched a series of initiatives focused especially on public broadcasting; 4 and Marco Travaglio, a journalist who exposed Berlusconi’s judiciary issues in a number of successful books.5 Four cases were eventually selected to be included in my research. Two criteria guided the selection of cases: first, that they had had a significant impact, that is, that they received more publicity than other comparable endeavours and achieved at least some success in attracting and mobilizing supporters; second, that the cases displayed a large level of variance in their goals (long-term versus short-term) and in the degree of innovation introduced in online communication. Thus, two cases – the ‘Pasta Cunegonda’ consumer boycott and the ‘I am a moron’ smart mob – were short-lived collective efforts, while two – girotondi and Beppe Grillo – were more long-term and organizationally robust efforts. These two pairs of cases are also internally differentiated in their propensity to invest and innovate in online communication, as Pasta Cunegonda and girotondi shared a top-down, traditional approach to the internet, while ‘I am a moron’ and Beppe Grillo were more inclined to experiment with social uses of the web and bottom-up organization. Conversely, as I will demonstrate, their success in the sphere of the web largely depended on their innovative abilities. The chapter is structured as follows: the four cases will be analysed in separate sections to highlight the distinctive features of each endeavour, whereas a final section will summarize differences and similarities between the cases and identify key factors related to success in mobilizing online opposition to Berlusconi. The chapter will thus move from a description of the phenomenon to the development of a hypothesis that helps explain it.

The ‘Pasta Cunegonda’ Strike On 20 April 2002, Professor and novelist, Umberto Eco, published an editorial in La Repubblica entitled ‘The Strike of Pasta Cunegonda Consumers’ (The brand of pasta was a fictitious and token one). Eco suggested that citizens unhappy with Berlusconi could penalize his television conglomerate, Mediaset, by boycotting the products advertised there. Eco recommended that consumers kept a notebook next to the television, recorded the brands promoted by Mediaset, and spread the word. He called for people to ‘organize information points on the streets to collect the signatures of those who promise [. . .] never to eat Pasta Cunegonda again’ (Eco 2002). Following Eco’s call,

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an online petition on La Repubblica’s website collected about 20,000 signatures supporting the strike. Although Eco was inviting citizens to organize themselves for the boycott and advocated a strategy based on horizontal ties, his article made no mention of the internet. On 22 April, an independent website went online to help citizens follow Eco’s advice.6 The website featured a ‘virtual notebook’ listing the products advertised on Mediaset, news about the boycott, and a community space where users could interact in a forum and vote in online polls. The site had been created by four young communication professionals, coordinated by Valerio Bellomo, and it was not associated with any party. ‘I was struck by the fact that Professor Eco had packaged a ready-made communication project that just needed to be brought online’, Bellomo recalls.7 The website was mentioned by some news outlets, especially online, and it attracted a large following in its early stages. According to Bellomo, about 2,000 people an hour visited it in the first weeks and its email newsletter had about 5,000 subscribers. Local committees to support the initiative, some of which had their own websites, were also born in about twenty cities and regions. Given that internet-based political participation was in its infancy, the main goal of Bellomo’s project was to show what the medium could achieve: While people talked about an information monopoly and the limited scope for communication, we wanted to show that there was little need to have large capital and structures on the internet, and that anyone could spark the dynamics of horizontal communication and get other people involved. The main responsibility we felt was to bring the project online and show that a new era had begun in which all these initiatives would have an internet component. Because they considered themselves as ‘communication pioneers’, rather than political entrepreneurs, Bellomo and his colleagues did not cultivate any grass-roots organization that would support their online presence, nor did they attempt to turn the online community that was coalescing around their project into a self-sustaining network. Relationships with the local committees were limited to the exchange of information, but the central and peripheral, and online and offline, facets of the movement remained detached from each other: ‘We treated the internet and the grassroots’, Bellomo recalls, ‘not as interconnected spaces, but as separate terrains’. Thus, they did little to strengthen the groups that had formed offline, and, by the same token, the latter were not involved in online efforts. Another aspect that hindered the website’s potential for mobilization was that devices such as social networking websites, weblogs, content aggregators and online collaborative platforms (see Holland 2008; boyd and Ellison 2007) were not available in 2002 or had barely registered with the public. In retrospect, Bellomo claims that such tools would have helped the project move beyond its start-up phase: If we had had anything like Facebook, 8 it would have helped us institutionalize our movement, but at the time, as soon as we stopped feeding our community with stimuli from above, the tension rapidly dropped. We did not have the means for drawing our users into the process to help with our editorial and political work. Indeed, little input from below reached the Cunegonda website. Lists of products advertised on Mediaset were made available to the site’s maintainers by marketing agencies and consumer groups, so there was no collective ‘note-taking’, as Eco had suggested, of products to boycott. The forum helped users exchange ideas on the initiative, but it was not supplemented by tools that could create relationships and stimulate collective action. No mechanism was available that would organize events, recruit participants or publicly commit to the strike. In sum, there was

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virtually nothing that anyone outside the website’s editorial team could do online to contribute to the success of the strike. The ephemeral nature of the boycotters’ network was the main reason why Eco’s proposal faded from the public sphere. After two months of intense activity, the Cunegonda website experienced a sharp decline in traffic, and feedback from its users started to wane. A lack of attention from the mainstream media and from Eco himself, who did not reiterate his original call to action nor interact with its internet spin-off, was also instrumental in the initiative failing to regain momentum. In the end, the website was closed six months after its opening. In early 2002, few political protest actions in Italy had an effective online dimension, apart from the movement against neo-liberal globalization. Pasta Cunegonda raised the awareness of the potential of the internet as a viable political tool. Where it did not succeed, however, was in marshalling the web’s main competitive advantage over other channels, that is, its potential to mobilize supporters and to allow them to organize themselves by establishing horizontal ties. Because it operated entirely as a top-down, informative endeavour aiming to attract attention more than to coalesce energies from below, the website could only be as long-lived as its promoters’ willingness to feed information. The ‘old wine’ of a consumer boycott, very common in Italy since the 1960s, thus filled the ‘new bottle’ of a website, but the latter failed to significantly expand the reach of Eco’s call to action.

The Girotondi Movement and the Web Between 2002 and 2004, the girotondi movement promoted various demonstrations against the Berlusconi government (Livolsi 2005: 19–43; see also Chapter 6). Chains of citizens linked hands around courtrooms and RAI buildings to symbolically highlight the need to protect these and other institutions. The movement quickly achieved media visibility, due both to the notoriety of some of its proponents (including Film Director Nanni Moretti) and the difficulties of the parliamentary centre-left opposition after the 2001 electoral defeat (see Chapter 5). Although the movement mostly relied on physical and mass-media channels of communications, it also experimented with internet tools, most notably a web portal.9 Because the movement had grown spontaneously in many Italian cities, the site was conceived as an aggregator that allowed local chapter leaders to publicize their initiatives, communicate with each other through a forum, and receive updates via an email newsletter. Although these tools were useful for the movement’s public self-presentation and fostered a modicum of coordination, the movement’s leaders expected their overall contribution to be marginal. Gianfranco Mascia, who oversaw internet communication for the girotondi, offers two explanations.10 First, ‘Web 2.0’ tools for information sharing, coordination and video distribution would have facilitated online organization, but were not yet available. Secondly, the girotondi lacked internal coherence and structure, which could not be provided by communication tools alone and hampered the development of the movement’s online presence, as Mascia highlights: As long as you depend on volunteer work, large-scale initiatives such as the Piazza San Giovanni rally [the movement’s largest demonstration, where an estimated one million people gathered in Rome on 14 September 2002; see Jerkov 2002] can be staged; but without a permanent professional structure, it cannot be repeated. On that occasion, the internet helped us organize buses for people who lived outside of Rome, advertise opportunities for car-sharing, and help those who were looking for, and offering, hospitality in the city. But, in general, a political decision had been made by the movement’s leaders not to create an organized structure.

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That the girotondi would not rely on internet tools to carry out organizational tasks thus arose from a general strategic decision not to develop a coherent operational structure; this, in turn, resulted from the elitist, top-down nature of the movement’s leadership. Similarly, the web was not employed for fundraising because the movement’s promoters thought, as Mascia had stated, that ‘when money is involved, the authenticity of an initiative is corrupted’. The internet’s potential in financial and organizational resource mobilization thus remained mostly untapped. Hence, when, in early 2004, the media lost interest in the girotondi, there was no other viable organizational support to regain momentum among supporters and public opinion. Besides its limited contribution to event organization and network coordination, the girotondi website hosted two campaigns based entirely online. In early 2004, an ‘internet primary’ was launched to nominate the leader who could best represent the movement in politics. More than 10,000 certified votes were cast, and Gino Strada, a surgeon and founder of the charitable organization ‘Emergency’ which provides free medical service in war-torn countries, won the consultation. These ‘primaries’ were by and large a popularity, rather than a political, contest, and thus were only briefly reported by the media and were ignored by political actors. The second initiative was a contest called ‘Berlusconi in thirty seconds’, modelled on the ‘Bush in thirty seconds’ challenge launched by the US online movement, MoveOn.org, on the eve of the 2004 presidential election.11 Citizens were encouraged to produce televised advertisements against Berlusconi, the best of which would be selected by a jury of celebrities. However, while the MoveOn.org initiative was considered a success and its winners were even aired on television, the same could not be said of its Italian equivalent. As recalled by Mascia, ‘We received between thirty and forty interesting ads, but there was no reliable online video-sharing platform at the time, such as YouTube is today, so we did not know how to publicize them.12 Furthermore, the jury did not take its job very seriously.’ Thus, while the girotondi website was certainly useful as a one-stop shop for information on the movement’s activities, its most audacious online attempts to innovate political communication were either largely symbolic (the primaries) or too demanding (the advert contest) to elicit a meaningful grass-roots response, and thus found little resonance among the public, media and politicians. Although the girotondi entertained sustained political activity for more than two years and marshalled significant offline resources, they failed to rely on the new media in innovative and value-adding ways. As a result of, in part at least, the movement leaders’ reluctance to establish formal organization channels, the internet was mostly employed in a demonstrative fashion, for example, to prove that primaries were a feasible tool for the centre-left. It never, however, functioned as a truly participatory, self-sustaining, bottom-up network.

The ‘I am a moron’ Smart Mob As defined by Rheingold (2002: 28), a smart mob is a cooperative effort made possible by mobile technologies, such as cell phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and internet devices. These tools enable individuals to organize spontaneous, fast and short-lived gatherings that originate online but easily ripple offline, often responding to real-world events. The diffusion of these tools and organizational practices has led some scholars to identify a new category of political action, that of ‘mobile-ization’ – mobilization via portable communication technologies (Castells et al. 2003: 185–213; Miyata et al. 2005: 159–63). On 4 April 2006, Italian politics witnessed its first national smart mob. That day, less than a week before the general election, Berlusconi had stated, ‘I have too much respect for Italians’ intelligence to think that there are so many morons who can vote against their interests’ (Marro 2006). A few minutes after news of Berlusconi’s assertion had broken, students of a Master’s

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degree in political campaigning opened a weblog, named ‘Sono un coglione’ (‘I am a moron’), which promoted gatherings on the same day in Rome, Florence, Naples, Siena, Bari, Milan, Turin, Bologna and Palermo, where people met to publicly denounce themselves as ‘morons’ for voting against Berlusconi.13 The message was spread via email, mobile-phone text messages and the mass media. Although turnout at the rallies reportedly averaged just 50 people, the website and events attracted remarkable media coverage, especially in the left-leaning press and online (Caporale 2006). One of the key components of the initiative was its willingness to ironically engage with Berlusconi’s use of politically incorrect language: while the centre-left parliamentary opposition adopted a moralistic tone and rushed to denounce Berlusconi’s alleged lack of good manners and fitness to represent the country, the online-engineered response emphasized the liberating, expressive potential of turning Berlusconi’s gaffe on its head. On 5 April, one final post, which received more than 6,000 comments, announced that the website had fulfilled its purpose and would not be updated anymore. In only a few days, the ‘I am a moron’ website had elicited 13,948 comments to 15 posts, averaging 930 comments per blog entry. Judged on its own terms, that is, as an instant, one-off attempt at political mobilization, ‘I am a moron’ can be considered a success, as it managed to stage events in several cities and to attract widespread media attention. The episode showed that the time and resources required to organize a public demonstration have shrunk dramatically as a result of the speed and accessibility of technology. The proponents of ‘I am a moron’, however, did not pursue more ambitious endeavours in terms of extensive and lasting grass-roots opposition. I now turn to a case in which short-term mobilization and long-term network building combined in the creation of a new and self-sustaining oppositional movement.

Beppe Grillo and the Breakthrough of the Internet as an Oppositional Force Beppe Grillo is a famous Italian comedian who has been effectively banned from national television since the late 1980s because he repeatedly denounced the corruption of the political class. However, the comedian has retained a high level of popularity through live performances in theatres. In 2005 Grillo, advised by a public relations firm, opened a weblog which soon attracted increasing attention from the public and, subsequently, from the media.14 At the time of writing (May 2008), it is ranked by Technorati as 15th in authority among almost 113 million blogs worldwide and is the first site in the ranking that is not written in English.15 The blog has a strong and active readership: a study by Navarria (forthcoming) analysed one year of posts from 1 May 2005 and found an average of 1,155 comments for each post. Grillo encourages his fans to self-organize though MeetUp, which currently lists 511 ‘Friends of Beppe Grillo’ groups in 365 cities and 24 countries, comprising a total of about 73,000 members who have organized more than 11,500 meetings.16 It has been claimed that beppegrillo.it ‘represents an important example of how civic-minded people with limited access to mainstream media . . . can indeed harness the power of the web to promote innovative modes of political participation’ (Navarria forthcoming). Grillo’s blog and initiatives draw most of their following from centre-left voters. In the aftermath of the ‘V-Day’ event, which I will discuss shortly, a survey revealed that 58 per cent of centre-left voters agreed with Grillo’s political proposals, while just 32 per cent of centre-right voters disagreed (Diamanti 2007). By emphasizing ‘postmaterialist’ and ‘left-libertarian’ values (Kitschelt 1988: 195) such as freedom of expression, citizen participation in politics, grass-roots democracy, peace and environmental protection, Grillo can tap into value orientations that are

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widespread in the centre-left electorate but are often neglected by leftist parties, with the exception of the Federazione dei Verdi (The Green party), which, however, is comparatively weaker than many other left-wing parties in Italy and than many of its European counterparts. Through his blog, Grillo has consistently chastised Berlusconi for his conflict of interests and manipulative media techniques. The Prime Minister is often addressed as ‘the psychodwarf’, in mockery of his low stature and strong ego. In March 2005, while the centre-right coalition was drafting an overhaul of the Constitution, Grillo claimed that ‘the outlaws are writing laws, and now the Constitution too’ and lamented the stark contrast between the allegedly incompetent centre-right partisans who were preparing the Berlusconi-backed proposal and the revered founding fathers of the 1948 Constitution.17 After Berlusconi’s coalition was defeated in the 2005 local elections, a post hailed the ‘funeral’ of his ‘interim’ government and called for Berlusconi’s ‘mummification’.18 In April 2005, Berlusconi’s media conglomerate sued Grillo for an article he had written for a magazine, in which he likened Fininvest to Parmalat, a large dairy company which had gone bankrupt in a major financial scandal. In commenting on his indictment, Grillo pointed out that Italy had been downgraded to the category ‘partly free’ in Freedom House’s worldwide ranking of freedom of information, and rhetorically asked why Berlusconi had not sued the international organization as well.19 When Berlusconi claimed that he had helped reconcile Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and US President, George W. Bush, (after the latter had claimed that the Yalta agreement led to ‘one of the greatest wrongs of history’, thus eliciting a harsh reaction from Putin), Grillo compared the Prime Minister to Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, when, at the 1938 Munich summit, Mussolini mediated between Chamberlain, Daladier and Hitler.20 In August 2005, as the government was planning to restrict the inquiring magistrates’ ability to use wiretapping devices in investigations, Grillo, in a post entitled ‘L’état c’est moi!’, showed Berlusconi’s face superimposed on a Louis XIV portrait.21 Subsequently, he encouraged his visitors to print and distribute a flier that portrayed the comedian claiming, ‘I want to be wiretapped!’.22 In September 2005, as Berlusconi was acquitted in one of the criminal cases in which he was still involved, Grillo demanded ‘the resignation of democracy’.23 Other posts went beyond expressing Grillo’s viewpoints and fostered participation from the blog’s audience. In October, while the centre-right was redrafting the electoral law, allegedly to its own benefit, Grillo denounced Berlusconi, saying he was turning parliament into a ‘casino’, with ‘a spoof law passed by crooks’, and asked his blog readers to send suggestions on how to protest against the overhaul.24 In response, 3,599 comments were written and three weeks later a post was published which collected the 18 most interesting ideas, among which were plans for exposing banners during football games, dropping fliers from airplanes, meeting in front of the Senate to throw away electoral registration cards, sending protest postcards to the president of the Republic, and collecting signatures for an abrogative referendum. Grillo encouraged MeetUp groups to implement most of these suggestions.25 A similar bottom-up mechanism was activated in February 2006, when the comedian wrote a post about the ‘modern slaves’ that had been created by the Berlusconi government’s reform of labour market laws, which had resulted in a large increase in temporary jobs at the expense of permanent ones.26 The comedian asked users to share their life stories and subsequently collected them in a book freely distributed online.27 These examples, which constitute only a sample of Grillo’s posted invectives against Berlusconi, highlight a significant difference between Grillo’s language and that of conventional political discourse. It has been claimed that the new media can offer opportunities for ‘carnival’, that is, ‘online action that transgresses and/or inverts established social and political mores, norms, and hierarchies’ (Foot, Schneider 2002: 232). The ‘carnivalesque’ nature of Grillo’s political language is apparent not only in the written words he uses, where he often resorts to

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mockery, curse words and provocative juxtapositions, but also in the pictures displayed on his blog, as ironic photomontages are quite common, featuring the comedian himself superimposed on historical characters such as Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Robespierre, Abraham Lincoln and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara. While this playful attitude is perhaps to be expected from a comedian, the web provides a much more hospitable environment for this kind of hybrid political discourse than does the mainstream media. Many authors (e.g. Coleman 2007: 50–3; Richards 2004: 345–9) have argued that there is an ‘emotional deficit’ in current politics and scholars of social movements have begun to study the role of emotions in their dynamics (Goodwin, Jasper 2004). Moreover, dissatisfaction with political elites is widespread in Italy and this in turn makes iconic and provocative language more appealing to a population that increasingly distrusts professional politicians and traditional politics (Tarchi 2003). One of the consequences of this mood, incidentally, is the success of ‘anti-political’ leaders, first and foremost Berlusconi himself (Campus 2006: 135–50). Grillo’s blog, however, is employed not only as an information tool for transmitting the comedian’s viewpoints to his fans or for collecting ideas and stories from users, but it often becomes a grass-roots organizational platform from which real-world initiatives can be organized. Grillo’s first successful online campaign was called ‘Clean up the Parliament’ and had originally been proposed by a Grillo MeetUp group in Milan in November 2005. The aim of the initiative was to denounce the fact that, despite having been found guilty of various crimes by courts, as many as 23 members of parliament (MP) were still serving as representatives. Grillo’s blog raised almost €60,000, which was then used to purchase a full-page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune to list the convicted MPs and call for their resignation.28 Of the 23 representatives mentioned, 19 belonged to the centre-right coalition and 13 to Berlusconi’s party. This campaign constitutes an interesting example of media triangulation: failing to achieve exposure in the mainstream media (the media would have neglected the issue per se, as court sentences had already been passed and were thus not newsworthy), Grillo used the new media to mobilize resources and ‘buy his way into’ public discourse. Although the comedian claimed that he was forced to turn to a foreign newspaper as the entire domestic press had refused to publish his advertisement, the choice of a prestigious international outlet attracted curiosity on the part of the domestic media, which covered the campaign because of its innovative communication strategy. Grillo was also clever in taking advantage of Italian journalists’ deferential attitude towards foreign newspapers, which they often rush to quote when they cover Italian affairs. Grillo’s most successful endeavour, however, took place on 8 September 2007 (after the collapse of Berlusconi’s third government), when he organized a rally called ‘V-Day’, where the ‘V’ stood for Vaffanculo, an Italian curse word. The main event was staged in Bologna, where about 50,000 people gathered; 225 further Italian cities and 30 foreign ones hosted related rallies (Santucci 2007). The initiative helped collect more than 300,000 signatures for three citizeninitiated draft laws that advocated term limits for MPs, the ineligibility of those who had been sentenced guilty in the final stage of a court case, and the reintroduction of preference voting in the electoral law for parliament.29 The success of the event took both journalists and politicians by surprise. Grillo’s weblog and the online networks of his fans had clearly been instrumental in providing the organizational infrastructure required to plan and simultaneously execute such a large number of events. The contribution of the new media in publicizing the initiative, however, is less clear, as a survey showed that about four out of five Grillo supporters never visit his weblog, while only a small core of activists (1.5 per cent of the sample) follow it regularly (Diamanti 2007). As in the ‘Clean up Parliament’ campaign, the formula for success was a mixture of word-of-mouth communication, online organization transferring to offline events, and triangulation with the mainstream media.

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Freedom of information and the democratic problem posed by Berlusconi’s media ownership were constant preoccupations for the comedian. In May 2005, Grillo appeared at a meeting of television executives and public officials and claimed that Digital Terrestrial Television, a transmission system that was being promoted by the Berlusconi government through public subsidies for the purchase of DTT decoders, was ‘a dead technology’, as its adoption by Italian families had been lukewarm, despite subsidies, and the advantages it offered were generally considered unremarkable. In a later post, Grillo called the technology a ‘zombie’.30 Grillo also demanded that justice be done after sentences of both the Italian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice that mandated that the Berlusconi-owned television channel, Rete 4, cede its terrestrial broadcasting frequencies to its legitimate owner, an enterprise named Europa 7, which had lawfully acquired them but had never been able to transmit (see Chapter 3). Grillo blamed Berlusconi’s conflict of interests for this outcome and claimed that in Italy ‘there is a monopoly of information and all that citizens can be sure of getting is false information’.31 Freedom of information then became the theme of Grillo’s second ‘V-Day’. In the run-up to the event, Grillo wrote that, ‘The Berlusconi phenomenon is not compatible with democracy. His newspapers, his televisions are not compatible with his presence in politics.’32 The rally was on 25 April 2008 in Turin, and about 50,000 people turned out (Griseri 2008). This confirmed the sustained ability of the comedian-blogger’s network to mobilize supporters, produce successful mass events and compel the mainstream media to cover them. After the demise of the Prodi government and in the run-up to the 2008 general elections, Grillo began to call Berlusconi ‘asphalt head’, in a mockery of various hair transplants he had famously undergone, and claimed that after his entrance into politics, ‘The country is poorer and sadder. He has become richer and happier. [. . .] He has devoted himself to destroying justice, to silencing information and to increasing his assets. Mission accomplished’.33 Later, he wrote that ‘the psycho-dwarf has kept Italy hostage for fifteen years. No one can afford five more years’.34 However, Grillo did not consider that the recently created Partito Democratico (see Chapter 5) represented a real alternative to Berlusconi and invited Italians not to vote in the general election, as a protest against an electoral law that gave parties complete power to determine who would be elected. Instead, the comedian pledged to sponsor ‘citizen lists’ running in local elections, provided that their candidates did not belong to any party, had never received a criminal sentence, promised not to serve more than one term in office, and resided in the constituency where they ran.35 A dedicated section of Grillo’s website was opened to certify and publicize such lists and the comedian took part in some local electoral events organized by his sponsored lists. It is still too early to assess the electoral potential of Grillo’s lists, as they ran in only a few of the local elections held simultaneously with the national consultations of April 2008.36 After Berlusconi won the 2008 general election, Grillo, with a post entitled ‘They will never let go, and neither will we’, blamed the centre-left leaders for giving Berlusconi another chance to govern the country.37 The movement led by Beppe Grillo is a significant example of innovative online political action successfully percolating both offline and into the mainstream media. More than three years after its launch, beppegrillo.it has proven capable of adapting to different political climates and of sustaining various types of public endeavours thanks to a strong and lively network of self-coordinating supporters. Grillo’s conduct as the leader of this movement is not immune from criticism (see Navarria forthcoming) and most political actors have been consistently dismissive of his claims, with the notable exception of Antonio Di Pietro, who is advised by the same PR company that serves Grillo and has emulated the comedian’s style and approach in his own weblog.38 As an oppositional force, however, the comedian-blogger has demonstrated that online political action can be lively, vocal and viable in the Italian public sphere.

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Discussion: Differences, Similarities and the Impact of Online Opposition The internet’s political potential is increasingly understood to lie mostly in its organizational, participatory and bottom-up dimensions, which help bridge the online and offline realms, rather than in top-down, informational uses strictly bounded within cyberspace (Chadwick 2006: 162–75). The cases analysed in this chapter show that actors and groups opposing Berlusconi proceeded along a steep learning curve in discovering and adapting to these realities. Whether the internet was understood as an informational, top-down dissemination channel – as with Pasta Cunegonda and the girotondi – or as an organizational, bottom-up mobilization tool – as with ‘I am a moron’ and, especially, Beppe Grillo – crucially differentiates the oppositional endeavours analysed here. Moreover, these divergences also made a difference to the outcome of the various online efforts. Pasta Cunegonda hoped to create an online conduit for Eco’s original call to action, but attracted little more than curiosity from a very small minority of the public, and its media visibility faded rapidly. The girotondi could rely on mass-media popularity; however, its internet component did not significantly add to the movement’s organizational structure and was mostly limited to token experiments that failed to genuinely involve users on a large scale. By contrast, the ‘I am a moron’ smart mob succeeded on its own terms, that is, to mobilize people in a very short time span in response to a real-life event, and to attract some media attention. Beppe Grillo’s website is, however, the most remarkable success story of internet-based opposition, as it successfully moved between online and offline mobilization and engaged significant numbers of supporters, thus creating a grass-roots oppositional arena that appears destined to remain viable for quite some time. It is just as clear, however, that the web was best employed not as a stand-alone platform, but as part of an integrated communication strategy based on triangulation between new and mainstream media. Due to their historical elective affinities with political power and institutions, Italian television and newspapers are normally quite reluctant to cover protest initiatives, thus limiting non-institutional actors’ opportunities to gain access to the public sphere. This places a burden on social movements to devise alternative media strategies that can both cope with routine lack of mainstream media access and create a ‘multiplier effect’ on those limited occasions when such access is provided. On this score, again, our cases present strong differences. On the one hand, Pasta Cunegonda and the girotondi achieved visibility in newspapers and on television, which in turn directed some supporters to their websites, but these did not sustain the flow of communication by generating events that could attract further visibility in the mass media. By contrast, in the ‘I am a moron’ case and especially in the Beppe Grillo one, events and endeavours went back and forth repeatedly from new to old media, as well as from online to offline environments, in a virtuous cycle whereby organization and resource mobilization in the former helped create visibility in the latter; this in turn attracted more supporters online and thus refreshed the cycle. Another aspect that ‘I am a moron’ and Beppe Grillo share, and that in turn differentiates them from Pasta Cunegonda and the girotondi, is their use of provocative language and imagery that pushed the boundaries of political correctness. While ‘I am a moron’ and Beppe Grillo’s instrumental dimension in fostering citizens’ organization of, and participation in, events and common endeavours was paramount, their emotional, expressive aspects were equally prominent. The internet offered a friendlier environment than the mainstream media for a sustained discourse that aimed at transcending the boundaries of institutional political language by encouraging citizens to publicly express their (especially, but not only, negative) feelings. By

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contrast, both Pasta Cunegonda and the girotondi employed more conformist repertoires of political discourse and relied more on logical argument than on emotional outbursts. In sum, the most effective web challenges to Berlusconi founded their success on the combination of instrumental, bottom-up organizational platforms that bridged the chasm between online and offline political action, and expressive, emotionally laden styles that transcended the conventional canons of political communication. The outlook for internet-based political mobilization will depend on how this formula will be recognized, acted upon, and renewed by social and political entrepreneurs. For the same reasons, however, whether the parliamentary opposition to Berlusconi will be willing and able to establish a strong presence in, and fruitful connections with, this new political battlefield remains an open question.

Notes 1. The author would like to thank the editors and the three anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions. 2. Internet freedom, however, has been challenged twice in recent years due to attempts of both centre-right and centre-left governments to impose sanctions and restrictions to web users. In 2004, the second Berlusconi government introduced the so-called Urbani law, named after the minister of culture, which, in its first version, featured criminal penalties against internet file sharing for both personal and commercial purposes. After vigorous protests from both the parliamentary opposition and the internet community, an amended version of the law was passed which ruled out criminal penalties against not-for-profit file sharing. In 2007, the second Prodi government approved a draft law that imposed heavy bureaucratic burdens on all publishers in all media, both profit- and non-profit-making, which would have included bloggers and personal website maintainers as well. By equating individual amateur internet publishers with established media companies, the draft law would also have made the former criminally liable for the information they published. The proposal elicited strong criticism online, not least due to the vagueness of some of its parts. However, it never became law, due, in part, to the early demise of the Prodi government. 3. See www.sabinaguzzanti.it. All websites mentioned in the footnotes were accessed on 17 July 2008. Some of them may no longer be active by the time this volume goes to print. 4. See www.articolo21.info. 5. See www.marcotravaglio.it, which, however, is not Travaglio’s official website. 6. This website is no longer active. Archived versions can be accessed at: http://web.archive. org/web/*/http://www.pastacunegonda.it. 7. An interview with Valerio Bellomo was conducted in Milan by the author on 25 September 2007. All quotes hereafter were collected on that occasion. 8. Facebook (www.facebook.com) is currently the most popular social networking website worldwide. 9. The website is no longer active. Archived versions can be accessed at: http://web.archive. org/web/*/http://www.igirotondi.it. 10. An interview with Gianfranco Mascia was conducted in Rome by the author on 20 September 2007. All quotes hereafter were collected on that occasion. 11. See www.bushin30seconds.org. 12. YouTube (www.youtube.com) is currently the most popular video-sharing website in the world. 13. See http://sonouncoglione.splinder.com.

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14. See www.beppegrillo.it. 15. See http://technorati.com/pop/blogs. Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the previous six months. 16. MeetUp (www.meetup.com) is currently the most popular website dedicated to event organization. 17. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/03/due_squadre_due.html. 18. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/04/funerale_pubbli.html. 19. See www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=204&year=2005. 20. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/05/monaco_1938_mus.html. 21. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/08/letat_cest_moi.html. 22. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/09/io_voglio_esser.html. 23. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/09/le_dimissioni_d.html. 24. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/10/parlamento_casi.html. 25. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/11/parlamento_casi_1.html. 26. See www.beppegrillo.it/2006/02/gli_schiavi_mod.html. 27. The electronic book can be downloaded at http://grillorama.beppegrillo.it/schiavimoderni/ download.php?item=schiavi-moderni. 28. See www.beppegrillo.it/immagini/beppe_ht.pdf. 29. See www.beppegrillo.it/2007/09/le_firme_del_v-day.html, which also features a geographic map of where the signatures were collected. 30. See www.beppegrillo.it/2005/12/post_3.html. 31. See www.beppegrillo.it/2007/03/europa_7_la_tel.html, http://www.beppegrillo.it/2007/09/ rete_4_sul_sate.html and http://www.beppegrillo.it/2008/01/libera_informaz.html. 32. See www.beppegrillo.it/2007/11/clicca_il_video.html. 33. See www.beppegrillo.it/2007/11/forza_italia_si.html. 34. See www.beppegrillo.it/2008/01/il_grande_legislatore.html. 35. See www2.beppegrillo.it/listeciviche//certifica.php. 36. The performance of the Grillo list in the mayoral race in Rome elicited some attention, as its candidate garnered a surprising 2.7 per cent of the total vote. 37. See www.beppegrillo.it/2008/04/non_molleranno_mai.html. 38. See www.antoniodipietro.it.

References Bentivegna, S. (2002), Politica e nuove tecnologie della comunicazione. Rome and Bari: Laterza. boyd, D. and Ellison, N. (2007), ‘Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship’, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13, (1), available at: www.jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd. ellison.html. Accessed 11 November 2008. Campus, D. (2006), L’antipolitica al governo: De Gaulle, Reagan, Berlusconi. Bologna: Il Mulino. Caporale, A. (2006), ‘E con “sonouncoglione.com” ecco gli autoconvocati di Roma’, Repubblica, 5 April. Castells, M., Fernandez-Ardevol, M., Qiu, J. and Sey, A. (2003), Mobile Communication and Society: A Global Perspective. Cambridge: MIT Press. Censis (2007), XLI Rapporto sulla situazione sociale del paese, available at: www.censis.it/277/280/339/6366/ cover.asp. Accessed 11 November 2008. Chadwick, A. (2006), Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies. New York: Oxford University Press. Coleman, S. (2007), ‘Mediated politics in everyday life’, International Journal of Communication, 1, Feature, pp. 49–60. Diamanti, I. (2007), ‘Quel popolo di Grillo che vota a sinistra’, Repubblica, 14 September. Eco, U. (2002), ‘Lo sciopero dei consumatori della pasta Cunegonda’, Repubblica, 20 April.

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Eurostat (2008), Information Society Statistics, available at: www.epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu. Accessed 11 November 2008. Foot, K. and Schneider, S. (2002), ‘Online action in campaign 2000: An exploratory analysis of the U.S. political web sphere’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 46, (2), pp. 222–44. Goodwin, J. and Jasper, J. (eds), Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Griseri, P. (2008), ‘ “Tv e stampa fasciste, noi i nuovi partigiani”: A Torino 50mila con Grillo, che attacca anche Napolitano. File per le firme’, Repubblica, 26 April. Holland, S. (ed.) (2008), Remote Relationships in a Small World. New York: Peter Lang. Jerkov, B. (2002), ‘Un mare di girotondini’, Repubblica, 15 September. Kitschelt, H. (1988), ‘Left-libertarian parties: Explaining innovation in competitive party systems’, World Politics, 40, (2), pp. 194–234. Livolsi, M. (ed.) (2005), I nuovi movimenti come forma rituale. Milan: Franco Angeli. Mancini, P. (2002), Il sistema fragile. Rome: Carocci. Marro, E. (2006), ‘ “Coglioni”, Berlusconi va all’attacco, poi frena’, Corriere della Sera, 5 April. Mazzoleni, G. (2000), ‘The Italian broadcasting system between politics and the market’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 5, (2), pp. 157–68. Miyata, K., Boase, J., Wellman, B. and Ikeda, K. (2005), ‘The mobile-izing Japanese: Connecting to the internet by PC and Webphone in Yamanishi’, in M. Ito, M. Matsuda and D. Okabe (eds), Portable, Personal, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 143–64. Murialdi, P. (2006), Storia del giornalismo italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino. Navarria, G. (forthcoming), ‘Beppe Grillo, the talking cricket’, in A. Russell and N. Echchaibi (eds), International Blogging. Oxford: Peter Lang. Rheingold, H. (2002), Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge: Perseus. Richards, B. (2004), ‘The emotional deficit in political communication’, Political Communication, 21, (3), pp. 339–52. Santucci, G. (2007), ‘V-Day, in piazza con Grillo: Contro i politici 300mila firme’, Corriere della Sera, 9 September. Sartori, L. (2006), Il divario digitale: Internet e le nuove disuguaglianze sociali. Bologna: Il Mulino. Tarchi, M. (2003), L’Italia populista: Dal qualunquismo ai girotondi. Bologna: Il Mulino.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Mascelloni, Masks and Mascara: Writing, Language and Power in Vincenzo Consolo Daragh O’Connell

Goliath, Fascism or Nazism, is defeated. But whether it is dead or simply prostrate, the days and years will tell. To a large extent it depends on us. (Giuseppe Antonio Borgese, Golia [Goliath] [1946: 16])

Introduction Resistance, opposition and protest through writing are just some of the traditional forms in which writers have articulated their critique of power. Quite often this power is opaque, seemingly invisible, a grey nebulous essence – or anti-essence – which the writer feels compelled to confront and unveil through written forms. More often, the power in question is visible, all-too-identifiable, and has a name. In many respects, the phenomenon of Silvio Berlusconi engenders a sense of both the seen and the unseen, the transparent and the opaque, the named and the unnameable. Despite the barrage of critical theorizing on the role of the so-called public intellectual, for writers who still believe in a notion of commitment, however fragile, and continue to conceive of the writing act as something with an ethical imperative – that writing is simultaneously an aesthetic and ethical activity – the figure of Berlusconi creates further difficulties. Berlusconi’s dual role as political leader (whether in government or in opposition) and as business tycoon (most importantly, his ownership of TV channels, newspapers and publishing houses) creates a unique challenge to oppositional voices. The irreconcilable tension between the aesthetic and the social that Theodor W. Adorno highlighted has in recent times been appropriated by Edward Said with his insistence that the intellectual’s provisional home is the domain of an ‘exigent, resistant, intransigent art’. This home, however, is one in which retreat and solutions are denied. Only in that ‘precarious exilic realm can one truly grasp the difficulty of what cannot be grasped and then go forth to try anyway’ (2003: 144). The collapse of ideologies in the 1980s signalled what Pertile has called a riflusso, or waning of political engagement, in narrative forms in Italy (Baran´ski, Pertile 1993: 16; see also Berardinelli 1997). In her study on the notion of commitment between the 1980s and today, Burns (2001) perceptively avails of the metaphor of ‘fragmentation’ to describe the dispersal and plurality of socially and politically committed narrative forms. The multiplicity of discourses in some sense obfuscates traditional ethical messages in these texts, where even the very significance of the author is under critical and theoretical threat. Added to this is the growth of new technologies as both a tool for wielding power and resisting it. Traditional acts of literary impegno may not have the same impact they once had, but are, nonetheless, unique

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and fixed testaments of a culture of opposition, despite their dispersal and plurality. Said (2003: 120) saw the problem as one in which the realms of the public and private had expanded to such an extent that they are virtually without borders. For him, the intellectual’s role should be a dissenting one that protects and forestalls the disappearance or cancellation of the past. He writes: The intellectual’s role is dialectally, oppositionally to uncover and elucidate the contest [. . .] to challenge and defeat both an imposed silence and the normalized quiet of unseen power wherever and whenever it is possible. For there is a social and intellectual equivalence between this mass of overbearing interests and the discourse used to justify, disguise, or mystify its workings while also preventing objections or challenges to it. (ibid.: 135)

Vincenzo Consolo and the Critique of Power This chapter briefly examines the literary strategies of resistance of one of Italy’s most respected writers and public intellectuals, Vincenzo Consolo. The Sicilian writer occupies a singular space within the current panorama of Italian culture: as a Sicilian writer living in Milan since 1968, much of the tension of the north–south divide is thematized in his writing. Moreover, Consolo belongs to the post-war generation and all that that generation’s failure to create a just society entails. Of all the writers in Italy today he is the most linguistically challenging, especially in his recuperation and restitution of the Italian language and the dialects of Sicily. He is also one of the most hyperliterary in his poetics, and practices a form of narration which is simultaneously polyphonic and palimpsestic, memorial and archival, committed and poetic (O’Connell 2008a; O’Connell 2008b). Joseph Francese (2006: 156–73) locates Consolo’s poetics in formal experimentalism, linguistic investigation, his opposition to the loss of social consequence inflicted on the novel by popular global media culture, and argues that Consolo’s texts perform a series of functions, among which are the articulation of the role of literature in society, the nature of literary artifice and the decentring of the locus of narration. Natale Tedesco, conversely, sees in Consolo’s writing an apparent contradiction: on the one hand, there is an ‘enlightened’ discourse, not unlike Sciascia’s, which seeks to unveil the distortions and brutality of history from a class perspective, while on the other, he writes in a language which is unpalatable, aristocratic and selective, distant from the linguistic usage of the masses. Where Consolo differs from Sciascia, Tedesco continues, is in his refusal to entrust a subaltern and exonerative role to literature (2002: 422). Giulio Ferroni’s essay ‘Une éthique de la parole’ (2007: 51–9) locates Consolo’s problematic and paradoxical ethical stance within the realm of his hyperliterary poetics, inscribed in the restitution of linguistic and literary memory. Thus, Consolo is an interesting writer to examine within the domain of oppositional writing to Berlusconi. This is not to suggest that Consolo is writing in a vacuum or that he is a sole voice in the wilderness: Berlusconi’s political and media presence has been the inspiration for an avalanche of oppositional literary responses. In the world of theatre, Dario Fo and Franca Rame wrote and performed their scathing satire and exposé of Berlusconi, L’anomalo bicefalo (The TwoHeaded Anomaly). In the field of narrative many writers have taken the subject of Berlusconi as both a metaphor for the state of Italy and as a figure who defies invention because his reality is seemingly so fantastical. Roberto Pazzi’s Il signore degli occhi (The Lord of the Eyes 2004) has his Berlusconi character – Cavalier Enrico Magnoni – lock himself away in a Benedictine monastery and come face to face with his conscience and impending death. Beha Oliviero’s Sono stato io (It Was Me 2004) is again set in contemporary Italy and has its journalist protagonist live through an existential, professional and political crisis caused by his inability to do his job

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effectively without serving the owner of the newspaper, Berlusconi; he is lead to the determination that he must assassinate the Italian Premier. Roberto Vacca’s Kill? (2005) has a similar thematic: the protagonist Giacomo Eliot instinctively foils an assassination attempt and thus saves the life of Berlusconi; between the embarrassing gratitude of the Prime Minister and the fact that he is being threatened by the terrorists, he begins to question his act and ponder whether he should have acted at all. Giuseppe Caruso’s Chi ha ucciso Silvio Berlusconi (Who Killed Silvio Berlusconi 2005) opens with the character of Ettore Saleri standing outside La Scala with a pistol in his pocket awaiting the arrival of Berlusconi. Babette Factory’s 2005 dopo Cristo (2005 AD), like the other four novels, envisages the death of Berlusconi: in an old Tuscan villa, the character of Sinisgalli weaves an intricate web embroiling others in a plan to assassinate Berlusconi.1 Adopting a different technique, Franco Cordelli’s Il Duca di Mantova (The Duke of Mantua 2004) is at once a diary, pamphlet, essay and meta-novel in which the recent history of Italy and the rise to power of Berlusconi is charted. Cordelli is less interested in the actual Berlusconi than in the embodiment of power, which he generically calls ‘The Duke of Mantua’: a man who has the ability to write history and reality, and thus is a rival of the writer. Giuseppe Montesano’s Di questa vita menzognera (About this Mendacious Life 2003) takes on a wider social voice in which the protagonist Roberto is drawn into the world of the Neapolitan Negromante family: they are the embodiment of the Berlusconi age and display vulgarity and arrogance at every turn in their insatiable desire to possess, corrupt and devalue all that they touch. Even Italy’s best-loved fictional police investigator, Salvo Montalbano, has taken an anti-Berlusconi turn in recent years: in Andrea Camilleri’s Il giro di boa (The Turn of the Buoy 2003), Montalbano considers resigning from the police force after the events at the G8 summit in Genoa. Camilleri states clearly Montalbano’s opposition to Berlusconi’s government and to the repressive techniques employed by certain elements within the police (2003: 12–21). However, it has to be stated that it took Camilleri seven novels in the Montalbano series before he accorded his protagonist a political conscience. These then are just some of the examples of literary works which have Berlusconi or the wider social implications of his rule at the centre of their discourses. Other writers such as Dacia Maraini, Umberto Eco and Antonio Tabucchi have, like Consolo, taken a more discursive turn through journalistic outlets to articulate their opposition to Berlusconi. This turn displays a desire to have a more immediate impact and also reach a wider audience. However, Consolo’s singularity within the realm of contemporary forms of literary commitment makes him especially interesting to examine: both the impossibility of writing the Berlusconian reality and the need, nonetheless, to seek out a means for writing that impossibility are bound up in Consolo’s unique creative praxis. His last major narrative of note, Lo spasimo di Palermo (The Spasm of Palermo 1998), was published in 1998 and he has since been unwilling or unable to write a major narrative. The fact that this period of silence coincides with the Berlusconi era is no coincidence. For a writer intimately committed to a notion of literature as having a social and artistic function, the dominance of Berlusconi on the Italian political scene has had the effect of redirecting his focus away from narrative. In particular, Consolo’s turn to a more discursive, linguistically accessible form of opposition through journalistic outlets demonstrates an increased frequency and urgency in his writing. Moreover, one short story written before the elections of 2001 demonstrates this writer’s belief that the phenomenon of Berlusconi is akin to an ever-pervasive Fascist element in Italian political, social, cultural and linguistic life. From his exile in Lucania, Carlo Levi once memorably wrote: Today we are unable to predict what political forms are being prepared for the future, but in a petit-bourgeois country like Italy, in which petit-bourgeois ideology continues to contaminate even the urban popular classes, it is likely unfortunately that the new institutions that will follow Fascism – even the most extreme and apparently revolutionary

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institutions – either through slow evolution or through violence – will be led to a reaffirmation of that same ideology under a different guise. They will recreate a State that will be equally, if not more, cut off from life, idolatrous and abstract. Under new names and new flags they will perpetuate and worsen the eternal Italian Fascism. (Levi 1955: 210) 2 Consolo quotes this passage in his seminal, Pasolini-inspired essay ‘La scomparsa delle lucciole’ (The disappearance of the fireflies 2000), in which he examines the linguistic and literary forms through which Fascism and cultural opposition to it have informed his literary poetics since his first novel in 1963. The essay constitutes a major contribution to debates on the history of the Italian language as well as being one of the most revealing pieces he has written thus far on how he conceives literature and its function in opposition to homogenized media culture. The language and structure of his narratives indicate a deeply held ethical stance and aesthetic overhauling – through mimesis, parody, fragmentation, wilful gaps and creative ruptures – of novels dominated by an authoritative voice in an enlightened, media-driven language. Fascism for Consolo, and in this he is following Barthes (1978), is not so much the obstruction of speech, but rather the obligation to use a particular speech. He draws on Pasolini’s 1964 essay ‘Nuove questioni linguistiche’ (New linguistic questions) to relate the irrevocable mutations in the national linguistic code since the post-war era. In the 40 years since Pasolini’s own essay on the disappearance of the fireflies Consolo argues (2000: 55–6) that the cultural, social and linguistic situation in Italy has further devolved. The prime reason for this is the ever-expanding power and influence of Silvio Berlusconi, whose television networks ‘poggiano la loro esistenza e la loro potenza sui messaggi publicitari’ (base their existence and their power on advertising) (ibid.: 56). One of Consolo’s main concerns over the years has been the debasement of the Italian language through its ever-degraded use in print and television media, resulting in a standard idiom bereft of linguistic, historical and literary memory. The imposition of this mutated tongue inevitably debases and erases the micro-histories of the marginalized and dispossessed, of those without the keys to the dominant linguistic system, and speeds up a collective cancellation of memory. His narratives deliberately eschew the authoritative, vacuous and ultimately oppressive monolingualism of the Italian state through appealing to the co-existing, though precarious, plurality of idioms. In this he participates with, and extends, Pasolini’s pronouncements in ‘Empirismo eretico’ (Heretical empiricism 1999: 1246–70) on the birth of a new national linguistic code, a koiné based on the osmosis of the technological language of a highly industrialized society. For Consolo (1993: 27), this new language identified by Pasolini was ‘una superkoiné, una sopra-lingua, un nuovo italiano generato dal nuovo assetto economico e sociale e imposto dai media’ (a super-koiné, a language from above, a new Italian generated by a new economic and social order and imposed by the media). Pasolini’s statement (1999: 1262) that ‘centri creatori, elaboratori e unificatori di linguaggio, non sono più le università, ma le aziende’ (creative, transformative and unifying centres for language, are no longer universities, but companies) is one that informs Consolo’s ethical position with regard to language and articulates his stance vis-à-vis contemporary publishing practices. The difficulty for Consolo, as an intellectual and novelist, is essentially what language he should write in, presupposing, of course, that writing and narrative matter in the contemporary context and that the new putative audience is reading. Consolo has stated (1999: 197) that it is no longer possible for the writer to ignore his or her own role as an intellectual ‘se non a rischio dell’accusa di complicità e di collaborazione col potere che perpetra ingiustizie e delitti’ (without risking being accused of complicity and collaboration with a power structure which perpetrates injustices and crimes). He has little doubt as to his role as a writer in society, and how an ethical dimension is necessary, indeed obligatory for the writer today. In an interview I

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conducted with him (O’Connell 2004: 246–7), Consolo stated: Uno scrittore dovrebbe sempre essere contro il potere [. . .]. Lo scrittore non ha bisogno di militare, anzi non deve. Lo scrittore è la coscienza critica della società, deve osservare, andare al di là di quelli che sono i segni immediati, per cercare di leggere altri segni, i segni più profondi. La sua perorazione e la sua difesa è quella dell’uomo, l’uomo nel senso totale della parola. Perché la politica si occupa soltanto dell’uomo sociale, lo scrittore si deve occupare dell’uomo non soltanto nella società, ma dell’uomo nella sua complessità, nella sua totalità, dei sentimenti dell’uomo, dei dolori dell’uomo. [A writer must always be opposed to power [. . .]. The writer does not need to take up arms; indeed he should not. The writer is the critical conscience of society, he [sic] must observe, go beyond the more evident signs in order to read other, more profound signs. His peroration and defence is man, man in the fullest sense of the word. Because politics only deals with man in a social context, the writer must concern himself not solely with man in society, but also with man in all his complexity, in his totality, with the feelings of man, the grief of man.] A dialectic emerges here between transparency and opacity; in other words, does today’s writer employ the linguistic code of those in power, the language of government and all its affiliated bodies, including print and television media, or not? Consolo’s resolution to this impasse is to thematize his commitment to social justice and civic values through language. Each of his fictional narratives places the very question of language at the centre of discourse.

Context The figure of Berlusconi made his first tentative appearance in Consolo’s narrative in 1987 with Retablo (Retable), and, though set in the eighteenth century, its Milanese protagonist, Fabrizio Clerici, is very much a modern figure and the present is seen through the prism of the past. At one point in the narrative, he begs his beloved Maria Teresa Blasco (grandmother of Alessandro Manzoni) to leave Milan once and for all: O gran pochezza, o inanità dell’uomo, o sua fralezza e nullità assoluta! O sua ferocia e ferina costumanza! O Secol nostro superbo di conquiste e di scienza, secolo illuso, sciocco e involuto! Arrasso, arrasso, mia nobile signora, arrasso dalla Milano attiva, mercatora, dalla stupida e volgare mia città che ha fede solamente nel danee, ove impara e trionfa l’impostore, il bauscia, il ciarlatan, il falso artista, el teatrant vacant e pien de vanitaa, il governatore ladro, il prete trafficone, il gazzettier potente, il fanatico credente e il poeta della putrida grascia brianzola. Arrasso dalla mia terra e dal mio tempo, via, via, lontan! (1987: 103–4) [O great smallness, man’s inanity, his fragility and absolute nullity. His ferocious and savage customs! O our proud century of conquests and science, deluded, stupid and convoluted century! Flee, flee, my noble Lady, flee from this active mercantile Milan, this vulgar and stupid city of mine which has faith solely in coinage, where the impostor, the braggart, the charlatan, the false artist, where the vacuous and vain thespian, the thieving governor, the trafficking priest, the powerful gazetteer, the fanatical believer and where the putrid fat poet of Brianza learn and triumph. Flee from my land and my time, far, far away.] Consolo’s ‘gazzettier potente’ is the eighteenth-century equivalent to Berlusconi, before his appropriation of the political scene. This is also the same Milan that the narrator conjures up at

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the beginning of Chapter 8 of Consolo’s last major narrative Lo spasimo di Palermo. What was once a place of hope, an ‘approdo della fuga’ (refuge from the flight) in which the qualities of civil society once thrived – ‘orgoglio popolare, civile convivenza, magnanimità e umore, tolleranza’ (popular pride, civil living together, magnanimity and humour, tolerance) – is now for Consolo’s narrator a destroyed dream: Illusione infranta, amara realtà, scacco pubblico e privato, castello rovinato, sommerso dall’acque infette, dalla melma dell’olona, dei navigli, giambellino e lambro oppressi dal grigiore, dallo scontento, scala del corrotto melodramma, palazzo della vergogna, duomo del profitto, basilica del fanatismo e dell’intolleranza, banca dell’avventura e dell’assassinio, fiera della sartoria mortuaria, teatro della calligrafia, stadio della merce e del messaggio, video dell’idiozia e della volgarità. Città perduta, città irreale, d’ombre senz’ombra che vanno e vanno sopra ponti, banchine della darsena, mattatoi e scali, sesto e cinisello disertate, tennologico ingranaggio, dallas dello svuotamento e del metallo. Addio (1998: 91). [Shattered illusion, bitter reality, public and private defeat, ruined castle, submerged by infected waters, by the mire of the Olona river, Navigli canals, Giambellino and Lambro weighed down by greyness, unhappiness, the Scala of corrupt melodramas, Palace of shame, Cathedral of profit, Basilica of fanaticism and intolerance, Bank of venture and murder, fashion show of death, theatre of calligraphy, stadium of goods and advertisement, video of idiocy and vulgarity. Lost city, unreal city, of shadow-less shadows moving on bridges, dockyard wharfs, slaughter-houses and stairways, Sesto and Cinisello abandoned, tennological mechanism, Dallas of emptiness and metal. Farewell.]3 If Retablo’s Milan was, in reality, Craxi’s Milan of the 1980s, the Milan of Lo spasimo is very much the Milan of Berlusconi and the Northern League.4 Consolo has not published a major work of fiction since 1998 and as such has not discovered a mode of expression – linguistic, thematic, ethical – with which to deal with recent political events. However, Consolo’s response to Berlusconi and his coalition partners has been to increase his discursive interventions in the press. The pieces range from satirical attacks, indignant critiques and searing ethical forays into history and responsibility. Thematically, they cover a whole series of issues for which Berlusconi and his government were directly involved and offer an eloquent testimony of a writer dealing directly with the prevailing neo-conservative forces of his time and writing with a clarity and directness far removed from his narrative output: corruption and Mafia (Pivetta 2002; Consolo 2004b; Consolo 2004e; Consolo 2005a); immigration (Consolo 2002a; Consolo 2002d); Berlusconi and his political allies (Consolo 2002b; Consolo 2002c; Consolo 2003a; Consolo 2003b; Consolo 2004d; Consolo 2005b); censorship (De Sanctis 2002); the war in Iraq (Consolo, 2002e); the torture of prisoners by the American troops in Iraq (Consolo 2004a); the Israel–Palestine conflict (Consolo 2004c). In one of these pieces, ‘La maschera, il trucco, il fango radioattivo’ (Mask, make-up and radioactive filth 2003), he wrote a reply to Antonio Tabucchi’s contention that under the Berlusconi government Italy was ‘una fogna a cielo aperto’ (an open sewer). For Consolo it was much worse, it was an ‘immensa discarica di rifiuti tossici’ (an immense dump of toxic waste). He begins by interpreting the nature and origin of the mask: ‘Prósopon era per i greci la maschera teatrale ed era anche il modo d’esser visti dagli altri’ (For the Greeks Prósopon was the theatrical mask and it was also the way to be seen by others), and goes on to state that with the advent of television meaning was transformed: Prósopon lost its other meaning Prósopsis (the way others see us) and was therefore reduced to the single, impoverished meaning of mask. Under Berlusconi ‘Il prósopon, la maschera, si trasformava in

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mascara, in belletto, cerone, tintura, trucco . . .’ (Prósopon, the mask, is transformed into mascara, make-up, foundation, dye, powder . . .). According to Consolo the 2001 elections were in effect a ‘Golpe mediatico’ (Media coup) which legitimized ‘l’imposizione della pietra tombale sul pluralismo dell’informazione, sulla libertà di stampa, che significa libertà di opinione e di espressione’ (the imposition of a death knell for pluralism in information, for freedom of the press – which means freedom of opinion and expression). A more public act came in March 2002 when Consolo, along with other high-profile writers, Umberto Eco and Antonio Tabucchi, refused to be named as part of the official Italian delegation at the Paris Salon du Livre and went instead as individuals. It was a symbolic gesture on the part of these writers against a government they viewed as corrupt and undemocratic, a gesture designed to gain publicity and embarrass the state’s representatives. The furore which ensued made international headlines and Berlusconi’s replacement (he had pulled out of making an appearance), Vittorio Sgarbi, faced a torrent of abuse from Italians living in France (Gnoli 2002; O’Connell 2007: 75–6; Pizzagalli 2002). However, it was with a short story that Consolo succeeded best in giving vent to his repudiation of Berlusconi and his government.

The Text: ‘Replica eterna’ In the February issue of MicroMega in 2001, under the heading Scrittori e politica (Writers and Politics), Consolo, Andrea Camilleri, Dario Fo, Carlo Lucarelli, Edoardo Sanguineti, Dacia Maraini and Erri De Luca all wrote pieces against Berlusconi and his coalition partners. The issue also included an article by Marco Travaglio on Berlusconi’s finances as well as two previously unpublished essays by the philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Hans Kelsen, along with other contributions by Angelo Bolaffi, Stefano Rodotà, Sergio Givone, Carlo Galli and Roberto Esposito. This issue of MicroMega was designed to have an impact on the general elections of 2001. Consolo’s short story was entitled ‘Replica eterna’ (2001b) and was republished a month later in slightly reduced form in La Repubblica with an alternative title: ‘L’uomo chiuso nel cubo di vetro’ (The man in the glass cube). In the story Berlusconi’s Forza Italia is re-baptized Business Italia, a name which is not only satirical in intent but also redolent of Berlusconi’s advocacy of the importance of learning English as the language of science, technology and international business, that is, scant regard for the dignity, history and cultural memory of the Italian language. Moreover, this sobriquet in itself encapsulates the recent confluence of politics and business interests in contemporary Italian political life. Where once it was a question of seeking political favour – both legally and illegally – in order to win contracts or protect interests, the new paradigm in the Italy of the so-called ‘Second Italian Republic’ is one in which there has been an elision of sorts, a blurring of the boundaries between the two, rendering them quite indistinguishable. In addition, in the story Gianfranco Fini’s Alleanza Nazionale party is rendered as ‘ex’ or ‘post’ Fascist, while Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord is transformed into Nord Sopra Tutto (North Rules), as well its Lombard equivalent Nord sòra tucc. Berlusconi himself is transformed into ‘Mascelloni’, a curious conflation of Berlusconi and Mussolini, in what amounts to an ad homine attack on the media tycoon. In a later piece Consolo (2002b) develops this name into ‘Cavalier Mussoconi’, and thereby furthers the binomy Berlusconi-Mussolini. Despite the brevity of ‘Replica eterna’, a number of important issues are accorded space and articulation. The setting is Milan at two carefully delimited historical moments: April 1994 (the general election in which Berlusconi first came to power) and May 2001 (the general election which saw Berlusconi and his centre-right coalition win a decisive and more lasting victory). Thus the second half of the story is future orientated and imagines the outcomes of Berlusconi’s electoral

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victory. The narration centres on three figures: the Sicilian ex-worker, Alfio Todaro, who now makes a living with his wife making jeans for a famous stylist; Bruno, the ex-partisan newspaper-seller, who from his kiosk alludes through metaphors, grunts and dialectal mimicry to the latest political news for his bewildered customers; and the Sicilian writer Scafati (a thinly veiled self-portrait of Consolo). What is significant about the piece is the way in which the changed political climate (1994/2001) is interpreted by and through these characters. The story opens with the screaming newspaper banners which repeat the sloganeering of Berlusconi’s electoral campaigns: ‘Mascelloni al potere’ (Mascelloni in power), ‘Mascelloni s’appresta a formare il nuovo governo’ (Mascelloni prepares to form a new government), ‘Mascelloni: vi darò la squadra migliore’ (Mascelloni: I will give you the best team) (Consolo 2001a: 28). The language is such that there is no mistaking this Mascelloni for anyone else but Berlusconi. Bruno, as an old partisan who had fought for Italy’s future, furious at this turn in national politics – the re-entry into Government of old and new Fascists – is stupefied that the country has allowed this character to come to power: ‘nuovo Mascella da variété, del Fossati o Smeraldo, boy della Wanda o Fougez: sorriso fisso colgate, trucco e tintura, rialzo a tacchetti, fasciato in sciantung o grisaglia, farfallino o cravatta a puà. Un bigiù’ (ibid.: 29) (new variety Mascella, of the Fossati or Smeraldo type, Wanda or Fougez’s boy: fixed colgate smile, permatan and dyed hair, stacked heels, dressed in shantung or grisaille, bow-tie or neck-tie. A real gem).5 Linguistically, Consolo employs the terms of show business and its personalities to render the absurdity of the Italian political situation, but this is also in keeping with the unfortunate reality of it. For the writer Scafati, this omni-present Mascelloni is the owner of everything from television channels, newspapers, publishing houses, insurance companies, islands, villas, villages, residential districts, skyscrapers, hospitals. Incongruously, he is also ‘il boy della Carrà tinturato e fardato’ (Carrà’s boy, dyed hair and make-up).6 Scafati’s reactions give way to wider reflections on the reality of what Mascelloni and his followers represent in an Italy in which power is wielded through the force of image and the absence of substance: Illusione, sogno, felicità da spot pubblicitario, mondo d’inganno, di ombre televisive, di squallida, triviale caverna platonica, di potere di un gruppo di samurai dell’azienda, di sacerdoti della religione della bottega, di mistici del messaggio del consumo e del profitto. (ibid.: 30) [Illusion, dream, advertisement happiness, world of deceit, of television images, of a squalid, trivial platonic cave, of the power of a group of business samurai, high-priests of the religion of trade, mystics of the ideology of consumption and profit.] The second section of the story is set in 2001 and once again the daily ritual of going to get the morning newspapers is recounted. Seven years on, however, the situation has worsened. The Todaro character is forced to leave his city centre home, along with the immigrants he shares the building with, and move out to an anonymous suburb. His livelihood has all but vanished as the manufacturers can no longer compete with the cheaper workforce in Romania. Scafati, on the other hand, receives an email in which he is requested to present himself in ‘telespace’ at a certain hour at the behest of Scialocco, the head of ‘Pantelevision’. This ‘telespace’ consists of a four-walled glass cube in which the brilliant colours and sounds of a surround-view-sound interactive television are projected and is therefore also a clear reworking of Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision of the future in the 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451. In Bradbury’s novel every household has these ‘phono-color walls’: Well, wasn’t there a wall between him [Montag] and Mildred, when you came down to it? Literally not just one wall but, so far, three! And expensive too! And the uncles, aunts, the

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cousins, the nieces, the nephews, that lived in those walls, the gibbering pack of tree-apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing and said it loud, loud, loud. He had taken to calling them relatives from the very first. [. . .] A great thunderstorm of sound gushed from the walls. Music bombarded him at such an immense volume that his bones were shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. (Bradbury 1993: 51–2) The reference to Bradbury is also an eloquent reminder of the danger Berlusconi poses to the liberty of the press and the freedom of opposition, especially oppositional forms of literature. Whereas in Bradbury’s novel books and literature were being burnt for fear that the individual reader would, if permitted to read, develop his or her own forms of freedom of thought and dissent, a more curious phenomenon is evident in the reality of the Berlusconi age: the notion that books could somehow pose a threat to government is, in the global market place, a redundant notion, in that the more books that are published the more oppositional literature’s message is diluted; it is the literature of the market place, not the literature of ideas. Consolo’s echoing of Bradbury suggests, moreover, that the Italy of the present age is one in which the power and the pull of the television message overrides and nullifies resistance (literary or otherwise). As Bradbury noted in the novel, opposition to this means of communication is near impossible, or at best symbolic if a government has control of all of the main arteries: the addressee of any message is in thrall with the bombardment of image and sound: Why? The televisor is ‘real’. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells us what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems to be right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!’ [. . .] But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours. (1993: 92) Scafati, however, has been called into ‘telespace’ to communicate with Mascelloni directly. After three trumpet blasts, Mascelloni arrives on a silver helicopter. He is ‘Bonario, nella tonda faccia, nell’occhio appena schiuso, nel sorriso largo, smagliante’ (Consolo 2001a: 31). (Friendly, from his round face, half-opened eye, wide, dazzling smile). He is, moreover, surrounded by aides who are replicas of himself, all smiles, and like their leader, wearing make-up. Mascelloni addresses Scafati and informs him that he has been selected, out of millions of citizens, to become part (from his home) of a choir for the premiere of L’abilità in trionfo (Ability in Triumph) at La Scala. The writer protests meekly that he is unable to sing, to which Mascelloni replies: ‘Non importa. Avrà, come gli altri, il suo play-back’ (ibid.: 32) (It’s not important. Like the others, you will have your own play-back). Scafati continues to object, but is met with Mascelloni’s insistence: ‘Dottor Scafati!’, fece allora il Mascelloni irrigidito. ‘Vuole negarsi? Lei che è il fiore all’occhiello della mia casa editrice, che scrive un best-seller via l’altro! Lei rappresenta la categoria degli intellettuali. Ci sono nel coro a domicilio musicisti poeti pittori scultori architetti attori ballerini acrobati cantanti presentatori calciatori anchormen parroci vescovi cardinali, e industriali finanzieri banchieri petrolieri costruttori brokers rottamatori riciclatori . . . E lei vuole negarsi a questa grande prima, a quest’incontro sublime di arte e democrazia.’ (ibid.: 32) [‘Doctor Scafati!’, then said Mascelloni rigidly. ‘Would you deny yourself? You are the feather in the cap of my publishing house, the one who writes one best-seller after another.

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You represent the category of the intellectual. In the home-based choir there are musicians, poets, painters, sculptors, architects, actors, dancers, acrobats, singers, presenters, footballers, anchormen, parish priests, bishops, cardinals, as well as industrialists, financiers, bankers, oil-barons, developers, brokers, demolishers, recyclers . . . . And you would deny yourself this great premier, this sublime gathering of art and democracy.’] The writer simply responds by emitting a fragile ‘no’ before fainting in his chair. The evident irony here is that as a writer Consolo is the opposite of what Mascelloni supposes Scafati to be.7 Despite the acclaim he has received nationally and internationally from cultural commentators and academics, Consolo never figures in the bestsellers’ lists in Italy and this note of selfmockery serves to highlight the ignorance of Mascelloni-Berlusconi. Indeed, Consolo’s views on the culture industry are noteworthy, and in the essay ‘La scomparsa delle lucciole’ (2000: 56) he develops his critique of the interaction and interdependence of culture, media, politics and business interests: Sempre più piccolo-borghese, consumistico, fascistico, il paese, telestupefatto, ha perso ogni cognizione di cultura e di lingua. Ha perso ogni memoria di sé, della sua storia, della sua identità. L’italiano è diventato un’orrenda lingua, un balbettio invaso dai linguaggi mediatici che non esprime altro che merce e consumo. Su questo terreno trova coltura e vigore un cespuglio di scrittori furbastri, personaggi mediatici prima che scrittori, che coi loro romanzi – polizieschi, comico-grotteschi, bozzettistici – intrattengono e dilettano i nuovi lettori. [Ever more petit bourgeois, consumerist and fascistic, the tele-stupefied country has lost all awareness of culture and language. It has lost all memory of itself, its history, its identity. Italian has become a horrendous language, a babble invaded by media languages which expresses nothing but merchandize and consumption. It provides fertile ground and energy for a grubby group of cunning writers, who are media personalities before being writers, and with their writing – detective novels, comic-grotesque novels, sketches – they entertain and delight the new readers.] Consolo’s alternative narratives do not have such ‘nuovi lettori’ (new readers), and here, perhaps, lies the paradox of his situation. By refusing to embrace these readers with a language that is accessible for them, he cuts himself off from spreading his aesthetic and ethical message. What Consolo calls for instead is a literature which takes seriously its social and political responsibilities, forestalls the cancellation of memory and perhaps awakens the interest of readers. Nevertheless, the writer today can no more stand up to the might of controlled media corporations, which have within their armoury television channels, publishing houses, newspapers and film, than can the addressee of the message make informed decisions which are not influenced in some way by this all-pervasive power. Literature as commodity, as a product of the market values of a given age is one of the thorniest issues here. And yet another contradiction would seem to be that Berlusconi somehow welcomes criticism (even from within his umbrella of organizations), actively encourages it, thus demonstrating a moral high ground of sorts. In reality, of course, this is only partially correct. It is a phenomenon of the globalized market that volume and quantity are what count, not content and quality. The culture industry follows the exact same rules as any other business with one small caveat; namely, if a respected author does not necessarily sell in great quantity, it is worthwhile keeping or maintaining that author on the books, as it were, for the prestige value that he or she lends to the publishing house. Berlusconi knows that a critique of his power which comes from within his own corporation is going to

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do little to damage his standing, especially if that critique is left-wing. Italy was long polarized along ideological lines before the emergence of Berlusconi. Beyond its links with Bradbury’s dystopian Fahrenheit 451, however, there is also an interesting historical source underpinning ‘Replica eterna’ which deliberately undercuts the satirical tone of the story. In a speech made on 10 October 1928 to all of the main editors of Italian newspapers, Mussolini memorably stated that ‘The most liberal press in the world is the Italian press.’ This superlative was undercut moments later when Mussolini further defined his image of the freedom of the Italian press: journalists were likened to musicians in an orchestra and the individuality of each instrument was counterbalanced by the collective will to contribute to the same musical score (Mussolini 1957: 231–2; see also Benedetti 1930: 6), much in the same way that Mascelloni-Berlusconi had gathered such a disparate group to sing from the same hymn sheet, as it were. Bonsaver (2007: 9) comments that Mussolini refrained from mentioning that he was to be the chief conductor and composer of the piece, and that his notion ‘of a paradoxical coexistence of freedom and all-pervading supervision’ was a determining factor for Fascist censorship. The only difference is that the contemporary incarnation obfuscates further under the banner of ‘art and democracy’. It is also worth noting that Consolo’s ‘Replica eterna’ has a longer textual history. The final encounter in ‘telespace’ between the writer figure and the political leader, though with different names, formed the bulk of an earlier short story Consolo wrote in 1977, entitled ‘Corista a domicilio’ (At home chorist). Thus, his Bradbury inspired dystopian vision also shares some parallels with the era of the Christian Democrats. This is in keeping with Levi’s notion of an eternal Italian Fascism under different guises and masks. Consolo’s response to Berlusconi, to power, to all forms of imposture and injustice is through language, a language which is invariably poeticized, memorial, palimpsestic and profoundly ethical. As he himself stated (1993: 70) both his utopia and ideology consist in opposing power through the arm of writing ‘che è come la fionda di David, o meglio come la lancia di Don Chisciotte’ (which is like David’s sling, or better, like Don Chisciotte’s lance). For such a writer, the aim is to recognize the Goliath of his age precisely as Goliath, unmask him and warn others. This unmasking, however, is also a severe critique of a society which allows the television image primacy over everything else, which actively partakes in the cancellation of memory and which passively accepts the erosion of democracy in Italy.

Notes 1. Babette Factory is a writing collective made up of Christian Raimo, Francesco Pacifico, Francesco Longo and Nicola Lagioia. 2. All translations from Italian are mine. 3. This passage forms part of a larger sequence in which Consolo alludes to the final section of Chapter 8 of Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) – Lucia’s celebrated ‘addio!’ as she crosses the banks of the river Adda. Consolo also references notable Lombard and Milanese landmarks. The term ‘tennologico’ is employed to mimic the speech and accent of the Milanese. 4. The Milan of the 1980s under Bettino Craxi’s premiership was synonymous with political corruption and bribery and ultimately led to the downfall of old political party system of the so-called First Italian Republic in 1992 with the Mani pulite investigations of the Italian judiciary (Foot 2001: 157–80). Berlusconi emerged as a political figure in the wake of the overhauling of the old parties. 5. Here Consolo references both contemporary and historical examples of popular culture: Ivano Fossati is a popular singer-songwriter; Smeraldo refers to the Ventaglio Smeraldo

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theatre in Milan which is famous for its productions of popular musicals; Anna Fougez (Maira Annina Laganà Pappacena – 1894–1966) was a famous Italian diva; Wanda Osiris (Anna Menzio – 1905–94) was a famous soubrette from variety shows. The Mascella character alludes to the historical Mussolini. 6. ‘Tinturato’ here references the fact that Berlusconi dyes his hair in order to maintain a youthful appearance. In addition, he is also said to have undergone various hair transplants and cosmetic surgery in order to sell the image of a youthful and successful leader to the Italian people. Consolo seems to be alluding here to the hagiographic glossy magazine entitled Una storia italiana which Berlusconi had delivered to every Italian household in the run-up to the elections in 2001. Every page contains at least one air-brushed photograph of the leader of Forza Italia in various smiling poses alongside appealing populist slogans. Raffaella Carrà (Raffaella Roberta Pelloni) is a popular TV hostess, singer and actress. 7. In 1992, after a lengthy court battle, Berlusconi’s Fininvest won control of Mondadori Spa. That same year Consolo won Italy’s prestigious Strega Prize for his novel Nottetempo, casa per casa (Night-time, House by House). Berlusconi is reported to have met Consolo at a reception to mark his ownership of Mondadori. Berlusconi was quick to compliment Consolo on the prestige that he had just brought to his newly acquired publishing house. Set in the 1920s, the novel investigates and develops thematically the rise of Fascism and various forms of societal and individual irrationality. The work is extremely prescient and reflects the new mysticisms and political leanings of the early 1990s as evidenced by the rise in popularity of the openly racist Lega Nord in the 1980s and the return to mainstream politics of the ‘post-Fascists’ of Alleanza Nazionale. Above all, the novel critiques the cultural dimension through its parallels with the overblown decadence of 1920s literature (D’Annunzio in particular).

References Babette Factory (2005), 2005 dopo Cristo. Turin: Einaudi. Baran´ski, Z. G. and Pertile, L. (eds) (1993), The New Italian Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Barthes, R. (1978), Leçon Inaugurale de la Chaire de Sociologie Littéraire du Collège de France prononcé le 7 Janvier 1977. Paris: Seuil. Beha, O. (2004), Sono stato io. Milan: Tropea. Benedetti, G. (ed.) (1930), Codice della stampa e degli autori. Milan: Libreria d’Italia. Berardinelli, A. (1997), L’eroe che pensa. Disavventure dell’impegno. Turin: Einaudi. Bonsaver, G. (2007), Censorship and Literature in Fascist Italy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Borgese, G. A. (1946), Golia: Marcia del fascismo. Milan: Mondadori. Bradbury, R. (1993), Fahrenheit 451. London: Flamingo. Burns, J. (2001), Fragments of ‘Impegno’: Interpretations of Commitment in Contemporary Italian Narrative 1980–2000. Leeds: Northern Universities Press. Camilleri, A. (2003), Il giro di boa. Palermo: Sellerio. Caruso, G. (2005), Chi ha ucciso Silvio Berlusconi. Milan: Ponte alle Grazie. Consolo, V. (1977), ‘Corista a domicilio’, Stampa, 20 February. — (1987), Retablo. Palermo: Sellerio. — (1992), Nottetempo, casa per casa, Milan: Mondadori. — (1993), Fuga dall’Etna. La Sicilia e Milano, la memoria e la storia. Rome: Donzelli. — (1998), Lo spasimo di Palermo, Milan: Mondadori. — (1999), Di qua del faro, Milan: Mondadori. — (2000), ‘La scomparsa delle lucciole’, Autodafé: La rivista del Parlamento Internazionale degli Scrittori, (1), pp. 51–6. — (2001a), ‘Replica eterna’, MicroMega, (2), pp. 28–32. — (2001b), ‘L’uomo chiuso nel cubo di vetro’, Repubblica, 27 March.

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Consolo, V. (2002a), ‘Il mondo di Bossi-Fini: Stupido e spietato’, Unità, 23 August. — (2002b), ‘Tutti gli avvocati del reame’, Unità, 3 September. — (2002c), ‘La piazza dei congiurati’, Unità, 16 September. — (2002d), ‘Dedicato ai morti per acqua’, Unità, 27 September. — (2002e), ‘Le armi uccidono la parola’, Unità, 29 December. — (2003a), ‘La maschera, il trucco, il fango radioattivo’, Unità, 11 October. — (2003b), ‘Il miracolo indecente’, Unità, 9 November. — (2004a), ‘Civiltà sepolta’, Unità, 16 May. — (2004b), ‘La mia isola è Las Vegas’, Unità, 15 August. — (2004c), ‘Il guerriero prigioniero’, Unità, 12 November. — (2004d), ‘Ci mancano la penna e la spada di Sciascia’, Liberazione, 2 December. — (2004e), ‘La nuova peste di Palermo’, Unità, 24 December. — (2005a), ‘Disonore di Sicilia’, Unità, 19 January. — (2005b), ‘Chi si sente liberato e chi no’, Unità, 24 April. Cordelli, F. (2004), Il duca di Mantova. Milan: Rizzoli. De Sanctis, F. (2002), ‘Germi di fascismo, è solo l’ultimo episodio’, Unità, 21 May. Ferroni, G. (2007), ‘Une éthique de la parole’, in D. Budor (ed.), Vincenzo Consolo: Éthique et Écriture. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, pp. 51–9. Foot, J. (2001), Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity. Oxford: Berg. Francese, J. (2006), Socially Symbolic Acts. The Historicizing Fictions of Umberto Eco, Vincenzo Consolo, and Antonio Tabucchi. Madison-Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson Press. Gnoli, A. (2002), ‘Libri e politica – al salone della discordia ritorna la letteratura’, Repubblica, 24 March. Levi, C. (1981), Cristo si è fermato a Eboli. Milan: Mondadori, first published in 1955. Montesano, G. (2003), Di questa vita menzognera. Milan: Feltrinelli. Mussolini, B. (1957), Opera omnia. Florence: La Fenice. O’Connell, D. (2004), ‘Il dovere del racconto: Interview with Vincenzo Consolo’, The Italianist, 24, (2), pp. 238–53. — (2007), ‘ “A Lost Ithaca”: Return, memory and loss in Vincenzo Consolo’s recent narrative’, in G. Ania and A. Hallamore Caesar (eds), Trends in Contemporary Italian Narrative 1980–2007. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 72–89. — (2008a), ‘ “And he a face still forming”: Genesis, gestation and variation in Vincenzo Consolo’s Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio’, Italian Studies, 63, (1), pp. 119–40. — (2008b), ‘Consolo narratore e scrittore palincestuoso’, Quaderns d’Italià, 13, pp. 161–84. Pasolini, P. P. (1999), Saggi sulla letteratura e sull’arte. Milan: Mondadori. Pazzi, R. (2004), Il signore degli occhi. Milan: Frassinelli. Pivetta, O. (2002), ‘L’ultima rapina alla mia Sicilia lasciata tra il deserto e la mafia’, Unità, 11 October. Pizzagalli, D. (2002), ‘Andrò a Parigi tra gli scrittori ma non devo ringraziare Sgarbi’, Il Secolo XIX, 10 February. Said, E. W. (2003), Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press. Tedesco, N. (2002), ‘Vincenzo Consolo, l’irrequietudine e la carta della letteratura’, in R. Giglio and P. Sabatino (eds), La civile letteratura. Studi sull’Ottocento e il Novecento offerti ad Antonio Palermo. Naples: Liguori. pp. 413–26. Vacca, R. (2005), Kill? Venice: Marsilio.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Adjusting the Cold Mirror: Berlusconi and Il Corriere della Sera Nina Rothenberg

In the end, the most serious crime is attributed to those recounting certain events, rather than to those who enact them. It is not the mirror that is to blame, but the person standing before it. (Enzo Biagi quoted in Bertoni 2008) On 29 May 2003 Ferruccio De Bortoli, editor of Italy’s most prestigious daily newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, resigned from his position after months of confrontation with the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and his lawyers. Despite his assurances that no political pressures were at the root of his departure, his move came as no surprise to his friends and colleagues, who stressed that De Bortoli had grown tired of the constant attacks against him, and had suffered a lack of support from the shareholders of the RCS-Media-Group, the owners of Il Corriere. Berlusconi had accused De Bortoli of biased coverage of the trials in which he and one of his closest collaborators, Cesare Previti, stood accused of corruption. The Prime Minister also felt offended by the newspaper’s critical comments on some specific items of legislation and by the space it had given to one of his harshest critics, the liberal political scientist, Giovanni Sartori. The popular cartoons of Emilio Giannelli, generally featured on the front page (see Figure 12.1), were interpreted by Berlusconi as the graphic résumé of the newspaper’s antagonistic frame, while the frequent editorials of Enzo Biagi, one of the victims of the Premier’s Bulgarian edict (see Chapter 16), were another source of anger. Il Corriere’s stance against the war in Iraq was the last straw for a disgruntled Berlusconi, who aimed for a more direct military involvement of his country alongside the United States, an ambition that was shaken by the overwhelming anti-war attitude of Italian citizens as well as the resistance within institutions such as the presidency of the Republic, the Church and the international community (Romano 2006: 103).1 De Bortoli, who avoided any participation in the animated public debate that followed his decision, has ever since remained discreet about the real motives behind his resignation: ‘I will probably never tell the truth about what happened. Too many people I respect are implicated and the truth is uncomfortable’, said De Bortoli in an interview with the present author.2 He rejected the strike that was initiated in protest by the journalist’s trade union Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana (FNSI) and urged his team to stay loyal to the new editor, the journalist Stefano Folli. In an editorial De Bortoli expressed disapproval regarding the ‘exaggerated interpretations’ of his departure, emphasizing that the Corriere della Sera was more than ever a ‘safeguarding institution’. He, however, admitted that political pressure had been frequent, and renewed his criticism of Berlusconi’s conflict of interests (De Bortoli 2003a). Accepting the new

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Figure 12.1: ‘The irresistible ascent’ by Emilio Giannelli – from Head of Government to King, President and Finally Emperor

post as the editor of the economic newspaper Il Sole 24-Ore, the departing editor again stressed his criticism of the war in Iraq, of the ‘decreasing legality’ and the ‘institutional and moral decline of the country’. De Bortoli’s resignation caused widespread concern, which was epitomized by the front page of the left-wing newspaper L’Unità, which stated, ‘They’ve taken the Corriere too’ (L’Unità 30 May 2003). Not even a year had passed since the exclusion from state television of Michele Santoro and Enzo Biagi following the Bulgarian edict, and many observers interpreted the departure of the moderate De Bortoli as the result of a concerted campaign that aimed to repress one of the most important enclaves of the country’s free journalism (Mastellarini 2004; Ottone 2003). This interpretative line was also taken by most foreign newspapers (Clarke 2003; Guardian 2 June 2003) and by the head of the Italian Press Federation, Paolo Serventi Longhi, who said, ‘We fear a non-pluralistic and non-democratic clampdown’ (BBC News 2003). One of De Bortoli’s colleagues, the journalist Corrado Stajano, resigned in protest, arguing that, ‘This affair is a symbol of old-style politics, with its closed doors, its secret pacts and deals, its winks and favours,

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its rather ignoble mediations, and its unending ambiguity’ (Stajano 2003). More than just an expression of intolerance and the arbitrary abuse of political power, the tensions between Silvio Berlusconi and the country’s most authoritative newspaper were indeed an expression of the confrontation between the liberal economic aristocracy of Italy’s biggest corporations within the executive committee of RCS and the self-made man, Silvio Berlusconi, who was generally regarded by these forces as an outsider (Marino 2008). This chapter explores the development of the distinctive journalism of the Corriere della Sera within the context of the structural peculiarities of the Italian media – conditions that have rendered the press vulnerable to political interference. It then analyses the complex economic and political issues behind the confrontation between the Corriere della Sera and Silvio Berlusconi, and the events that led to the resignation of De Bortoli. Generally regarded as a moderate-conservative newspaper, the tensions between the Prime Minister and Il Corriere give strong evidence not only of the social and historical dispositions of the Italian press but also of Berlusconi’s specific approach to the media. His attempts to interfere with the newspaper’s coverage and personnel structure show that repressive practices were not only adopted against antagonistic actors and agencies but also against those who were ideologically closer to the Premier’s neo-conservative agenda and who generally adopted moderate forms of criticism.

Italy Through the Cold Mirror Founded in 1876 by the liberal-conservative, Eugenio Torelli Viollier, the Corriere della Sera has operated within a cultural climate characterized by the structural deficiencies of the developing print press and by its ‘passive subordination to the political class’ after unification (Castronovo, Tranfaglia 1979: 84). The chronic weakness of the press, which resulted from linguistic fragmentation and low educational standards, forced many editors to seek funding from the government – a practice that would create a ‘favourable symbiosis’ of editorial and governmental interests, offering the political system ample space for interference (Mancini 2005: 39). Under the dynamic direction of Luigi Albertini from 1900 to 1925, Il Corriere became Italy’s most read and most authoritative newspaper (Mack Smith 1978). In 1925, the Fascist regime introduced repressive legislation that stated that all newspaper journalists had to be members of a professional register. A new law also threatened to suspend print outlets for anti-patriotism and slander of the nation or its highest representatives (Tranfaglia, Murialdi 1980: 39). The anti-Socialist and anti-Fascist Albertini, was forced to resign by the owners, the Crespi family, who hoped to establish constructive relations with the regime. Il Corriere was gradually aligned with Fascism through moderate pressure and self-censorship. For the regime, a pro-governmental Corriere della Sera was of crucial importance in order to extend its political consensus among the Northern bourgeoisie. After the war, the newspaper professed its dedication to the values of Anglo-American journalism, based on autonomy and objectivity, and extended its editorial staff with a group of talented writers – which included Indro Montanelli, Alberto Moravia and Dino Buzzatti3 – the big names who would distinguish the newspaper from its less prestigious competitors. The authoritarian, hierarchical and conservative features of the Italian press remained, however, substantially intact (Forcella 2004: XV). The editorial contract of 1947 put the editor under the control of the owners, and the journalists under close supervision of the editor. This determined a lack of autonomy for both that would heavily condition the Italian press in the years to come. Under the leadership of Mario Missiroli, the newspaper adopted the cautious style on political issues that was soon to gain it the unflattering adjective, ‘slippershod’ (Tranfaglia 2005: 256), a term referring to a supposedly pro-governmental, placid attitude that the newspaper rarely surrendered and that reflected the chronic difficulties of journalism within a political

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system characterized by the continuous hegemony of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) since 1948. The press also suffered the restrictive interpretation of legislation against slander, based on the Fascist Rocco Code (Murialdi 2006: 218). Besides its close relations with the political system and the rigid legal vigilance it underwent, the economic structure of ownership also reduced the editorial autonomy of the press. After World War II, most newspapers fell under the control of large corporations, which used their press outlets to extend their social and political influence, rather than making further profit – a fact that led Umberto Eco to his dry conclusion that ‘newspapers are the bulletins of one power group talking to other power groups’ (quoted in Capecchi, Livolsi 1973: 375). The former director of Il Corriere, Piero Ottone, also pointed to the consequences of this apparent contradiction, suggesting that it inhibited a more dynamic development of successful mass outlets which would be able to engage the majority of the population in some sort of public debate (quoted in Murialdi 1978: 13). The interdependencies between the editors and the political system determined an often instrumental approach towards the press, which was seen as a useful side-business in a continuous power struggle in a country where the state-sector economy and large private corporations are closely interwoven. Indeed, the Corriere della Sera is owned by Italy’s biggest and most influential economic players. Mediobanca, Fiat, Pirelli, Gemina and Capitalia are its main shareholders. These companies are strongly interconnected and often rely on state subsidies and tax relief, while exerting strong influence over governmental decision-making and the allocation of public funds. The development of newspapers as instruments of communication among elites has led to the press directing its attention towards domestic politics. Another consequence of this was a marked partisan orientation of journalists that reflected the politicization and corporatism of Italian society. The umbilical cord between corporations and the media, on the one hand, and the political system, on the other, is further reinforced by the substantial payments the state regularly grants print outlets. Shareholders of Il Corriere della Sera receive €23 million in subsidies every year for postal expenses and the purchase of paper (Lopez 2007: 3). The policy of subsidizing the press, which costs the Italian taxpayer more than €100 million per year, was first introduced in the Fascist period in a deliberate attempt to secure political consensus for the regime. After the war, it was retained, allegedly to promote the development of a free and pluralistic press, especially at local level. The effects were, however, the opposite: a deep dependence on the part of many press outlets on state subsidies and the distortion of market forces that was further accentuated by the uneven distribution of advertisement revenue. The Corriere della Sera is the expression of a journalism that generally challenges the government from within the interpretative frames of the dominant elites (Tranfaglia 2005: 291). In its gate-keeping function, the newspaper supported the hegemony of state institutions and often denied new political and social players appropriate representation. This pro-governmental tradition was rarely questioned, although the newspaper eventually responded to dynamic social transformations, specifically those induced by the Northern Italian middle classes. In 1972, under the progressive direction of Piero Ottone, Il Corriere dared to adopt a more transparent style that distinguished between news coverage and commentary and that aimed at a detached relationship with the political class (Mack Smith 1978: 574). The panorama of the Italian press had been widened in the 1970s by new left-wing publications such as Il Manifesto in 1971, Lotta Continua in 1972 and La Repubblica in 1976. The progressive era of Il Corriere was, however, short-lived. In 1977 Piero Ottone resigned after pressure from the ownership, leaving the guidance of the newspaper to the conservative Franco Di Bella. Alberto Asor Rosa (1981: 1257) pointed to the return ‘of greyness, flatness, and conformism’. The newspaper, now owned by the Rizzoli family, was hugely in debt and suffered the growing competition of La Repubblica. Financial help came through the Banco Ambrosiano, a private bank that was associated with the

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Vatican and heavily implicated in shady dealings with organized crime (Viviano 2002). It soon emerged that Di Bella, like most of the journalists of the Rizzoli group, were members of the Masonic lodge, Propaganda 2 (P2), a secret organization of powerful politicians, entrepreneurs and journalists that aimed to weaken the Communist party through a wide range of covert strategies (Castronovo, Tranfaglia 2002: 27).4 The P2’s plan for a ‘democratic awakening’ included the control of the mass media to assure the support of those politicians who were deemed antiCommunist and ‘reliable’, such as Bettino Craxi and Giulio Andreotti (Cecchi 1985). Il Corriere della Sera lost 100,000 readers in a few months and Di Bella was forced to resign, leaving the newspaper in a profound crisis. It was able to recover from the scandal and redefine its journalism: at times discreetly critical, at others elegantly indifferent, but generally supportive of the traditional axis of power that governs the nation. The historian, Giuseppe Galasso, called the newspaper ‘Italy’s cold mirror’, arguing that it projected an image as detached from civic society and therefore ‘inhumane and disorientating’ (Tranfaglia 2005: 298). The Tangentopoli corruption scandal of the early 1990s (see Introduction) did not change Il Corriere’s moderately conservative outlook. While the newspaper initially relegated the first scandals to its local Milan pages, it later followed the agenda-setting avalanche triggered by La Repubblica and the newsmagazine L’Espresso (Giglioli 1996: 383). However, the influence of the government was consistently strong. The powerful leader of the Socialist party, Bettino Craxi, prevented the promotion of Giulio Anselmi as editor, although the appointment of Paolo Mieli did eventually result in the continued reporting of the scandals that would lead to the dissolution of the political class of the so-called ‘First Republic’.

Homo Sapiens versus Homo Videns The marked interdependence of Italian journalism and the political and economic system did not favour the territorial expansion of the Italian press. According to the Federation of Italian Publishers (FIEG), Italy has one of the lowest newspaper distribution figures in Europe, with only 10 per cent of the population reading a newspaper on a regular basis (FIEG 2007). Figures are particularly low in the South. In Molise and Calabria only 40 citizens out of 1,000 read a daily newspaper. This parallels the above-average consumption of television compared to other European countries and the concentration of 58 per cent of advertising investment in television rather than in the print press (Buonocore 2004: 21). Television’s dominant position is also determined by the exceptionally low costs of television advertising. This system drains significant resources from the print press, which often lacks the material means to pursue long-term investment to boost its readership (Bosetti, Buonocore 2005: 30). The economic instability of the Italian press is also reinforced by the low subscription rates and the limited distribution channels: in Italy newspapers are distributed only through newsagents. The historical heritage of below-average educational standards, when compared to most European countries, is another factor affecting the structural instability of the print press in Italy. According to the League against Illiteracy, 10 per cent of the Italian population is illiterate or without any school diploma (UNLA 2005). The percentage of Italians with university degrees is 10 per cent compared with that in the United Kingdom and Germany where it is 27 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively (Bosetti, Buonocore 2005: 22). Various attempts to establish tabloid newspapers failed, while the strategy of the main newspapers to boost the all-embracing ‘omnibus’ character of their publications did not lead to a substantial increase in circulation figures. Television became the dominant force of public debate, one which remained unchallenged by a pluralist organization of the market. The absence of a powerful popular press, read by the majority of the population, further strengthened television’s central role in the formation of public opinion.

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The structural weaknesses of the Italian press – the low readership figures, the dominance of television, the lack of autonomy from economic and political forces and the literacy void – provides the essential background against which to read the crisis that unfolded between the Corriere della Sera and the Berlusconi government in 2001–06. These factors rendered the newspaper vulnerable to political interference at times when the economic crisis would put the main shareholders under immense financial pressure.

Clean Hands and Dirty Robes At the time when Berlusconi won the elections in May 2001, he was subject to various judicial inquiries. In Spain he was being investigated for accounting fraud on behalf of his channel Telecinco. In Italy, relations between the judiciary and the government were tense as the two sections of the court of Milan initiated trials against him and the Senator of Forza Italia and former solicitor of the Fininvest Group, Cesare Previti. Both were accused of corrupting judges in 1986 to get favourable sentences regarding the acquisition of the public supermarket chain, SME, and the country’s biggest publishing company, Mondadori. The trials soon led to a major clash between the Corriere della Sera and the government, which accused the newspaper of acting as the tribunal’s press office. In September 2001 Il Corriere published documentary evidence of money transfers from Berlusconi’s Fininvest company to Roman judges via the Swiss bank account ‘Mercier’, that belonged to Cesare Previti. The author, Paolo Biondani, suggested that the urgency with which the government rushed the law proposal on the international rogatories through parliament was determined by the existence of evidence that proved Previti’s guilt (Biondani 2001). This new legislation would, in fact, prevent the use of non-original documents, such as photocopies, in court. Biondani’s article is an example of fact-oriented, investigative journalism but it was over-shadowed by the terrorist attack on the twin towers and relegated to Page Sixteen. The author alleviated its explosive potential by concluding with a long statement by Berlusconi’s lawyer who denied that the evidence was at all relevant. Although the newspaper clearly avoided exploiting the scoop any further, the article infuriated Berlusconi and led to strong pressures on the editor. Nevertheless, De Bortoli encouraged Biondani to continue with his enquiries. In May 2003 Berlusconi attacked the magistrates for waging a political battle to overthrow his government, stating that ‘They cannot just use putschist logic to choose the government they want’ (Corriere della Sera 1 May 2003). His strong tones, parred with the threats to curb the magistrates, caused strong disapproval even among the most conservative journalists of Il Corriere. However, the newspaper presented opposing voices on this issue. Most commentators emphasized that a reform of the justice system was necessary and that, in their attacks against politicians, some prosecuting magistrates had gone beyond what should be regarded as acceptable in a democratic country (Panebianco 2003a). One of the paper’s main political commentators, Piero Ostellino, went as far as stating that it would be better to conclude the trial with an acquittal and ‘to let bygones be bygones’ (Ostellino 2003b). In June 2003 the government pushed a new law through parliament that again triggered strong protests from the opposition and sections of civic society. The Schifani law granted immunity to those holding the five highest offices of the Republic and was seen by the opposition as blatant attempt to save Berlusconi from the upcoming sentence in the SME trial (Ginsborg 2004: 145).5 Opinions on the law among the leader-writers of Il Corriere della Sera were again mixed, although a negative attitude prevailed. Piero Ostellino took a cautious position on the issue, reminding readers of the damage any criminal conviction of the Prime Minister and future president of the European Union would do to the country’s image (Ostellino 2003a),

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while Giovanni Sartori accused Berlusconi of ‘paranoia’ regarding the magistrates and rejected any further attempts at curtailing the judiciary (Sartori 2003a). The coverage of the SME trial and the critical reception of a number of laws triggered enormous conflicts between the newspaper and Berlusconi, although relations between Il Corriere della Sera and the ‘Cavaliere’ had not always been conflict ridden. The newspaper had remained neutral in the electoral campaign of 2001, while its main commentators often expressed positive views on Berlusconi and his neo-liberal agenda. Just weeks before the elections, the critical analysis of the Premier’s power concentration and legal problems published in The Economist and El Mundo were widely reported in Il Corriere della Sera. However, these were accompanied by a long article in which Berlusconi was reported as launching heavy attacks against the news magazine, the left and ‘the international club of slanderers’ (Corriere della Sera 1 May 2001). After the election, De Bortoli had rejected the position of The Economist, which had claimed that a victory by Berlusconi would be a dark day for Italian democracy (Corriere della Sera 14 May 2001; Economist 2001). Various leader-writers welcomed Berlusconi’s clear majority as an opportunity for him to prove what he was able to achieve, and promised that Il Corriere della Sera would represent his government ‘with neither prejudice nor special favours’ (Franchi 2001). The front page commentaries in the months following the election indeed put great emphasis on the tensions within the parties of the centre-left, which were generally portrayed as split and lacerated by its radical factions. The newspaper also took a hostile stance towards the extra-parliamentary girotondi movement and criticized the ‘apocalyptic sections’ of the left, which saw Berlusconi as a threat to democracy (see Chapter 6). Relations, however, turned sour after the introduction of various laws judged ad personam by most commentators. The crisis between Berlusconi and De Bortoli was, however, not the first time that the editor had clashed with a Prime Minister. In 1997 the left-wing leader, Massimo D’Alema, had unsuccessfully sued the journalist for slander over a series of critical articles.6 But the conflict with Berlusconi and his entourage unfolded in far more sinister ways. For Berlusconi, the critical attitude of the newspaper towards some of his policies was a declaration of war at a time when he was troubled by serious allegations in court and by a difficult international scenario that negatively affected the country’s economic outlook. On the basis of his rigid and patriarchal conception of the media, Berlusconi frequently lamented that the Italian press was 85 per cent left-wing, and antagonistic towards his government. Although he attributes limited powers to newspaper influence on public opinion, exclaiming on various occasions that ‘housewives don’t read the papers’ (Bosetti, Buonocore 2005: 77), he feared the influence of Il Corriere della Sera on the moderate electorate and resented what he felt as a rejection of his persona and policies by the country’s liberal intellectuals. Despite the limited circulation of Italian newspapers, Il Corriere della Sera is read by almost one million Italians daily and its relevance for the formation of the public opinion of the moderate middle classes cannot be underestimated. Denis Mack Smith emphasized in 1978 that It is my impression that the influence of the Corriere della Sera has often been crucial, if nothing else because it is read by nearly all of the narrow political class. On occasion, it has contributed to orientating the behaviour of governments. Outside Italy, it is considered, almost universally, as a representative voice of Italian politics and attitudes. (Mack Smith 1978: 7) De Bortoli pointed to the deteriorating climate in an editorial meeting with his journalists in February 2002: ‘The pressures are palpable. The impression is that they want a servile kind of journalism’ (De Bortoli 2008). Niccolò Ghedini and Gaetano Pecorella, lawyers for Berlusconi and both Forza Italia MPs, accused Il Corriere della Sera of being ‘worse than La Repubblica’ in

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its bias against the government, and announced legal proceedings against individual journalists who took ‘a biased and heavily critical perspective on events’ (quoted in Gomez, Travaglio 2004: 221). In an editorial De Bortoli nevertheless renewed his criticism of the hasty way in which the government tried to rush through both chambers laws aimed at solving the Premier’s legal problems: The Cavaliere should counteract the rather unpleasant feeling that Italian citizens have that Parliament is used as a mallet against the judicial system and he should pack off on holiday those pathetic little MP-lawyers that are more worried about their fees than about the good of the country. (De Bortoli 2002) Outraged by De Bortoli’s confrontational stance, Ghedini and Pecorella sued the editor successfully for slander. Defamation laws in Italy leave ample space for interpretation and are meant to generally protect people’s honour. Journalists have often been tied up in courts for years, burdened with legal fees and the threat of large sums of compensation. Many journalists in Il Corriere della Sera were heavily affected, both personally and professionally, by the increasingly tense relations with government officials. Paolo Biondani felt threatened by Berlusconi’s lawyer and member of government, Gaetano Pecorella, who approached him with the words, ‘From now on, I will be reading your every line with a magnifying glass, so that I can sue you at the first opportunity’ (Biondani 2008).

Conflict of Interests With Berlusconi’s tightening grip on state television after the elections of 2001 and the Bulgarian edict of 2002, the public discourse on Berlusconi’s conflict of interests erupted on the pages of the Corriere della Sera, where two opposite positions, that of the liberal political scientist, Giovanni Sartori, and that of the conservative journalist and former editor of Il Corriere della Sera, Piero Ostellino, battled away in an editorial dispute. Sartori lambasted the occupation of state television by professionals close to Berlusconi as an attack on democracy and the creation of a ‘multiple monopoly’. His criticism was sharp and not without polemicism. He also attacked the president of the Republic for remaining silent on the issue of the conflict of interests and failing to use his institutional authority to put it centre stage (Sartori 2002b). With regard to the Frattini law,7 drawn up to address the conflict of interests, Sartori criticized it heavily as ‘a sham’ that excluded Berlusconi from the equation, leaving the country at the mercy of an inappropriate concentration of power (Sartori 2002c). The political scientist also attacked Berlusconi for the Bulgarian edict and the attempts to silence Enzo Biagi, ‘one of the most authoritative voices of the country’s free journalism’ (Sartori 2002d). He labelled the new legislation on the television sector – the Gasparri law (see Chapter 2) – unconstitutional and claimed that it was another attack on the country’s democratic pluralism (Sartori 2003c). Sartori’s indignation also targeted the left for not having tackled the conflict of interests while in government. Although Sartori’s criticism reflected the views of the editor, De Bortoli, on the issue of the conflict of interests, Il Corriere della Sera also presented a range of different interpretations of this issue that, while rarely in open support of Berlusconi, did not express opposition towards him. Piero Ostellino rejected Sartori’s views by pointing to the insolubility of Berlusconi’s conflict of interests and by reminding readers that the voters had cast their decision in full awareness of Berlusconi’s enormous economic and mediatic power (Ostellino 2002). After the resignation of De Bortoli, Sartori assured readers in an editorial that his independence and freedom to express his views had always been safeguarded under the outgoing

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editor: ‘Even if the siege of power became ever stronger, Ferruccio de Bortoli never complained to me. He also took the complaints against me on himself. His elegant and firm way of offering protection is really important to me’ (Sartori 2003b). Again, Sartori stressed that Berlusconi’s conflict of interests had suffocated an Italy which was ‘ever more his property, ever more possessed by him’. The only piece that was missing in his accumulation of power was, according to the university professor, Il Corriere della Sera.

Waning Loyalties On 9 February 2003, just days before the American attack on Baghdad and the outbreak of the war in Iraq, Ferruccio De Bortoli expressed a clear editorial line on the imminent war in Iraq. Although criticizing any ‘blind sense of pacifism’, the editor wrote in a front-page editorial that Il Corriere della Sera rejected the concept of ‘preventive war’ as it was in violation of international law and a sign of dangerous ‘neo-unilateralism’ (De Bortoli 2003b). The newspaper prominently featured UN reports that predicted a human catastrophe and a long and strenuous war that would be reminiscent of Vietnam (Corriere della Sera 18 February 2003; Biagi 2003). The newspaper did, however, project various opposing viewpoints, especially on the part of the generally conservative editorialists. Angelo Panebianco (2002, 2003a) reprimanded the Pacifist movement for its ‘deep-rooted anti-Americanism’ and ‘exaggerated pacifism’, arguing that the war addressed the threat Islamic terrorism posed to the West. Ernesto Galli della Loggia (2003) criticized the Pope for his anti-war stance, which he interpreted as ‘an excessively radical and political position that affects the image of the Church negatively’. The editor’s clear position against the war reflected widespread concern among journalists, the general public, institutions such as the president of the Republic, the international community and the Church. However, it angered sections of the shareholders, who did not appreciate a clear taking of sides on the issue (De Bortoli 2008). The shareholders’ growing discontent with the editor De Bortoli was also a reaction to the economic downturn in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the twin towers. Fiat’s share of the Italian car market had slumped from 60 per cent to 30 per cent in just a decade, and it lacked an equivalent slice of any other European market. The total debt of the company was reckoned at €17 billion (BBC News 2 January 2003). Fearing social discontent as a result of the closure of factories, especially in the South, the government had intervened heavily in the industrial plan in order to avoid extensive lay-offs and backed the company with a number of strategies that included the allocation of public funds to alleviate Fiat’s financial difficulties (Repubblica 10 October 2002). The Fiat management hoped to finalize a deal with General Motors to solve its crisis, but also relied on the government in case the agreement with the reluctant American giant fell through (Repubblica 17 July 2002). Gianni Agnelli had watched Berlusconi’s ascent with a critical eye. While Berlusconi had always admired the Fiat boss, Agnelli had disparaged the media-magnate, calling him, ‘someone who has never even touched steel’ (Valli 2001). His attitude towards Berlusconi, however, changed before the elections in 2001. After The Economist’s attacks against Berlusconi, Agnelli criticized the foreign press for portraying the country ‘as if it were a banana republic’ (Corriere della Sera 1 May 2001). The ailing patron of Fiat, and with him Fiat’s president, Paolo Fresco, grew increasingly susceptible to the Premier’s complaints about Il Corriere della Sera’s allegedly antagonistic editorial line. During a press conference, just months before his death, Gianni Agnelli symptomatically refused to express confidence in the editor (Perini 2003). The other majority shareholders of Corriere della Sera, Mediobanca and Gemina, also needed open lines of communication with the new government. Mediobanca supported the nomination of Salvatore Ligresti, a close friend of Berlusconi, for the chief executive committee of the RCS Media Group in order

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to satisfy the Premier’s requests for having a friendly voice within the company (Pons 2002). De Bortoli remained increasingly isolated in a battle he was not able to win. He commented on the weakness of the ownership during the conflict with Berlusconi in the following terms: The shareholders had their problems with Berlusconi and Tremonti, just as they had done in the past with D’Alema. Let’s say that at that time it would have been possible for them to show the same strength and serenity they had been able to show on other occasions. De Bortoli reflected critically on the role of the big corporations in the Italian press and expressed his desire for the development of independent publishing companies and editors.8 While Berlusconi did succeed in bringing about the departure of De Bortoli, he was unable, however, to pilot the nomination of his favourites, the journalists Carlo Rossella and Giuliano Ferrara. De Bortoli’s successor, Stefano Folli, had a reputation as a liberal-conservative journalist with strong connections to the president of the Republic, who, according to some sources, supported Folli’s candidacy in order to protect the newspaper’s liberal tradition from further interference (Murialdi 2003; Gomex, Travaglio 2004). The change of editor, rather than curbing Il Corriere della Sera’s critical outlook on the government, enhanced it. Bruno Vespa, prominent television host with close connections to Berlusconi, in fact emphasized that the coverage of the newspaper under Folli had been for Berlusconi ‘un unpleasant shock’ (Vespa 2003: 157). Folli was soon the target of even harsher criticism, while his position was further weakened by declining circulation figures. The new conglomerate of 15 different companies that now owned 58 per cent of the RCS shares replaced the editor in December 2004 with the higher profile journalist Paolo Mieli, who had been editor of Il Corriere della Sera in the early 1990s. Widely esteemed as a liberal-conservative journalist with strong bipartisan relations to the political system, Mieli did not become a victim of the numerous attacks by the government. Relations, however, became worse when, prior to the elections in 2006, Mieli announced in an editorial that Il Corriere della Sera endorsed Romano Prodi’s centre-left coalition in the elections (Mieli 2006). Financial turmoil continued to threaten the newspaper’s autonomy. In 2003, just after his resignation, De Bortoli had warned some of his colleagues of anonymous attempts to conquer the newspaper through massive stake acquisition (Repubblica 10 August 2005). In June 2005 the editor and his journalists were alarmed when the corporate raider, Stefano Ricucci, started building a holding that in only a few months amounted to a stake of more than 16 per cent of RCS shares at a value of over €500 million. Ricucci, chairman of Magiste International, an ominous financial trust with its headquarters on the Island of Guernsey, told journalists that he aimed at reaching 20 per cent of the shares and that he did not exclude a hostile take-over bid. It remained unclear, however, where he had got the money for this ambitious transaction (Hopper 2005). The entrepreneur Cesare Geronzi and Prime Minister Berlusconi were both suspected of being the secret backers of the operation (D’Avanzo 2007). A former manager of Berlusconi’s Fininvest company, Ubaldo Livolsi, has in the meantime admitted to having directed a secret consortium of investors to buy shares in the company and of having spoken about this endeavour with his former patron, Silvio Berlusconi (Sarzanini 2007). Berlusconi himself has always denied any personal implication in the affair. Ricucci was arrested in 2006 in connection with allegations of ‘market-rigging’ linked to his interests in RCS, and is currently awaiting trial.

A Biased and Heavily Critical Perspective on Events? Generally pro-governmental and operating within the interpretative frames of the liberal and moderately conservative economic and political elites, Il Corriere della Sera has rarely been the

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source of destabilizing political criticism of the political class, and specifically of the government. The newspaper generally practiced moderate forms of political critique that rarely went beyond a restricted examination of specific dysfunctions in the institutions. Within the history of the country’s various political scandals, Il Corriere della Sera had generally followed up those cases that were triggered by other agents, predominantly the judiciary or press outlets such as La Repubblica and L’Espresso. This journalism was the result of the specific historical development of the newspaper within the political context of post-war Italian society that precluded any alternatives to the political and cultural hegemony of the Christian Democrats. The initially not unsympathetic line taken towards the Premier, Silvio Berlusconi, which stressed the legitimacy of his political leadership and the validity of his project, gradually changed after the elections of 2001 into a more critical representation of the Prime Minister and his government. Despite the newspaper’s usual detached style that aimed at maximum objectivity, criticism of Berlusconi and his team was frequently expressed in the editorials and in the undertone of the news coverage. It can be argued that the newspaper’s initial efforts to find convergences with the new executive on issues such as the liberalization of the labour market and strengthened relations with the United States of America were undermined by some of the government’s policies. Some specific legislation was interpreted as strongly contradicting Il Corriere della Sera’s traditional values – democratic liberalism, the search for bipartisan agreements, respect for institutions and political compromises to appease Italy’s social and political fragmentation. Il Corriere della Sera started to resent the Premier’s populist rhetoric and his aggressive tone towards journalists and magistrates. The exceptional context of the SME trial – the first trial against a head of government in a Western democracy – also left the newspaper facing the dilemma of whether to fulfil its journalistic duty or whether instead to become an instrument in the ‘unceasing propaganda war against the judiciary’ that was enacted by Berlusconi’s entourage and that found major outlets in his channels and newspapers (Ginsborg 2004: 146). The preposterous attitude of Berlusconi’s lawyers, their attempts to exploit political office in order to benefit their client and to paralyse the SME trial were seen by the editor and his team as signs of the government’s illiberal style and arbitrary abuse of power. The laws to modify judicial proceedings appeared as rather coarse attempts to curb the magistrates and to solve the Premier’s own legal problems. Most explicit in terms of their criticism towards the Premier were the occasional editorials by the political scientist, Giovanni Sartori, who sharply attacked the Premier, even comparing him once to Mussolini (Sartori 2003a). These editorials were, however, outweighed by the less antagonistic and sometimes favourable positions of conservative leader-writers within the newspaper, who rejected any radical solutions to Berlusconi’s conflict of interests.

Final Considerations Berlusconi’s attempt to render Il Corriere della Sera more pliable in relation to his political agenda is closely connected to his approach regarding state television, and has to be interpreted as a concerted strategy to use his power to repress dissent within Italian society. Berlusconi identified Ferruccio de Bortoli as the brain behind Il Corriere della Sera’s critical stance. On various occasions he expressed his aversion for the editor publicly and once even referred to him sarcastically as the director of the Communist newspaper Il Manifesto (De Bortoli 2008). The economic difficulties of Fiat’s former president, Cesare Romiti, and of Fiat’s president, Gianni Agnelli – two of the major shareholders of the RCS Media Group – made the ownership vulnerable to complaints and pressures from the government. This did not, however, lead to a substantial political shift to the right, although Pierluigi Battista, a journalist close to Berlusconi, was nominated vice-editor in 2005. The conservative journalist and advisor to Silvio Berlusconi,

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Giuliano Ferrara, attributed this continuity to the general ‘weakness of character’ of newspaper editors in Italy who would seldom leave a personal imprint and therefore adapted to ‘mainstream conformism’. A change of editor in Il Corriere della Sera should, according to Ferrara, not trouble anybody (Ferrara 2003). It was, however, rather the strong tradition of its liberal values and the commitment of the newspaper’s editorial team that saved it from losing its limited autonomy. Il Corriere della Sera has been able to preserve the main features of its moderate and liberal-conservative journalism within the editorial boundaries that have prevented it from playing a more dynamic role in the country’s cultural and political development.

Notes 1. After the occupation, Italy sent a small contingent of 4,000 ‘non-belligerent’ soldiers into Iraq. 2. I am grateful to Ferruccio De Bortoli (Il Sole 24 Ore), Paolo Biondani (L’Espresso) and to the historians Nicola Tranfaglia and Carlo Giuseppe Marino (University of Palermo) for agreeing to be interviewed for this chapter in 2008. Unless otherwise stated, any references to the opinions of these people found in this chapter are references to these interviews. 3. Indro Montanelli (1909–2001); Alberto Moravia (1907–1990); Dino Buzzati (1906–1972). 4. Silvio Berlusconi, also a member of the P2, himself contributed a series of editorials to the economic pages of Il Corriere della Sera in the 1980s. 5. The law was subsequently declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court. 6. De Bortoli told the author that he had been served more than a hundred libel-suits during his journalistic career. 7. The Frattini law prevents the Prime Minister from managing his numerous businesses. However, he is free to decide who should replace him. It is legal, for example, to ask family members to stand in during the tenure of the officeholder. 8. According to Castellani Perelli, the newspaper La Stampa was forced on a clearly progovernmental line due to the economic crisis (Bosetti, Buonocore 2005: 81). La Stampa is owned by ITEDI Spa, which belongs to the FIAT group.

References Asor Rosa, A. (1981), ‘I giornalisti, appunti sulla fisiologia di un mestiere difficile’, Storia d’Italia. Annali 4, Intellettuali e potere, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 1228–57. BBC News (2003), ‘Italy: Editor was forced out’, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2950538. stm. Accessed 13 December 2007. Bertoni, R. (2008), ‘La colpa non è dello specchio ma di chi ci sta davanti’, Il Riformista, 28 July. Biagi, E. (2003), ‘Ricordo bene il Vietnam’, Corriere della Sera, 12 January. Biondani, P. (2001), ‘Carte svizzere, fondi Fininvest andarono da Previti a Squillante’, Corriere della Sera, 30 September. Bosetti, G. and Buonocore, M. (eds) (2005), Giornali e tv negli anni di Berlusconi. Venice: Marsilio. Buonocore, M. (2004), Anomalia italiana televisione. Rome: Reset. Capecchi, V. and Livolsi, M. (1973), La stampa quotidiana in Italia. Milan: Bompiani. Castronovo, V. and Tranfaglia, N. (1979), La stampa italiana nell’età liberale. Bari: Laterza. — (2002), La stampa italiana nell’età della televisione. Bari: Laterza. Cecchi, A. (1985), Storia della P2. Bologna: Editori Riuniti. Clarke, H. (2003), ‘The war over a bald patch’, New Statesman, 9 June. Corriere della Sera (2001), ‘E’ solo l’internazionale della spazzature’, 1 May. — (2003a), ‘Giudici con logiche golpiste’, 1 May.

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— (2003b), ‘I cortei per la pace e le istituzioni lontane’, 18 February. D’Avanzo, G. (2007), ‘Cosi assaltai il Corriere della Sera con la benedizione di Berlusconi’, Repubblica, 17 June. De Bortoli, F. (2002), ‘Sgradevoli sensazioni’, Corriere della Sera, 31 July. — (2003a), ‘Un istituzione di garanzia’, Corriere della Sera, 14 June. — (2003b), ‘Le ragioni per dire no’, Corriere della Sera, 9 February. Economist (2001), ‘Unfit to govern Italy’, 28 April. Ferrara, G. (2003), ‘Un fedele servitore dei lettori’, Panorama, 6 June. FIEG (2007), ‘La stampa in Italia’, presentation of annual report, Rome, 16 March. Forcella, E. (2004), Millecinquecento lettori. Rome: Donizelli, first published in 1959. Franchi, P. (2001), ‘Un mandato pieno’, Corriere della Sera, 15 May. Galli della Loggia, E. (2003), ‘Il Diapason dei cattolici’, Corriere della Sera, 7 January. Giglioli, P. P. (1996), ‘Political corruption and media: The Tangentopoli affair’, International Social Science Journal, 48, (3), pp. 381–94. Ginsborg, P. (2004), Television, Power and Patrimony. London: Verso. Gomez, P. and Travaglio, M. (2004), Regime. Milan: Bur. Guardian (2003), ‘Editor’s resignation sparks strike in Italy’, 2 June, available at: www.guardian.co.uk/ media/2003/jun/02/pressandpublishing.italy. Accessed 30 July. Hopper, J. (2005), ‘Who’s buying out Corriere della Sera?’, Guardian, 3 June. Licata, G. (1976), Storia del Corriere della Sera. Milan: Rizzoli. Lopez, B. (2007), La casta dei giornali. Viterbo: Nuovi Equilibri. Mack Smith, D. (1978), Storia di cento anni di vita italiana visti attraverso il Corriere della Sera. Milan: Rizzoli. Mancini, P. (2005), Il sistema fragile. Rome: Carocci. Mastellarini, G. (2004), Assalto alla stampa. Bari: Edizioni Dedalo. Mieli, P. (2006), ‘La scelta del 9 aprile’, Corriere della Sera, 8 March. Murialdi, P. (1978), Ottone: Intervista sul giornalismo italiano. Bari: Laterza. — (2003), ‘Undici azionisti, nessun editore’, Problemi dell’Informazione, 2, pp. 123–56. — (2006), Storia del giornalismo italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino. Ostellino, P. (2002), ‘Gridare al lupo’, Corriere della Sera, 3 March. — (2003a), ‘Sospetti, veleni e verità perdute’, Corriere della Sera, 1 May. — (2003b), ‘I costi dell’etica e la ragion di stato’, Corriere della Sera, 10 May. Ottone, P. (2003), ‘La lunga storia d’assalti alla libertà di stampa’, Repubblica, 3 June. Panebianco, A. (2002), ‘La necessità di un dialogo’, Corriere della Sera, 12 November. — (2003a), ‘La Repubblica dei paladini’, Corriere della Sera, 30 January. — (2003b), ‘Un malessere e le sue radici’, Corriere della Sera, 10 March. Perini, B. (2003), ‘La battaglia di Solferino: Laboratorio Corriere’, Rivista del Manifesto, 42, July–August. Pons, G. (2002), ‘Ligresti bussa alla porta del patto Hdp’, Repubblica, 29 August. Repubblica (2002), ‘Crisi Fiat: General Motors svaluta la partecipazione’, 17 July. — (2002), ‘Chiusure al sud inaccettabili’, 10 October. — (2005), ‘Tramano contro Il Corriere, se arriva Ricucci me ne vado’, 10 August. Romano, S. (2006), ‘Berlusconi’s foreign policy: Inverting traditional priorities’, International Spectator, 2, pp. 101–07. Sartori, G. (2002a), ‘La posta in gioco, Tv e troppo potere’, Corriere della Sera, 18 February. Sartori G. (2002b), ‘Io e le parole di Ciampi’, Corriere della Sera, 21 February. — (2002c), ‘Quella vedetta è un po’ miope’, Corriere della Sera, 2 March. — (2002d), ‘Servizio pubblico e il caso Biagi’, Corriere della Sera, 23 May. — (2003a), ‘Un Premier e i suoi fantasmi’, Corriere della Sera, 13 May. — (2003b), ‘Così io ho vissuto il cambio al Corriere’, Corriere della Sera, 27 June. — (2003c), ‘Ma la legge TV è costituzionale?’, Corriere della Sera, 1 October. Sarzanini, F. (2007), ‘Scalata RCS, Livolsi: Berlusconi mi suggerì di parlarne con Agag’, Repubblica, 19 June. Stajano, C. (2003), ‘L’ultimo giorno al Corriere’, Unità, 8 June. Tranfaglia, N. (2005), Ma esiste il quarto potere in Italia? Milan: Baldini & Castoldi.

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Tranfaglia, N. and Murialdi, P. (1980), La stampa quotidiana del regime fascista. Bari: Laterza. L’Unità (2003), ‘Hanno preso anche il Corriere’, 30 May. UNLA (2005), Rapporto UNLA sull’analfabetismo in Italia, available at: www.gildavenezia.it/docs/ Archivio/2005/nov2005/UNLA.htm. Accessed 14 June 2008. Valli, B. (2001), ‘Il ritorno dell’avvocato’, Repubblica, 3 July 2004. Vespa, B. (2003), Il Cavaliere e il Professore. Milan: Mondadori-Rai Eri. Viviano, F. (2002), ‘Vent’anni dopo i segreti di Calvi in una cassetta di sicurezza’, Repubblica, 12 October 2003.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

‘Adopt a Domestic Worker?’: The Response of Immigrant Associations to the Centre-Right Wendy Pojmann

Introduction In 2002, the Bossi-Fini law (Law 189/02) took effect, following months of debates that shed light on the modus operandi of the second Berlusconi government. The result was the implementation of a rapid policy change that occurred between 1990 and 2002 and which brought Italy in line with immigration legislation in long-term countries of immigration, such as the United Kingdom, after years of what immigrant activists had viewed as a more accommodating approach to the permanent settlement of immigrants in Italy. As participants in the public discourse surrounding Bossi-Fini, immigrant-led associations attempted to alter key provisions of the proposed legislation but with few concrete successes. Migrant women’s associations were vocal in expressing their objections to Bossi-Fini, especially to those provisions that defined migrants in relation to their employment status, and in particular, to the amnesty that implied a labelling of migrant women as ‘donne migranti quindi badanti’ (migrant women therefore care workers).1 This chapter examines the reaction of migrant associations to the Bossi-Fini law before and after its passage. I aim to show that in response to immigration legislation, migrant women’s associations, in particular the Association No.Di. (i Nostri Diritti; Our Rights) in Rome, have consistently combined resistance to the law with integration into Italian society. Because of its emphasis on exclusion, however, the Bossi-Fini law changed the nature and degree of the migrant women’s associations’ ability to participate in debates leading up to the passage of the legislation and prevented them from having a widespread favourable impact on public discourse. Many migrant women’s leaders came to view the Italian government as interested only in migrant women’s economic value as domestic workers and the Italian people as uneasy about the possibility of a multicultural society. Nonetheless, migrant women activists have obtained some positive outcomes in their efforts to resist certain measures of the legislation, although mainly at the local level, and continue to seek integration and good relations for immigrants in Italy.

The Bossi-Fini Law and the Opposition to Centre-Right Policies on Immigration When Silvio Berlusconi became Prime Minister for a second time in 2001, Italy was grappling with its increasingly visible role as a country of immigration with a foreign population reaching

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over 1.3 million documented immigrants (Caritas 2004) from an estimated figure of just over 500,000 a decade earlier (Istat 2003). Since the 1970s, male and female migrants from countries such as Morocco, the Philippines, and Peru had been entering Italy in search of employment in the country’s growing industrial sector and as domestic workers in private Italian homes (Campani 2000; Macioti, Pugliese 1998). By the early 1990s, resident foreigners included growing numbers of eastern Europeans affected by the fall of Communism and ensuing conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001, the foreign population was made up of 43.9 per cent Europeans, 29 per cent Africans, 16.1 per cent Asians and 10.7 per cent Americans (North and South); the leading countries of origin included Morocco, Albania, Romania and the Philippines (Caritas 2004). Although immigrants constituted just over two per cent of the total population (compared to 4 per cent in the United Kingdom, 6 per cent in France and 9 per cent in Germany), the perception was that they were overrunning the country, in part because of growing numbers of undocumented migrants (Censis 2002). Although no exact figures can be claimed, estimates range from 500,000 to 800,000 undocumented migrants living in Italy in the late 1990s and early 2000s.2 During the election season, immigration emerged as a national political issue driven by the vocal anti-immigrant populist party, the Lega Nord (LN) (Gold 2003). Italian researchers have noted that the LN successfully put immigration at the centre of the political contest leading up to the elections that brought Berlusconi to power and created public scrutiny of immigration concerns as never before by conflating legal and illegal immigration, pointing to crimes committed by immigrants, and challenging the possibility of the integration of foreigners (Colombo, Sciortino 2003; Pepino 2002; Zincone 2002). In fact, the larger parties of the centre-right had focused little attention on immigration policy prior to their cooperation with LN. Alleanza Nazionale (AN) wanted to define itself as a moderate Conservative party by following the broader European discourse of stopping undocumented migrants from entering Italy and tightening national security, proposals put forward in the bill co-written by AN party leaders Gianfranco Fini and Giampaolo Landi di Chiavenna. Forza Italia (FI), on the other hand, had very little to say about immigration at all until it entered into the Casa della Libertà (CdL) coalition with the AN and the LN in 2000. At that point, Berlusconi, together with LN leader Umberto Bossi, suggested a new legislation to establish a sort of guest-worker policy that would significantly reduce access to permanent settlement but allow for a continued supply of needed migrant labourers thus decreasing illegal entries (Colombo, Sciortino 2003: 168). The Berlusconi-Bossi proposal found enormous support, especially among regional electorates in the Veneto and Lombardy, and immigration became the hot button issue that helped propel the centre-right to victory. Once the Berlusconi government took control in June 2001, new immigration legislation continued to dominate the political agenda and led to the passage of the Bossi-Fini law (Law 189/02). As had been the case during the election season, the AN and the LN led the restructuring of existing immigration legislation while the centre-left did little to oppose it. In fact, the centre-left Ulivo coalition, which had been in government between 1996 and 2001, had given into pressure from its electorate to look as though it, too, was taking a stronger stance on illegal immigration and related criminal activities by putting in place immigration guidelines more in line with those of other EU countries and establishing tougher penalties for immigrant criminals. However, as political parties re-examined previous immigration legislation, especially the Martelli law (Law 39/90) passed during Giulio Andreotti’s third tenure as Prime Minister (1989–92) and the Turco-Napolitano law (Law 40/98) passed by the first centre-left government led by Romano Prodi (1996–98), it became evident that these policies had been problematic. The Italian government had scrambled to correct years of ignoring immigration – no comprehensive policy was in place until 1990 – only to face it as a national emergency (Zincone

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2001). Law 39/90 established a quota system in conjunction with the trade unions but did not set up clear guidelines for immigrants’ entry into Italy. Law 40/98, instead, was connected to Italy’s compliance with EU guidelines on illegal immigration. To be granted full entry into the Schengen Agreement, Italy had to tighten border controls and deal with illegal immigrants already in the country. Turco-Napolitano also established the Centri di Permanenza Temporanea (CPT), temporary holding centres for persons waiting to be deported, and separated immigration and refugee policies. Another major emphasis of the Turco-Napolitano law was the integration of legal immigrants through such measures as free Italian language courses, the right to state-funded health services and access to family reunification based on evidence of financial support. Although some immigrants, especially those of European or Catholic background or with high levels of education, had successfully integrated into Italian society, many others had not and faced great challenges and hardships in accessing the benefits of the Italian welfare state (Caritas 2004: 144–6). As a result, immigrant associations supported the aspects of Law 40/98 that favoured integration, including the ability of associations to sponsor immigrants (Parati 2005: 233). Despite the regularization under Law 40 of more than 200,000 immigrants, and provisions for their access to health care and education, the public continued to focus on illegal entries and an incomplete integration of migrants. According to a study conducted by Censis in 2001 and 2002 the media reported negatively on immigrants in 78 per cent of its stories, with crime and clandestine migrants as the principle arguments treated in more than 55 per cent of news broadcasts (Censis 2002: 2–3). Moreover, the inability of the state to provide services to immigrants surfaced in a study by the Coordination Body for the Policies of the Social Integration of Foreigners (ONC), a body of the National Council of the Economy and Work (CNEL) created under Law 40/98, which found nearly 900 voluntary immigrant associations operating throughout Italy to assist foreigners with immigration documents, education and employment, and social and cultural life where the state did not (ONC 2001). The centre-right coalition was able to attack Laws 39/90 and 40/98 by pointing to their deficiencies, including data that showed only a slight increase in the overall number of undocumented migrants turned away at the borders or deported (Caritas 2004: 119) and increases in crimes perpetrated by them (Istat 2001). The AN and the LN easily garnered enough support for the Bossi-Fini bill to ensure its passage by July 2002. Although touted as mainly a restructuring of the Turco-Napolitano law, Bossi-Fini is the most restrictive immigration law yet to take effect in Italy (Nascimbene 2003; Ventucci 2006). Because it directly ties legal residence to regular and continuous employment, the Bossi-Fini law resembles current policies in other EU states, including in established countries of immigration such as Great Britain and France. In order for a worker to enter Italy, he/she must have a signed contract from an employer as well as the employer’s guarantee of round-trip travel to and from Italy and adequate housing while employed. If the worker loses his/her job during the permit period without finding work within 90 days of the expiry date, he/she must leave the country when the permit expires. Family reunifications for legal residents are possible only for spouses in legitimate marriages, children under 18 years of age (over 18 years only in cases of special medical needs), or parents over 65 years of age who cannot be cared for by a child in the country of origin. Naturalization for immigrants not married to an Italian citizen is possible only after 10 years of regular residency. As had been the case with all previous immigration legislation, Bossi-Fini also carried an amnesty. At first, this was granted only to domestic care workers whose residency permits had expired and who could prove that a family had employed them between 1 October and 31 December 2001. One domestic care worker per household was allowed unless the family unit included a member with disabilities, in which case no limit was placed on the number of workers. Measures to counter illegal immigration included the

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extension of holding times in the CPTs to up to 18 months and jail time for those seeking a second illegal entry. Although by no means uncontested by and satisfactory to all members of the centre-right (see Chapter 4), the CdL claimed victory in moving the legislation through parliament quickly and the LN demonstrated its ability to dominate the political landscape, despite having received just 4.5 per cent of the national vote, by repeatedly capitalizing on public fears of crimes perpetrated by immigrants and by highlighting cultural differences deemed too steep to be overcome (Gold 2003: 127). Migrant associations mobilized to call the public’s attention to the problems of Bossi-Fini and hopefully put pressure on government leaders to alter key provisions. Large Italian-run, pro-immigrant organizations such as Caritas,3 Arci and the Social Forum network united immigrant and native leaders and gained support from many influential Italian politicians, such as Walter Veltroni, then mayor of Rome, and Senator Livia Turco. On 19 January 2002, between 150,000 and 250,000 people peacefully marched in Rome against the bill, which Turco denied to be a continuation of the legislation passed with her name saying, ‘The underlying spirit is opposite’ (Bruzzone 2002).4 Migrant activists agreed that while the Turco-Napolitano law increased restrictions on immigration, it also looked to help immigrants integrate into Italian society by providing access to social services. The results of integration had been mixed, but Bossi-Fini, by defining immigrants solely in relation to their status as workers, would simply put up further barriers to an effective integration. Migrants would come to be tolerated for their utility to Italians but would not be accepted any longer as complete individuals, with relationships, families, cultures or needs of their own. Further large demonstrations took place in other Italian cities between January and June, which continued to highlight objectionable aspects of the proposed legislation but also underscored disunity among migrant and native leaders, especially with regard to the fractured centre-left coalition (see Chapter 5). At a demonstration in Bologna in early March 2002, a group of organizers representing numerous immigrant associations of people from such countries as Pakistan, Algeria and Nigeria, and of various political leanings, marched beside Italian members of the radical anti-globalization White Overalls group, several small anarchist groups and members of the CGIL trade union and Rifondazione Comunista (RC). Luca Casarini of the White Overalls declared the January march in Rome organized by the centre-left Ulivo coalition a ‘funeral’ and other marchers claimed that the ‘real left’ was in Bologna and not in Rome (Pierangelo 2002). The inability of the centre-left to put forward a common counter-proposal to Bossi-Fini ultimately hurt immigrants by failing to help them access the political system and it further divided and weakened their own positions. Divisions among immigrant organizations compounded the situation. For example, in one of the final demonstrations held in Turin before the government approved the law, turnout among immigrants was much smaller than anticipated because of a lack of a united platform, especially on issues such as the fingerprinting of immigrants, supported by some centre-left leaders such as Francesco Rutelli but opposed by activists who wore blown-up images of fingerprints in protest of the proposal. Only about 600 people marched in Turin; participation was limited in comparison to the Rome and Bologna marches, but Abdel, leader of the Migrant Commission in the Turin Social Forum reported, ‘We are nonetheless satisfied that we have given visibility to the protest against the law of the Berlusconi government’ (Martinengo 2002: 39). The response of migrant women’s associations to the proposed Bossi-Fini legislation was especially critical, in large part because of the amnesty suggested specifically only for migrant domestic workers. In the larger cities where many immigrant women’s associations had been active for over a decade, migrant and Italian women came together to voice their opposition to the legislation and to call for resistance to it. A letter signed by leading women’s activists in

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June 2002 circulated via the internet and named specific aspects of the bill deemed offensive to migrant women while taking a polemical tone. With Bossi-Fini we are back to overt servitude and slavery. Moreover, this law humiliates women: women who have known the world, its laws, its frontiers, its barbarisms, its hopes, its many languages. They will be only servants or caretakers, by law.5 In Milan, on 13 June, women held a protest in front of the Palazzo di Giustizia where they distributed the letter and spoke out against the impact of Bossi-Fini on migrant women, arguing that care work falls disproportionately on them as do responsibilities for finding adequate housing, attempting to keep families united, and raising children born in a country that does not consider them citizens. In response to the contradictory messages put forth by the LN of the danger posed by immigrants and the provision granting amnesty to domestic workers, one woman noted the irony in suggesting that migrants are criminals and then making sure that they are allowed to look after precious family members. Another pointed out that Italians would benefit from migrant women’s labour while migrant women would become dependent on their domestic worker status for their resident permits stating that, ‘it’s a great deal for you [Italians], not a gift for migrant domestic workers who become like prisoners waiting [for their paperwork] to be processed’ (Cartosio 2002). In the call to action of the letter, the women asked that: citizens not allow for the passage of Bossi-Fini; that they fight steadily for its blockage and withdrawal; and that everyone from ordinary citizens to the president of the Republic reflect on the grave consequences of the law on the civility of the country. In the meantime, the women said they would no longer cure wounds and patch disasters, as they had always done, and would refuse to be servants in a hostile culture. The language of the text and the women’s multiple forms of distributing their message (e.g. internet, public protest) gave migrant women a voice in the public discourse.

The No.Di. Association and Migrant Women’s Response to the New Law In Rome, the Association No.Di. became deeply involved in the fight against the Bossi-Fini law.6 Operating informally since 1994 and formally since 1997, No.Di. is a multiethnic immigrant women’s association that helps migrant women with matters related to their rights and responsibilities in the spirit of integration and justice (Pojmann 2006: 105–7). Because of its longevity, the ethnic diversity (i.e. Latino, Arab, African) of its membership, and the fact that it is migrant-led but well networked with Italian associations, No.Di. makes for an illuminating case study.7 The association operates from a small office on a narrow pedestrian street near St. Peter’s Basilica making it easily accessible by public transportation. Because of its emphasis on providing information to women about their rights, No.Di. has long been working on matters connected to immigration legislation. No.Di. participates in numerous networks with Italian governmental and non-governmental bodies to keep up to date on immigration policies. One major aspect of the association’s work is to be open as much as possible to migrant women who can drop in during specified hours for assistance. Health care, psychological counselling, job placement and legal counselling make up the majority of No.Di.’s information services. No.Di. leaders Miryam Fuentes and Pilar Saravia, both of whom also work as migrant representatives for Italian trade unions, explain the great political changes that took place in relation to Bossi-Fini. Whereas legislators, including Senator Livia Turco, had invited migrant women

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to contribute to the discussions that shaped Law 40/98, the same could not be said of the proponents of Bossi-Fini. Fuentes notes the specific exclusion of migrants before Law 189/02 was passed: ‘there was no call from civil society to say let’s discuss this, let’s talk about it, let’s try to find a way out. No, it was simply done without a real discussion with migrant associations’. Moreover, the new exclusionary framework that characterizes the law dismays Saravia: ‘The ideology is not that of social inclusion but of social exclusion. The layout of the law is based on the utility of foreigners, meaning we accept them because we need them, without understanding that foreigners are people.’ Having long upheld a political perspective that promotes dialog and exchange between immigrants and Italians, the women of No.Di. were taken aback by these new divisive policies. Through their work as cultural mediators in Italian schools and associations, the women of No.Di. had been encouraging immigrants and natives to open themselves to the many languages and cultures of the world and to embrace living in a society enriched by multiple ethnicities. The fact that migrant women’s associations were not called upon by the government or civil society to participate in the design of the law does not mean that they did not voice their objections to it. In fact, No.Di. was among the many immigrant associations that marched in the Rome protest in January 2002, and No.Di. representatives appeared on radio and television programmes about immigration and the law during the months that preceded its approval. No.Di. was also one of the 22 migrant women’s associations, including single nationality associations such as the Filipino Women’s Council and the Cape Verdean Women’s Association and several multiethnic associations such as Candelaria and Nosotras, which wrote and signed a letter to the Italian Parliament in opposition to the bill.8 Unlike the highly expressive letter distributed in Milan, this letter used direct language and referred to specific legislative passages and immigration data. For instance, the signatories used statistics collected by the Banca d’Italia showing that migrant labour contributes to approximately 3.7 per cent of the GDP, noting that while Migrant Worker’s Convention number 143 of the International Labour Office, which Italy signed, guarantees equal rights for immigrants, these were not being respected. The women called for the new legislation to uphold specific aspects of the Turco-Napolitano law, such as sponsorship for immigrants and broad access to family reunification, and asked for reduced waiting times for permanent resident permits and naturalization. The tone of the letter reflects No.Di.’s emphasis on respect and integration. If migrants are to be productive members of a democratic society, their full range as individuals, who work, pay taxes, raise children, socialize with neighbours, and have ties to multiple cultures must be respected. By viewing migrants only through their productive capacities, the Italians were risking losing opportunities to build communities and unnecessarily increasing hostilities among Italians and immigrants. The strongest objections to Bossi-Fini by all migrant activists are related to the tie between the work contract and the resident permit, as discussed above, but the women of No.Di. also criticize the law for being especially detrimental to women. Saravia asserts, ‘Bossi-Fini is truly against women because they have more difficulties renewing the resident permit’. Several factors make migrant women especially vulnerable under Law 189/02. First, a sizeable majority of migrant women, especially new arrivals, work as housecleaners or care takers in private Italian homes. Recent data suggest that as many as 700,000 migrant women work as care takers, which means that there are as many as 30,000 more social service workers in the private sector than are employed in social services by the Italian state (Povoledo 2008). Because of the private nature of domestic work contracts, domestic workers are exposed to a series of possible abuses they have little recourse to correct. Migrant women afraid of losing their jobs are less likely to raise objections or complain about working conditions. Women employed as the care takers of the elderly or infirm are susceptible to remaining unemployed if the person under their care passes away, and migrant women who use their rights to vacation time or maternity leave may find

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themselves permanently replaced. As a result, domestic workers live in a state of insecurity, even in the best of circumstances, and must constantly be looking for the next opportunity (Colombo 2007: 220–2). For women seeking family reunification, Bossi-Fini established stricter requirements for housing and familial relationships. Migrants must have a signed rent agreement with a landlord and be able to verify the square footage and configuration of the apartment where they will live in with their family. Finding adequate and affordable housing in large cities such as Rome is already challenging for Italians, but migrants are more likely to face obstacles to securing housing approved by the state. Italian landlords know they can ask for higher rents from foreigners and evict them more easily and, by not registering rent agreements, they can avoid paying taxes on rental income. As a result, Fuentes says that, ‘We all know too well that the rental market is a dirty business and that this contract is never properly drawn up. People find themselves unable to verify their residence.’ In addition to a rental agreement, Bossi-Fini put in place stricter guidelines for family re-unification. For instance, women from the developing world point to factors not taken into consideration by the legislators. A woman from Somalia commented during the Milan demonstration in June 2002 that: To have my mother come here, in addition to demonstrating that she doesn’t have other children in Somalia who can support her, I will have to wait until she reaches sixty-five years of age – an age that few people in Africa reach, as everybody knows, everybody but Bossi. (Cartosio 2002) The situation is complicated even for children of foreign parents. As Saravia explains: The Bossi-Fini Law says that if you are in Italy for family reunification, when you reach eighteen years of age, you have to renew the resident permit – either the permit for school or the permit for work and that’s it. There aren’t any alternatives. And many of the girls were left out. In all of these cases, the law put up obstacles to integration by preventing migrants from living with their families in a stable environment and thus leaving the door open for re-patriation. After Bossi-Fini went into effect in July 2002, migrant activists, although discouraged by their inability to have an impact on the design of the law, did not give up their struggles. While working to push through a legislative change, migrant associations began to put into practice forms of resistance to assist their communities. Through traditional forms of protest, such as demonstrations and marches, and new media politics, such as internet blogs and email circulation, migrant leaders continued to put forward the argument that Bossi-Fini would create more problems for immigrants genuinely interested in integration and permanence in Italy while it would do little to stop illegal entries or criminal activities related to migration and migrants. At the same time, migrant leaders asserted, Bossi-Fini would harm businesses and families in need of migrant labour by complicating and lengthening bureaucratic procedures. If any positives could be pointed to at all, activists said, they were limited to having working and housing conditions spelled out for a select number of labourers working mostly in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors.9 Criticisms that Bossi-Fini was simply contributing to violence rather than diminishing it, rang true when hostilities against migrants and their supporters erupted in conflict following a march of approximately 8,000 anti-Bossi-Fini protestors in Treviso in mid-September 2002. While about five hundred protestors of foreign and Italian background were waiting for trains

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to leave Treviso, a group of several hundred LN militants began shouting out insults, which led to a brief but intense fight. No one was seriously injured but the incident highlighted the highly charged political situation as well as the fact that migrants were increasingly victims of racist violence.10 More Italian groups, including lay and religious Catholic organizations such as Caritas, came out in favour of migrants and encouraged civil disobedience with one anonymous marcher claiming, ‘We will commit ourselves to organizing disruptive actions and protests at the borders and also to organizing ourselves to help our brothers cross the borders freely’ (Rizzo 2002). Since the legislation included the special amnesty for domestic workers, families scrambled to have their house cleaners and care takers regularized as quickly as possible; approximately 340,000 requests were made before the 11 November 2002 deadline and overwhelmed offices handling such cases (Caritas 2003: 4). Among migrant women’s associations, the unique status of domestic workers generated opportunities for resistance but also led to disagreements. Although not ultimately supported by the women’s associations, some activists suggested an ‘adopt a domestic worker’ campaign to secure resident permits for the most vulnerable women, which would enable migrant women to turn the policy on its head, in a sense using it to help themselves while drawing attention to the amnesty’s flaws. Ultimately, however, ‘the proposal failed because it implied the implicit acceptance of a de facto situation and of a point of view offensive to migrant women that sees them, in fact, only as caretakers’ (Punto di Partenza 2002: 2). On a smaller scale, migrant women activists looked for opportunities for regularization by encouraging migrant women to insist that their employers legalize their work agreements. In some cases, such as in desperate conditions of unemployment, the associations turned also to friends and family to temporarily hire domestic workers until they could find more permanent work on their own. The way in which the category of domestic worker has been imposed has led women’s associations to moments of resistance and integration as they attempted to find legal solutions that would most benefit migrant women. No.Di. put multiple forms of resistance and integration into action to help the women most affected by the Bossi-Fini law, but providing information on migrant women’s rights and responsibilities remains No.Di.’s top priority. As Saravia explains: The most important work is that of resistance. It is necessary to inform women, warn them about the law, how it is changing, what their rights are, if they don’t do something they can lose their resident permit, etc. People generally do not know the law [. . .] there’s Law 943, Law 39 of 1990, Bossi-Fini, the decree on security, the Unified Act on Immigration, the Amato-Ferrero circular. People have gone mad. People come here and say, but I’ve been here for twenty years. Does this law apply to me? Yes, I say. Even to you. Fuentes says that one of the biggest frustrations is, in fact, attempting to keep up to date with the many changes in policy: ‘It’s exhausting. I feel it as a sort of loss, as fatigue, because with all these changes . . . because in Italy all these decrees and circulars come out. You have to be up-to-date, but these changes wear you down’. At the same time, however, Fuentes underscores the importance of staying on top of new developments: ‘I maintain that information is the most important thing, because if you have information no one can take advantage of you’. Since keeping up with legal changes became too much for No.Di. members to handle on their own, the association turned to a group of women lawyers. Each Monday afternoon, No.Di. offers free legal counselling by certified attorneys who work side by side with No.Di. representatives. Since Bossi-Fini went into effect, No.Di. has been struggling to keep up with the demand for these services and typically sees eight to ten women, at least half of whom are new each week, during the four-hour sessions. No.Di. helps all migrant women, whether they are legally

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resident in Italy or not. The services are intended to be for information only, but the attorneys do a great deal of work for the clients, sending faxes, calling other attorneys, helping to fill out legal forms and offering detailed explanations of their legal options. Many of the problems the women bring to No.Di. are directly tied to Bossi-Fini and to their gender. Most women are looking for help securing or renewing a resident permit for themselves or their children. Their cases are often complicated by family situations, relationships with Italian or migrant men and dubious dealings with would-be employers. Other typical problems include complications with landlords, cases of domestic violence and discrimination at work. In each case I observed, the No.Di. representative and the attorney tried to be as clear and helpful as possible and most of the migrant women appeared to be comforted by their advice. In addition to the services offered at No.Di.’s offices, the association has been actively involved in publishing guides for migrant women and has participated in large research projects with other organizations. These activities further support No.Di.’s objectives of resistance and integration through information. For example, from the multilingual (e.g. Italian, English, French, Arabic) handbook ‘All we need is law: what to do in cases of judicial and administrative discrimination’, immigrants learn what laws are currently in place to protect them, key words and explanations of the Italian judicial system, and where to go for legal support in Latium and Sicily. They are also given four sample cases of discrimination with an expert opinion on each. No.Di.’s contact information and legal consulting hours are included in the guide along with those of organizations such as Caritas and Arci. No.Di.’s contribution to the research project ‘I colori della giustizia’ (The Colours of Justice) published as Storie di vita e di discriminazione (Tales of Life and of Discrimination) in February 2008 makes the ties between research and resistance clear: Law 189/2002, known as the Bossi-Fini Law, has gravely affected our liberty. Migrants have passed from a condition of ‘simple’ discrimination to something that puts a dent in our freedom. It must be changed before it further harms migrants and their children, future citizens. (Ass. No.Di. et al. 2008: 5) Through hundred in-depth interviews with immigrants who have faced discrimination in Italy and an accompanying legal explanation, readers have access not only to real-life cases but also to precise information about the law. No.Di’s hope was that the publication would increase awareness of the flaws of Bossi-Fini among immigrants and Italians while emphasizing the fact that immigrants are people with complex stories and serious problems.

Assessing the Impact of Immigrant Associations The results of the actions taken by immigrant-led associations are difficult to measure. Clearly, immigrant mobilizations to stop or change the Bossi-Fini law were not successful. However, the second Romano Prodi government (2006–08) made a few modifications that did not dramatically alter immigration policy but did make some procedures and waiting times a little more manageable. For instance, the Amato-Ferrero circular made it possible for second-generation immigrants over eighteen years of age to receive a six-month resident permit through their parents or as unemployed adults, and all migrants now receive a grace period of sixty days after their permit’s official expiry date to facilitate renewal. Saravia explains: Improvements were made under Prodi’s government. The problem is that Prodi’s government didn’t have time to do much of anything and they didn’t have the majority consensus.11

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They issued a circular that made life a little easier . . . a series of elements that support life and that pointed toward integration. In any case, Saravia and Fuentes are not convinced that the efforts of immigrant-led associations such as No.Di contributed to the modifications. Since Berlusconi came back to head the government for a fourth time in 2008, however, a new series of proposals have been discussed and debated in the legislature and the press as the immigrant population has continued to grow. Caritas reported in 2007 that there are now nearly 3.7 million foreign residents in Italy, almost triple the 2001 figure (Caritas 2007b).12 There is little evidence to suggest that illegal entries have fallen during the same period, and reports indicate a decline in the number of repatriations from 64.1 per cent in 1999 to 36.5 per cent in 2006 (Caritas 2007b: 3). Moreover, according to a study by the ministry of the interior, 85 per cent of Italians believe there are currently 50 per cent more illegal than legal immigrants in Italy (Makno & Consulting 2007). During the summer of 2008, several incidents pointed towards a worsening of the situation for migrants: an LN proposal for the criminalization of undocumented migrants; the raiding of Roma camps and a call for the fingerprinting of all ‘gypsies’; random stops of foreigners asked to show documents; and numerous reports of violence against migrants and their property.13 Fuentes connects the recent focus on immigration to broader national problems: ‘The immigration question has always been, and not only in Italy, an escape from having to confront other national problems’. Fuentes argues that the ruling government, however, sets the tone from above, which can lead to problems at the local level and influence media and public opinion. She claims, for example, that the media’s emphasis on crimes committed by immigrants is far out of line with actual statistics. In cases of violence against women, for example, Fuentes says that foreign men unknown to the woman commit less than 1.5 per cent of crimes, but ‘when one of these cases occurs, it is given a huge amount of publicity’.14 In terms of both national legislation and public opinion, immigrant associations have had little notable impact under the Berlusconi governments. This is true especially for small migrant-run associations, such as No.Di., but even for large, influential pro-immigrant associations, such as Caritas, which are run by Italians and have consistently put forward a message of tolerance. Associations such as No.Di. can claim successes although Saravia and Fuentes are conservative in their assessment of how much impact their efforts have had. Saravia says that when you look at a city as large as Rome and the population of migrant women residing in it at any given moment, the ability to touch numerous lives appears limited: ‘If one wanted to see with numbers, I don’t believe we are that strong or important but we have great support and a lot of women’. The women of No.Di. know that they are helping migrant women in concrete ways and with consistency even if they may only reach a few thousand of them: ‘I think that the fact that we have succeeded in maintaining continuity is fundamental’, says Saravia of No.Di.’s ability to survive through so many changes. Fuentes, who expresses a particular interest in helping women integrate, says: I remember especially in the beginning when I would say okay, you have to come up with an immigration plan. If you are sure you want to stay, even for a little bit, planning means giving stability and having clear ideas. And so we’d start with having degrees recognized and so on. Many people came back very happy, saying thank you, I didn’t know. Both Saravia and Fuentes expressed great satisfaction in being able to reach out to women but also frustration in not being able to do more. No.Di. would like to have free legal services available to women each day but it is just not financially possible at the moment. Saravia and Fuentes would also like to see more migrant women take charge to resolve their problems.

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Conclusion Ultimately, the results of immigrant activists’ resistance to the Bossi-Fini law have been mixed. Law 182/02 remains largely intact while immigrants’ access to a complete integration has deteriorated (Caritas 2007b: 13–16). It can certainly be said, however, that associations such as No.Di. help individual immigrant women and their families and friends while at the same time they put pressure on the government and civil society to listen to their objections and consider alternatives to a guest-worker immigration policy. No.Di. recognizes that immigrants, especially migrant women domestic workers, contribute to the economy and take burdens off the Italian state. However, they must also be recognized for their value beyond the workplace to ensure a culturally rich society that appreciates democracy and guarantees political, social and cultural rights to all its residents. In return for practices of inclusion that emanate from the government, immigrants are much more likely to demonstrate loyalty to the state and uphold its laws and values. In Italy, as elsewhere, however, given current public opinion about immigration, which is fuelled by fears of terrorism, a weak economy, and a discourse about the possible loss of traditional culture, it is unlikely that immigration will be liberalized in the near future. Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum know that they have to appear tough on immigration to secure votes, and as long as few of those votes are coming from the small naturalized immigrant community, policy is not likely to change.15 The fact that the centre-left opposition remains divided and unwilling to act on immigration also makes policy changes seem improbable. The victories of resistance for now remain small and are exemplified by the commitment of the Association No.Di., whose drop-in services, guides and research projects reach just a few migrant women at a time but ultimately touch many lives.

Notes I would like to thank Salvatore Lombardo for his comments on a draft of this chapter. 1. This was a common criticism made by migrant women’s associations. See for example, Punto di Partenza (2002). 2. Caritas, the Italian trade unions, IDOS, Eurispes, and others have made estimates in this range. 3. Caritas Italiana is part of the international Caritas organization founded in 1971 in connection to the reform policies of the Second Vatican Council. In addition to its social assistance work, Caritas publishes annual studies on immigration, the Dossier Statistico Immigrazione. See http://s2ew.caritasitaliana.it/caritasitaliana/s2magazine/index1.jsp?idPagina=4 for more information. Accessed on 1 June 2008. 4. All translations from Italian are mine. 5. I obtained a copy of the letter from Ainom Maricos of the Il Tropico Cooperativa in Milan. 6. I conducted my participant observation at No.Di. in January and June 2005 and May and June 2008. In Rome, I interviewed Miryam Fuentes (on 28 May 2008, at her CISL office) and Pilar Saravia (on 29 May 2008, at her UIL office). All quotes hereafter refer to these interviews. 7. It is worth noting that there are other multiethnic migrant women’s associations, such as the Candelaria association in Rome, and migrant/native associations such as Almaterra in Turin and Punto di Partenza in Florence, operating in a similar fashion. No.Di. can be said to be representative of these groups since they all provide social services to migrant women and engage in pro-migrant politics (see Pojmann 2006). 8. I obtained a copy of the letter from No.Di.’s office.

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9. Such criticisms are evident in articles on the websites of Arci (www.arci.it), Stranieri in Italia (www.stranieriinitalia.it), and Melting Pot Europa (www.meltingpot.org). 10. According to the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, the Italian government does not collect data on acts of racist violence. However, RAXEN reports from 2001 and 2002 indicate more than 250 annual cases of violence against migrants covered by the media with 48 related deaths in 2001 and 50 in 2002. See pages 105–11 of the report ‘Racist Violence in 15 EU Member States’ http://fra.europa.eu/fra/index.php?fuseaction=content. dsp_cat_content&catid=43c54ea09682f. Accessed 1 June 2008. 11. The Prodi government fell after two years, opening the way to a fourth Berlusconi government. 12. According to Caritas (2007), the Mediterranean countries are still seeing large increases in immigration while in countries such as France and Germany immigration has remained stable or is decreasing. 13. Italy’s major newspapers Il Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, and La Stampa ran feature stories about immigration, legislation and crime nearly each day from May to July 2008. 14. As noted above, however, there is a proven link between illegal migrants and crime. See the annual reports by Istat and Caritas. 15. Caritas (2007b: 1) reports that in 2005, there were 29,000 naturalized resident foreigners in Italy, or about 1 per cent of the foreign resident population.

References Associazione No.Di., Associazione Generi e Generazioni, and DAERA Soc. Coop. Sociale (2008), Storie di vita e di discriminazione: Rapporto di ricerca del progetto i colori della giustizia. Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri. Bruzzone, M. G. (2002), ‘Tornano i “migranti”: No alla legge razzista’, Stampa, 20 January. Campani, G. (2000), Genere, etnia e classe. Migrazioni al femminile tra esclusione e identità. Pisa: Edizioni ETS. Caritas/Migrantes (2003), Dossier statistico. Immigrazione, Italia, paese d’immigrazione, available at: http:// s2ew.caritasitaliana.it/caritasitaliana. Accessed 1 June 2008. — (2004), Dossier statistico immigrazione 2004 XIV rapporto. Rome: Nuova Antarem. — (2007a), Dossier statistico immigrazione 2007 XVII rapporto. Rome: Nuova Antarem. — (2007b), ‘Immigration in Italy: Recent findings’, Rome, available at: http://s2ew.caritasitaliana.it/ caritasitaliana/allegati/471/immigrazione_inglese.pdf. Accessed 1 June 2008. Cartosio, M. (2002), ‘Non cureremo la Bossi-Fini’, Manifesto, 14 June. Censis (2002), ‘L’immagine degli immigrati in Italia tra media, società civile e mondo del lavoro’, Rome, available at: www.censis.it/277/372/4975/4649/cover.asp. Accessed 1 June 2008. Colombo, A. (2007), ‘ “They call me a housecleaner, but I do everything.” Who are domestic workers today in Italy and what do they do?’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 12, (2), 207–37. Colombo, A. and G. Sciortino (2003), ‘The Bossi-Fini law: Explicit fanaticism, implicit moderation, and poisoned fruits’, in J. Blondel and P. Segatti (eds), Italian Politics: The Second Berlusconi Government. New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 163–79. Gold, T. W. (2003), The Lega Nord and Contemporary Politics in Italy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Istat (2001), Gli stranieri e il carcere: Aspetti della detenzione. Rome, available at: www.istat.it/dati/ catalogo/20040802_00/. Accessed 1 October 2005. — (2003), La presenza straniera in Italia. Rome, available at: www.istat.it/dati/catalogo/20040621_01/. Accessed 15 October 2005. Macioti, M. I. and Pugliese, E. (1998), Gli Immigrati in Italia. Rome: Editori Laterza. Makno & Consulting (2007), ‘Una ricerca sociale sull’immigrazione’, conducted for the Ministry of the Interior, Milan, available at: www.ristretti.it/commenti/2007/luglio/ricerca_sociale_immigrazione. pdf. Accessed 1 June 2008.

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Martinengo, M. T. (2002), ‘La manifestazione senza incidenti si è snodata da Porta Palazzo contro la BossiFini’, Stampa, 23 June. Nascimbene, B. (2003), ‘Nuove norme in materia di immigrazione. La legge Bossi-Fini: perplessità e critiche’, Corriere Giuridico, (4), pp. 532–40. Organismo Nazionale Coordinamento per le Politiche di Integrazione Sociale degli Stranieri (2001), ‘Le associazioni dei cittadini stranieri in Italia’, Rome, available at: www.portalecnel.it/portale/documenti. nsf/0/C1256BB30040CDD7C125730E004A870F/$FILE/ricerca%20corazzin.pdf Accessed 15 October 2005. Parati, G. (2005), Migration Italy: The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pepino, L. (2002), ‘La legge Bossi-Fini. Appunti su immigrazione e democrazia’. Diritto, immigrazione e cittadinanza, (3), pp. 9–21. Pierangelo, S. (2002), ‘I no global sfilano a Bologna’, Stampa, 3 March. Pojmann, W. (2006), Immigrant Women and Feminism in Italy. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing. Povoledo, E. (2008), ‘Italian plan to deal with migrants could affect residents who rely on them’, New York Times, 21 June. Punto di Partenza (2002), ‘Resoconto dei lavori dei gruppi. Politica migratoria italiana, lettura di genere della Bossi-Fini’, Florence, 21–22 June, available at: http://isole.ecn.org/reds/donne/italia/ italia0902PUNTOINC.html. Accessed 15 October 2005. Rizzo, R. (2002), ‘Alla stazione di Treviso incontro-scontro con i partecipanti al corteo dell’Humanity Day contro la Bossi-Fini’, Stampa, 16 September. Ventucci, C. (2006), Provvedimenti legislativi del governo Berlusconi. Interventi in Parlamento del Presidente On.le. Berlusconi, 2001–2006. Rome: Forza Italia. Zincone, G. (2001), Secondo rapporto sull’integrazione degli immigrati in Italia. Bologna: Il Mulino. — (2002), ‘Immigrazione’, in F. Tuccari (ed.), Il governo Berlusconi: Le parole, i fatti, i rischi. Bari: Editori Laterza, pp. 57–71.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Feminist Activism and Practice: Asserting Autonomy and Resisting Precarity Manuela Galetto, Chiara Lasala, Sveva Magaraggia, Chiara Martucci, Elisabetta Onori and Charlotte Ross1

‘Resistance’ today is a feminist practice of precarity/multiplicity that passes through and involves all our experiences of life. (Allegrini) 2

Introduction: Berlusconi the ‘Ladies’ Man’ Berlusconi’s philandering tendencies, his cultivation of a ‘playboy’ identity and sexist gaffes are legendary; his comments on the physical attractiveness of female politicians or of male politicians’ wives, and tales of his conquests have frequently provoked national and international criticism (Amato 2007; BBC News 2005). Following reports that Berlusconi had remarked at a TV award gala dinner that if he were not married he would happily have engaged himself to several of the female stars present, his second wife Veronica Lario wrote an open letter to La Repubblica, requesting a public apology for this assault on her dignity (Berlusconi 2007). For Berlusconi, women’s highest achievement seems to be physical attractiveness as advocated by heteronormative models of femininity. His Mediaset television channels feature eroticized, semi-naked women ‘treated as decorative chickens (galline) without an idea in their heads’ (Ginsborg 2005: 43). As Prime Minister, he has resisted proposed measures to increase women’s presence in politics. He voted against the introduction of the ‘quote rosa’ or ‘pink quota’, legislation tabled – but not passed – in 2006 (Amato 2007). This sought to ensure a female parliamentary presence of at least 33 per cent, thus improving the substantial gender imbalance since women represented only 11.5 per cent of those elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2001 (ISTAT 2007). This type of ‘positive discrimination’ has been problematized (including by feminists) as an anti-democratic imposition of equality (Time Europe 14 September 2003) which unhelpfully essentializes women as a monolithic group (Krook 2008: 359). However when Berlusconi’s government (his fourth) includes only four women, some action seems necessary.3 This chapter identifies Berlusconi’s policies that impacted most strongly on Italian women during 2001–06, and analyses the resistance offered by the Italian feminist movement to what were seen by many as assaults on the dignity and autonomy of all women. By ‘feminist movement’, we understand a ‘social movement [. . .] where women, organized explicitly as such, are the major actors and leaders and make gendered identity claims the basis for their actions’ (Beckwith 2005: 585). Della Porta (2003), among others, uses the term ‘the Italian women’s movement’ to refer

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collectively to feminist organizations. Not all women’s organizations are predominantly feminist in character – some Catholic women’s organizations fall into this category, for example – but for the purposes of this chapter, the term ‘women’s movement’ is intended in this way. Discussion begins with a contextualization of the feminist movement at the millennium. We then analyse the activities, views and experiences of several Italian feminist collectives, especially of emerging feminists who are redefining established activist practices. The discussion draws on interviews conducted in 2007, and on textual and web sources. We argue that these years saw a return to large-scale demonstrations, but certainly did not impose a monolithic identity on participants. Collective action was characterized by a blending of the personal and the political, established through second-wave feminist thought and practice, but with a contemporary twist in the recognition of individual specificities and differences among women, and an emphasis on irony.

The Italian Feminist Movement at the Millennium Like the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) movement in Italy, the feminist movement can trace its roots back through several decades, to second-wave activism of the 1970s but also to earlier mobilizations (Birnbaum 1986). The 1970s was a decisive decade for women in Italy, when sustained campaigning led to the legalization of divorce and abortion among other milestones. The ruling party at the time opposed these developments, even attempting to abrogate Law 194 (1978), which legalized abortion, in a 1981 referendum on which they were roundly defeated. Since then, feminist protest culture has somewhat slipped from the limelight, but has certainly not disappeared.4 Italian feminist thought has a strong tradition of ‘sexual difference’ feminism, developed particularly by the Milan Women’s Bookshop, founded by the philosopher Luisa Muraro and others in 1975, following the example of the Librairie des femmes in Paris. In antithetical contrast to equal rights feminism, which seeks equal standing for women in the existing (patriarchal) social order, the practice of sexual difference rejects any assimilation with patriarchal codes and seeks to create a distinct, sexed, symbolic order.5 Sexual difference feminism remains vitally important to many Italian feminists, however, by 2000, the relationship between the Italian women’s movement and state institutions had changed. During the 1990s, a kind of ‘State feminism’ was established as the state developed from the ‘enemy’ and ‘repressor’ of previous decades to the indirect provider of institutions and services specifically for women (Della Porta 2003: 50). Through third sector services, women’s organizations gained increased funding, and were effectively indirectly sponsored by the State.6 This was especially true when the left was in government, particularly at local level, due partly to the historic relationship between the political left and feminist groups, (Birnbaum 1986: 54–5; Della Porta 2003: 67). In Della Porta’s view, these shifts helped women’s associations by providing resources and formalizing previously loosely affiliated groups into recognized organizations that provided directed services; however, political support impacted on their adopted strategies, reducing large-scale collective protest and mobilization (Della Porta 2003: 67). Indeed, during the 1990s radical protest was deemed by some to be ‘damaging to the cause’; instead the movement privileged their relationships with institutions (ibid.: 193). For Muraro, a sexual difference feminist, these were not positive developments as she regards state feminism as ‘anything but propitious to the freedom of women’ (Muraro 2002: 78). In her view, seeking equality within the confines of traditional politics (the ‘master’s house’) is an inadequate strategy for substantially increasing women’s freedom. Nevertheless Muraro remains buoyant about the potential of the feminist movement; feminist relationships and networks are less visible than during the mass feminism of the 1970s but they retain their ‘political value’ (ibid.: 80).

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These events resulted in a loss of unity in the contemporary women’s movement. Women’s increased access to public life and office means that the feminist community can no longer position itself as purely opposed to institutions of power, dissolving the sense of a clearly defined, ‘shared “us” ’ affirmed during the 1970s (Bono, Giardini 2000: 1029). Such divisions between women are exemplified in political figures such as Alessandra Mussolini (formerly Alleanza Nazionale [AN], now Popolo delle Libertà [PdL]) and Stefania Prestigiacomo (Forza Italia [FI]) who have campaigned for women’s rights within a right-wing framework. Moreover, tensions arose between women in the movement when in 2004 the established feminists Lucetta Scaraffia and Eugenia Roccella collaborated on the publication Italiane (‘Italian Women’) which presented brief biographies of selected Italian women, and was produced by Berlusconi’s Council of Ministers, with a foreword by Stefania Prestigiacomo, then minister for equal opportunities (Scaraffia, Roccella 2004). Paola Di Cori has criticized the volume’s ‘ambivalent’ position towards Fascism, given the uncritical portrayals of several known Fascist women, including Claretta Petacci, and the ‘contempt’ shown towards anti-Fascist women (2007: 138). Di Cori has also criticized the ‘corporate’ power structures within the women’s movement, in which more established figures effectively subordinate younger generations of feminists, preventing them from developing an autonomous voice (ibid:. 139). In the 1990s, there were comparatively few collective, public protests. The dominant pattern of activism was small group organization and the practice of feminist relationality. This involves establishing localized networks of interpersonal support among women through affidamento (entrustment); relationships of trust between women of different status, in which more established feminist figures dominate (Spinelli 1986). However this was soon to change. Indeed, shortly after the Berlusconi government took up office in 2001, events in Genoa around the G8 summit touched broad swathes of the population concerned with issues of human rights and the excessive exercise of police power. Feminist groups and individuals began to manifest an urgent desire for a different modality of participation in political life, leading to the creation of new feminist collectives, new strategies of activism for established groups, and facilitating an enhanced network of contacts that enabled collaboration, confrontation and vitally the creation of new collective forms of antagonism. Paraphrasing Liana Borghi, the new forms of feminism that began to develop attempted the difficult undertaking of expanding and transforming accepted definitions of gender and sexuality, through recourse to discourses on (im)migrant women, poststructuralist feminist, queer and post-colonial theories (Borghi 2006: 22–3). Before discussing these issues further, we provide a summary of the political interventions of the period 2001–06 that impacted significantly on women.

The Specificity of Women’s Battles under the Second and Third Berlusconi Governments The most significant issues to affect women between 2001 and 2006 were an increased precarity in the workplace, and sustained attacks on women’s right to autonomous control of their bodies and sexuality. As regards employment, Law 30 (2003) had a particularly gendered impact. It aimed to improve flexibility in working conditions, creating new posts and lowering unemployment, opening up opportunities, especially for women, younger people and those seeking to return to work.7 However, research has shown that it has instead increased precarity for ‘atypical’ workers, including large numbers of women, whose status has simply changed from that of ‘Collaboratori coordinati e continuativi’ (lit. ‘Co-ordinated and continuing collaborators’; in practice, freelance workers) to ‘Lavoratori a progetto’ (project workers).8 Family commitments such as caring for the young, the sick and the elderly, coupled with a lack of support for these

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by the state and gendered divisions of labour in the home, mean that women often work parttime. The new, ‘flexible’ system, has seen women working longer hours, for lower pay, with little right to complain and extremely uncertain future prospects (Altieri 2005: 37–52; Altieri et al. 2006: 9–11; Vento 2008). Precarious working conditions have impacted on all aspects of individuals’ lives, since the ‘world of work’ is inextricably linked with ‘the conditions of existence’ (Nannicini 2006: 58). Indeed, an increase in ‘precarity’ has been recognized as a widespread phenomenon in Italy, creating a cohort of ‘precarious subjects’.9 Indisputably, younger and older men and male immigrants whose right to remain depends on an ever-elusive work contract, are also deeply affected by the implications of Law 30; however here we focus on women, who statistically receive lower pay, have fewer managerial opportunities and experience a higher rate of unemployment than their male counterparts (Sconvegno 2007: 100). Berlusconi’s government did not create inequality or precarity in the workplace, but the shortcomings of Law 30 arguably exacerbated the situation for women. As regards questions of bodies and sexuality, several political struggles during these years relate specifically to women’s right to self-determination; from access to reproductive technologies, to the right to abortion and the recognition of civil unions. In 2002 discussion began regarding a draft bill to regulate medically assisted conception, approved in 2004 as Law 40 (see Chapter 1).10 The law recognizes the rights of the foetus and forbids donor insemination using an egg or sperm from an individual other than the couple seeking treatment, who should naturally be married and therefore heterosexual. Criticisms of this law by the feminist movement were numerous, as they sought to inform the population of its implications; in addition to denying access to IVF treatment to single women or lesbians and seriously curbing access for many heterosexual couples, it implicitly erodes rights that have already been gained, such as that to abortion which is called into question by the overt recognition of the rights of the foetus.11 Feminist groups were not alone in their protest; one hundred Italian scientists, including Nobel Prize winners Renato Dulbecco and Rita Levi Montalcini, signed a petition against the law, because the recognition of the foetus’ rights prevented research on stem cells and on nonimplanted embryos, among other reasons (Comitato Ricerca e Salute 2005). In January 2005, thanks to campaigning by many groups and political parties including the feminist movement, the Democratici di Sinistra (DS) and Rifondazione Comunista (RC), four referenda were announced on proposed partial amendments to Law 40, scheduled for 12–13 July. The amendments that citizens were asked to approve or reject were: (1) to allow rather than prohibit scientific research on stem cells; (2) to improve protection for women’s health during IVF and offer a greater chance of successful birth, for example, by allowing pre-implantation diagnosis of serious conditions and by allowing the fertilization of more than three eggs at each attempt; (3) to increase women’s self-determination by asserting that the rights of living persons are more important than those of the foetus, thus safeguarding the right to abortion, and to allow insemination for other reasons than sterility; and (4) to allow donor insemination. Unfortunately, the results of the referenda were inconclusive since only 26 per cent of the electorate voted. The required quorum of 50 per cent was not attained, therefore the law remained unchanged. The particularly low turn out of voters may be attributable to the Vatican’s stance against amending Law 40,12 and to the high profile campaign by the Scienza e vita (Science and Life) Committee, which invoked Catholic doctrine to question the morality of science, and encouraged people not to vote at all.13 While the validity of Law 194 was implicitly in doubt, a parallel battle was being waged over the introduction of the pill RU 486, which was seen as an ‘incentive to abortion’ by the health minister Francesco Storace (Repubblica 12 November 2005).14 This type of rhetoric demonizes both medical advances and the women who might benefit from them.15 Finally, the issue of civil unions, or the battle for the proposed PACS legislation (Patto Civile di Solidarietà; Civil Solidarity Pact) directly affected lesbian couples, transsexuals and

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heterosexual women seeking recognition for non-nuclear forms of co-habitation, or new types of family group. The Church was also vociferous in its condemnation of PACS (see Chapter 15). All these developments and campaigns took place in a context in which it was felt that the influence of the Catholic Church extended too deeply into the Italian state, affecting legal and social procedures, and impacting profoundly on women’s personal lives. Women’s sexual autonomy was under attack from the Church, while Mediaset television channels, the content of which was implicitly legitimated by virtue of Berlusconi’s position of authority as Prime Minister, ceaselessly promoted young women and girls as constantly sexually available; a Madonna/whore model of female subjectivity was much in evidence. It has been argued that the Western world has recently witnessed a ‘backlash’ to feminist ideas and the emancipation of women (Faludi 1991; Superson, Cudd 2002). Contemporary attacks on women’s rights won in Italy in the 1970s invite us to consider the government and the Church as manifesting a form of anti-feminist backlash. The misogynist content of Berlusconi’s television channels might be added to this list. While the Catholic Church’s position on abortion and female emancipation is not a new development, the Church’s sustained engagement in the ‘Science and Life’ campaign reveals a renewed zeal in its socio-political interventions on such issues.

Feminist Protagonists In order to tell the story of feminist activism during the Berlusconi years, we interviewed eight women who are actively involved in feminist initiatives either individually or as part of collectives, who were protagonists of the mobilizations and political interventions of that period.16 We make no claim to provide an exhaustive analysis of the Italian feminist panorama, but have selected those groups and individuals that seemed most significant to us during 2001–06; several of them reflect the growing presence of younger generations of women seeking to redefine feminist activism and to dismantle hierarchies within the movement, creating more productive spaces of confrontation (Di Cori 2007: 139). In a context marked by an anti-feminist backlash, many young women display a resistance to feminism, even while expressing feminist ideas. This often takes the form ‘I am not a feminist, but . . .’, implying that the ‘F’ word itself and its associated identity positions are considered outdated, unappealing and unrepresentative (Cirant 2005: 96). In this climate, it seems important to engage with those younger women who do participate in feminist activism. Taking as a starting point our experiences of politics and feminist activities (Sconvegno 2002), and drawing on interviews and material produced during this period, we attempt to trace the discussions and struggles through which interviewees sought to oppose and imagine alternatives to the neo-liberalism promoted by the Berlusconi government. Some protagonists of our journey are involved in feminist associations. Alessandra Allegrini, who followed a course in Women’s Studies in Utrecht, became part of the Orlando association, based in Bologna. Orlando was born from different veins of historical feminism and women’s rights movements of the second half of the 1970s, and took on a formal structure at the beginning of the 1980s.17 Cristina Gramolini has a long involvement with Arcilesbica, the national lesbian association founded in 1996, of which she was president from 2002–06 (see Chapter 15). Arcilesbica has two objectives: to defend lesbians from discrimination and strengthen their public visibility through the promotion of political and cultural activities, demonstrations and meetings, both at the national and local level. Others share a militant past in the feminist movement: Gaia (Maqi) Giuliani is a long-standing member of the University of Bologna’s collectives and autonomously managed social centres. She is currently a member of the group ‘Sexyshock’, coordinated by a group of ‘Betties’, a collective name assumed by its members. Sexyshock is composed of (biological and non-biological) women and men, heterosexuals, gays, lesbians

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and transgendered individuals from all over Italy who connect with each other through the web.18 This project operates both on a local and a national level and reflects the interests and desires of individuals with different political experiences which have been catalysed in a provocative and creative way: they have opened the first sex shop in Italy run by women for women. Nicoletta Poidimani, from Milan, has been active in mixed extra-parlamentarian left-wing political groups, but has always privileged her affiliation with autonomous women’s collectives. She spoke to us of the collective Maistat@zitt@ (Never been silent), composed of women who had already collaborated in the previous decade. They are all feminists who have campaigned for freedom through antagonistic practices. Some interviewees got involved in activism through theoretical interests in women’s rights, such as Sara Ongaro, whose experiences studying in the United Kingdom inspired her to write Donne e globalizzazione (Women and Globalisation 2001). In the following years she met many groups and associations –predominantly women’s groups – all around Italy that were contributing to reflections on global economic transformations, women’s role and the relations between production and reproduction. She has travelled extensively in ‘southern’ regions of the world, which had led to an interest in international solidarity. As an active member of a fair trade cooperative for 15 years, she is a strong believer in critical consumerism. Federica Giardini, who in 2001 edited a special issue of the historic feminist journal DWF.donnawomanfemme with Tonia De Vita and Rita Corsi, is the author of Genealogie del presente (Genealogies of the Present). Giardini, De Vita and Corsi share a close association as former students of the influential exponents of Italian sexual difference feminism, Luisa Muraro, Maria Luisa Boccia and Chiara Zamboni. Their exchanges developed in a university context, but as Giardini explains, their relationship was also that of a ‘political apprenticeship’. Their combined theoretical and practical aims led them to found the network ‘Matri_x’, which seeks, to redescribe reality, to discover meaningful formulations and representations of it; it implies a concrete and practical relationship with experience. Two recurring themes which emerged through our narratives are the altered relationship with institutions and changes in the labour market, both of which were particularly contradictory and problematic during Berlusconi’s government (Giardini). Laura Fantone from Bologna has a PhD in Gender Studies and is now research fellow at Berkley. We interviewed her as the representative of another group, Prec@s. This was founded in 2003 as an extension of a network of women that had been active since 1998. Prec@s consists of around forty young researchers in their thirties with interests in questions of gender and feminism, who confront political issues from a gendered and generational perspective. Their objective is ‘to reflect on the intersections between precarity, working conditions, and generational status for young female graduates in Italy’. The Prec@s network campaigned in particular for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum to amend Law 40, against Law 30, in favour of the rights of immigrants, against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and more recently on the campaign to stop violence against women. Finally, Linda Santilli, from Rome, comes from a more institutional context. She is part of the forum of women affiliated to RC. The forum is a feminist political group of Communist women. The radical change they seek can only occur, they believe, through contesting the strong bonds between capitalism and patriarchy and through the recognition of women as autonomous and responsible political protagonists. The forum of women represents, a meeting place for people from different backgrounds, and a shared site where it is possible to discuss and construct a politics of gender. The women who choose to participate

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determine the forms and processes of the Forum. The main issues are: the body and the law, sexuality, self-determination, precarity, production and reproduction, war and peace. The overarching approach is a critique of all forms of patriarchy and fundamentalism. (Santilli) The feminist campaigners and activists briefly introduced here share a belief in the political value of the practices and relationships of daily life. Conceptualizing politics as a practice means channelling the implications of our political actions into our lives, and vice versa. The practice of partire da sé (starting with oneself) involves questioning and transforming daily realities, and the rules which govern them, making human existence a continuous experiment, with the self as a starting point (Diotima 1996; Scarparo 2004: 203). This belief in the inextricable and mutually enriching connection between the personal and the political has motivated feminist activism in Italy from the 1970s onwards, and still animates feminist strategies of resistance today (Monica 2001). At a time when many young women seem unwilling to assume political positions, perhaps because of the fear of becoming trapped in stereotyped vicious circles of antagonistic relations (Cirant 2005: 116–17), the collaborative initiatives of these emerging (or continuing) feminist activists represent a core of simultaneously enduring and revitalized resistance.

Kick-Starting Campaigns of Resistance As mentioned above, the accession of Berlusconi’s government in 2001 also coincided with the wave of demonstrations and activism inspired by the G8 in Genoa, and the constitution of the Genoa Social Forum, in which women and feminist groups participated actively from the outset (see Chapter 3). Indeed, the culture of resistance that mobilized around the G8 kick-started a renewed programme of feminist activism in Italy. The World March of Women (WMW) network, campaigning against poverty, violence and war, organized an international meeting to coincide with the G8, entitled ‘G Spot: Gender and globalization. For an equal, united, peaceful and democratic society for men and women’. The WMW is an international feminist network comprising around 6,000 associations in more than 150 countries. In Italy, around thirty associations and many individuals actively took part in its work, adapting international campaigns to the localized Italian situation. ‘G Spot’ enabled Italian feminist movements to break out of the silence into which they had fallen during previous decades, creating a physical space where women and feminists of different generations could meet and debate. For many younger feminists this was their first experience of collective action and association, which was organized in a manner emblematic of feminist solidarity; women from all over Italy who travelled for the event were hosted by the women of Genoa in a symbolic and practical act of hospitality underlining their common cause. Many workshops were held and different generations of women presented their often-contrasting views. Each individual involved brought her own specificities, experiences and heterogeneous political approach to bear on the situation, yet all were united by the framework of feminist reflection, demonstrating women’s determination to reclaim discourses on women’s condition and on the world in a globalized context. ‘G Spot’ concluded with a peaceful protest, proclaiming its opposition to the G8 agenda and proving the large police presence to be wholly unnecessary. Yet, less than a month later, blood would be shed on those same streets. For Ongaro, the excessive repressive force used during the G8 marked ‘an end to any guarantees of how political protesters are treated, as was already the case for immigrants, petty criminals and football fans’. Reflecting with hindsight on the Berlusconi years, Poidimani notes that ‘there was an exponential increase in the techniques of social control and the criminalization of “non-conformists” ’, which set off a chain reaction of consequences

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including ‘alienation and widespread mistrust of the political system’. Gramolini emphasizes that ‘after the carnage of Genoa there was a wave of repression, particularly against gays, lesbians and transsexuals’. Thus for these feminist activists, the implementation of force against protesters in Genoa marks a new era of aggressive prosecution of non-normative, non-passive subjects. Of course, as Poidimani notes, the socio-political criminalization of anyone outside the norms is ‘nothing that hadn’t already been going on in previous decades’. However, the extremity of the events of Genoa was seen to mark a new form of ‘ostentatious militarization’, that broke with the balance of peace in the piazzas painfully built up over previous decades (Pepino 2003:12–4); moreover, the Church’s public condemnation of gays and lesbians, and attacks on the pro-choice movement, were much more audible and sustained than in the 1990s, and certainly in the case of the Law 40 referenda, seemed to impact directly on the democratic process. In parallel to this perceived surge of repressive social control, large-scale demonstrations were becoming more common. On 30 June 2001 in Bologna, a national demonstration was held by the ‘Coordination for Women’s Self-Determination’19 to protect Law 194, which had been under attack from pro-life groups and local councils seeking to siphon funds away from the provision of abortion (Coordinamento Donne 2001). The group’s slogan was ‘No political deals over women’s bodies’, and it united women from many different backgrounds, both Italian and immigrant, across generations. Other demonstrations took place in Turin and Rimini, bringing together women, and some men, united in a common cause. These moments of collective political confrontation multiplied, some inspired by external events such as Genoa, others devised within larger projects such as the Movement of Movements, in which women’s participation has been vital. Indeed the presence of women was crucial and determining in all the major Italian demonstrations during these years, such as the girotondi and protests against the war in Iraq (see Chapter 3). Far from seeking to establish a separate, gendered perspective on society at large, women’s active, richly variegated presence at these protests, insisted that ‘another world is possible’ only if women’s perspectives are included in alternative visions. Significant collaborations for Italian feminists include participation in the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence (2002), Paris (2003) and London (2004), and with the European network NextGENDERation. If Genoa kick-started a new tradition of feminist massprotest, the most publicly visible actions since then have been organized by ‘Usciamo dal silenzio’ (Let’s break the silence), a new national feminist network that began mobilizing in 2005 and held its first demonstration on 14 January 2006. Their initial objectives were to protect women’s freedoms, and to fight to protect the threatened Law 194 on abortion. Significantly, this movement formed primarily to ensure that battles fought and won in the past were not overthrown, demonstrating the extent to which legal and socio-cultural changes were moving in a regressive direction. Unlike in previous decades, these new waves of collective association and political participation did not insist on individuals remaining rooted to a single identity or affiliation, and brought together women and feminists with a range of views and experiences, from community associations to militant organizations, both Italian and migrant women, who worked together in multilayered collective practices. Internet technology has arguably been vital to the widespread dissemination of information regarding campaigns and events; in addition, websites often host blogs or forums that encourage individuals interested in feminism to enter into dialogue with the broader community.

Resisting through Precarity Aside from protests regarding the specific issues that impacted directly on women, feminist groups were motivated to resist changes to the overall socio-cultural and political climate in

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Italy. There was a general consensus among interviewees that the years of Berlusconi’s government 2001–06 were marked by an atmosphere that impoverished and vulgarized politics, curtailing secular society, devalorizing precarious modes of existence and disempowering the public sphere. This resulted in a rift forming between politics and society that gave new force to critiques of representative democracy. For Gramolini, Italy was on the verge of ‘regime’ status; Ongaro denounces the squabbles and scuffles in parliament, the discrediting of institutions and the overt, rampant individualism that derides all minorities or those without financial success. In Fantone’s experience, women, especially young women, interested in politics and in cultural redefinitions of gender roles are ‘immediately stigmatized and isolated’; Sexyshock, like Poidimani, have observed much fiercer responses to anyone who doesn’t fit within heterosexual or gender norms. Moreover, they feel that critical opposition to dominant norms (such as the nuclear family, capitalist ideals) has been ‘devalorized in a context of cultural chauvinism, misogyny and heteronormativity that render public space unwelcoming for any who try to assert alternative ways of being’. There was a shared conviction that this intolerance of differences has been seized upon and exploited by the Church, especially through their encouragement to voters to boycott the 2005 referendum. Italian feminists have historically resisted on two levels, the collective and the individual. During 2001–06, collective action received renewed impetus through an enriched demonstration culture; for individuals, in Allegrini’s words, resistance involves all the ways in which our lives are articulated, beyond rigid definitions and identifications, affiliations, dichotomies, the normative stages of the life/work trajectory (male and female) that for so long have marked the passage to adulthood (permanent jobmarriage-children). In Allegrini’s view, the theoretical basis of second-wave feminist thought remains a relevant and dynamic influence in feminist activism today, for example, the practice of partire da sé that weaves personal and collective change together in a continuum of related experience. Similarly, for Ongaro, resistance means putting relationships at the centre of one’s actions. Theirs is an activist response that refuses to allow the system to reduce individuals to alienated, disempowered and expendable subjects, but insists on the human value of all citizens. By privileging relationships, it also encourages, and even requires individuals to be part of a community of resisting social actors, strengthening solidarity in a way that promises to be much more lasting than the kind of fleeting consensus achieved in mass-demonstrations where individuals simply come together for one day. It is a resistance that works on both the individual and her surroundings. The continuum of individual-collective has of course been marked by the increased gendered precarity of life, work and self-determination which have emerged as a vital, central issue for Italian feminists. Members of Sexyshock have reflected on the multiple implications of this: Precarity is the condition that defines thirty-somethings today. It has definitively altered our structures of thought, the categories of everyday life and existential paradigms, until everything becomes a little too uncertain, unstable and fragmented. Nevertheless, while this instability appears to be and is the result of a mercilessly individualistic trajectory, it remains a collective experience. (Giuliani) Similarly, Sconvegno’s activities have sought to point out the ambivalent nature of precarity, which threatens security but nevertheless offers a transformative potential through its collective

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reach (Sconvegno 2007). Collective experiences, whether ‘cross-movement’, ‘cross-national’ or ‘cross-scope’ (Beckwith 2005: 585–6) served to support and galvanize groups and individuals during these years, and to render effective their strategies of resistance. For example, Gramolini notes that at the ESF in Florence, Arcilesbica ‘shared with many other groups their condemnation of the crisis of democracy in Italy due to the Berlusconi government’; this feeling of solidarity translated into a collaborative campaign between the feminist movement and the LGBT movement for the PACS legislation. Although there has been a longstanding relationship between the feminist and lesbian communities, this has not always been entirely supportive (Danna 1996: 9). The largely productive collaboration on the PACS campaign is a sign of an increased cross-association acceptance of individual differences as vital elements of life, rather than as a hindrance to unity on campaign issues.20 To ensure that collective precarity is productive, Fantone and Prec@s decided not to adopt a position of weakness but to see their predicament as an opportunity and, above all, to use humour: our strategies of resistance are peppered with irony, with spiritual optimism as opposed to an intellectual pessimism. Rejecting the sense of precarity as pure victimhood and suffering, we try to transform the limitations derived from our generational situation and gender into agency. Other groups, such as the Bolognese Comunicattive, a verbal pun combining allusions to communication, activism and a combattive ‘bad girl’ attitude (cattive), established in Bologna during the campaign to amend Law 40, have also embraced the benefits of what they call creA(c) tivism.21 They attempt to convey a critical sensibility, through humour, games, words, sounds, and images which privilege creative experimentation. In a comparable vein, for its campaign against the war in Iraq, A/Matrix distributed a series of stickers using images of the erotic icon Betty Page alongside playful pacifist slogans: an attempt at cultural interference based on the denaturalizing of women’s bodies as charged sexual signifiers (Magaraggia et al. 2005: 30). The origins of this form of creative activism can be traced to the association of the feminist movement with the LGBT and queer movements in recent years, whose use of fantasy, play, transvestism and the calling into question of dominant stereotypes are well known.

Reflections and Conclusions Reflecting on their activities over these years, some interviewees underline the importance of the autonomy gained as a result of their independence from institutions (Gramolini, Poidimani), and of creating new networks of support with emerging feminist and other like-minded movements (Prec@s). This signals a move away from, or a ‘mistrust’ of the ties of state feminism (as foreseen by Della Porta 2003: 68), and a trend towards feminist reinvention, using the strategies of the past but redefining them in the context of the demands of the present moment. This needs to be achieved with some caution: Allegrini warns that group association can be a limiting factor; instead she envisages a fluid network of mobile networks founded on affinities between individuals, who bring their lived experiences to any initiative. It has to be acknowledged that the feminist movement has won few battles in recent years; PACS, and any amendment to Law 30 have been definitively shelved, it seems, although they were election campaign issues for the Prodi government that replaced Berlusconi’s coalition in 2006. Moreover, the extreme failure of the referenda on Law 40 has led to that issue slipping out of debate. Precisely because Berlusconismo is a specific, pervasive, cultural, social and political model, its ‘persisting

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mediatic and discursive implications’ continued to impact significantly on the feminist movement even after Berlusconi ceded power to Prodi in April 2006 (Fantone), and very little changed for Italian women between Berlusconi’s electoral defeat of 2006 and his win of 2008. Feminist strategies of resistance in these years marked a break with activities in the 1990s, partly through the resuscitation of large-scale demonstrations, partly through newer forms of feminist activity and collaborations with migrant women. Reading between the lines of declarations regarding the updated post-colonial, post-structuralist Italian feminist subject, there is a slippage between stated aims and concrete achievements. It remains to be seen exactly how effective the dialogues with migrant women will be, especially since some Italian feminist groups have been accused of employing affidamento with migrant women in a rather elitist way, ‘willing to give and teach not to listen or receive’ (quoted in Andall 2007: 83). Similarly, Prec@s admit that their efforts to establish dialogue with migrant women have proved ‘difficult’. On the whole, however, the current moment seems to be one in which groups and individuals are open to redefinition of themselves, of multiple emerging feminisms and of their relationships to a changing feminist movement. Interestingly, this is being accomplished through feminist strategies of relationality that have stood the test of time and are now proving themselves to be flexible and indeed, resistant. Looking towards the future, rational logic cautions against an overly positive outlook, yet there are reasons to be confident. Ongaro lives in a state of ‘great pessimism of reason and great optimism of spirit and for daily life’. Large participation at demonstrations, such as the 100,000 women at the recent demonstration in Rome in support of violence against women (24 November 2007), reveals a strong activist basis, but also that ongoing problems, which both pre- and post-date the 2001–06 Berlusconi government, have certainly not gone away. What is certain is that the temporary, relative ‘silence’ of feminist groups during the 1990s has been well and truly broken, and that the paradoxically potentially empowering character of collective precarity may serve to strengthen activism. The internet is proving a productive forum for debates about the forms of feminist practice that are enacted individually and collectively, and how these contribute to the wider struggle for women’s rights. Yet if the cultural and political anti-feminist backlash continues to erode the rights and securities of women, and to limit their visible public role to that of sexualized object, they may need to redouble their efforts simply to hold on to gains made in the past. This could draw time and energy away from important developments in the feminist movement, such as the relationship between women of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds in Italy, and the emergence of new generations of feminist campaigners.

Notes 1. All authors except Ross are members of the Sconvegno Group. For more information on this group see Magaraggia et al. 2005. 2. This chapter is informed by a series of interviews with some active Italian feminists: Alessandra Allegrini, Cristina Gramolini, Gaia (Maqi) Giuliani, Nicoletta Poidimani, Sara Ongaro, Federica Giardini, Laura Fantone and Lidia Santilli. Further details are provided below. These interviews are referenced using the names of the interviewees. 3. In the April 2008 elections, 21.1 per cent of all deputies elected were women. This moves Italy from sixty-seventh to fiftieth position globally for the representation of women in government (Arcidonna 2008). 4. See Bono, Kemp (eds) 1990 for an account of the activities and a collection of the writings of key feminist groups from the 1960s to the 1980s.

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5. Italian sexual difference feminists were influenced by French thinkers such as Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva. See Libreria delle donne di Milano 1987. 6. The ‘third sector’, sometimes called the ‘social economy’, refers to not-for-profit, community and voluntary organizations, which may be supported by the state. 7. See also www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/03030l.htm. Accessed 27 October 2008. 8. A recent report of the Research Office of the trade union CGIL (www.ires.it/node/745; Accessed 27 October 2008) highlighted strong evidence of a ‘women question’ within the labour market. According to the data collected by the authors (Altieri, Ferrucci, Dota) women employees seem to be more precarious than their male colleagues, even when they are educated to a high level. 9. For a broad discussion of these issues see vol. 87 of The Feminist Review (2007), which is devoted to Italian feminisms and focuses on issues of ‘precarity’. 10. www.parlamento.it/leggi/04040l.htm. Accessed 27 October 2008. 11. For a wide-ranging discussion on the problematic character of this law see Valanzuolo (2004). 12. Among other broadcasts supporting a ‘no’ vote, Radio Vaticano featured an interview with Carlo Casini, president of the pro-life organization ‘Movimento per la vita’ (Radio Vaticano 2005). 13. www.comitatoscienzaevita.it/. Accessed 8 March 2008. 14. After many years of campaigning RU 486 was finally introduced in February 2008 (Corriere della Sera 26 February 2008). This pill, which causes an abortion if taken within the first forty-nine days of pregnancy, has been available in the United Kingdom since 1991. 15. There was a debate within Forza Italia on this issue; Stefania Prestigiacomo, in favour of the pill being legalized, clashed with Marcello Pera, who opposed it (Stampa 28 November 2005). As Chapter 4 explains, FI has never been able to take unambiguous stands on ethical issues such as this. 16. The interviews were conducted either face to face or via email, between May and October 2007. 17. www.women.it/orlando. Accessed 27 October 2008. 18. Sexyshock has a website, http://atelierbetty.noblogs.org/summary.php and a mailing list open to anyone. Accessed 27 October 2008. 19. http://retedelledonnedibologna.blogspot.com/. Accessed 27 October 2008. 20. However, the PACS campaign provoked some tensions even among lesbian groups; see Chapter 15. 21. www.comunicattive.it/. Accessed 27 October 2008.

References Altieri, G. (2005), Nuovo contratto. Stessi problemi. Gli effetti della legge 30/03 nel passaggio dalle collaborazioni coordinate e continuative al lavoro a progetto, IRES-CGIL, 21 October, available at: www.ires.it/ node/296. Accessed 12 March 2008. Altieri, G., Carrieri. M. and Megale, A. (eds) (2006), L’Italia del lavoro oggi. Condizioni e aspettative dei lavoratori, IRES-CGIL, 5 September, available at: www.ires.it/node/442. Accessed 12 March 2008. Amato, R. (2007), ‘Berlusconi e le donne, battute e gaffe tra Veronica, Aida e le altre’, Repubblica, 31 January. Andall, J. (2007), ‘Italian feminisms and the challenges of ethnic diversity’, Feminist Review, (87), pp. 76–84. Arcidonna (2008), ‘Elezioni 2008. Lieve aumento delle donne in parlamento’, available at: www.arcidonna. org/indexweb/arcidonna/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1322& mode=thread&order=0&thold=0. Accessed 29 May 2008. BBC News (2005), ‘Playboy Berlusconi irks Finland’, 23 June, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ europe/4122596.stm. Accessed 26 April 2008.

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Beckwith, K. (2005), ‘The comparative politics of women’s movements’, Perspectives on Politics, 3, (3), September, pp. 583–96. Berlusconi, V. (2007), ‘Veronica Berlusconi, lettera a Repubblica: “Mio marito mi deve pubbliche scuse” ’, Repubblica, 31 January. Birnbaum, L. C. (1986), Liberazione Della Donna: Feminism in Italy. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Bono, P. and Giardini, F. (2000), ‘Crisis and adventure’, Signs, 25, (4), 1027–32. Bono, P. and Kemp, S. (eds) (1990), Italian Feminist Thought. Oxford: Blackwell. Borghi, L. (2006), ‘Tramanti non per caso: Divergenze e affinità tra lesbo-queer e terzo femminismo’, in T. Bertilotti, C. Galasso, A. Gissi et al. (eds), Altri femminismi. Corpi. culture. lavoro. Rome: Manifestolibri, pp. 19–36. Cirant, E. (2005), ‘ “Io non sono femminista, ma . . .”. Immagini di giovani donne nello specchio incrinato dell’identità di genere’, in E. Ruspini (ed.), Donne e uomini che cambiano. Relazioni di genere, identità sessuali e mutamento sociale. Milan: Guerini, pp. 91–120. Comitato Ricerca e Salute (2005), ‘Appello degli scienziati per i 4 sì’, 19 May, available at: www.lucacoscioni. it/node/4019. Accessed 29 April 2008. Coordinamento Donne per l’Autodeterminazione (2001), ‘In strada per l’autodeterminazione’, available at: http://isole.ecn.org/reds/donne/italia/italiadonneBologna30giug.html. Accessed 12 March 2008. Corriere della sera (2008), ‘Aborto, primo via libera alla RU486’, 26 February. Danna, D. (1996), ‘Cronache recenti di lesbiche in movimento’, Quaderni viola, (4), pp. 6–17. Della Porta, D. (2003), ‘The women’s movement, the left and the State. Continuities and changes in the Italian case’, in L. A. Banaszak, K. Beckwith and D. Rucht (eds), Women’s Movements Facing the Reconfigured State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 48–68. Di Cori, P. (2007), ‘Comparing different generations of feminists: Precariousness versus corporations?’, Feminist Review, (87), pp.136–40. Diotima (1996), La sapienza di partire da sé. Naples: Liguori. Faludi, S. (1991), Backlash. The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York: Crown. Giardini, F., De Vita, T. and Corsi, R. (eds) (2001), ‘Genealogie del presente’, DWF.DonnaWomanFemme. Rome: Utopia. Ginsborg, P. (2005), Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power and Patrimony. London and New York: Verso. ISTAT (2007), ‘Le statistiche di genere’, 7 March, available at: www.istat.it/salastampa/comunicati/non_ calendario/20070307_00/. Accessed 12 February 2008. Krook, M. L. (2008), ‘Quota Laws for Women in Politics: Implications for Feminist Practice’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 15 (3), pp. 345–68. Libreria delle donne di Milano (1987), Non credere di avere dei diritti, Rosenberg & Sellier, Turin; trans. P. Cicogna and T. De Lauretis (1990), The Milan Women’s Bookstore Collective, Sexual Difference: A Theory of Social-Symbolic Practice. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Magaraggia, S., Martucci, C. and Pozzi, F. (2005), ‘The great fresco painting of the Italian feminist movements’, Annual Review of Critical Psychology, (4), pp. 26–38. Monica (2001), ‘Il partire da sé non è partito’, DWF. DonnaWomanFemme, (1), pp. 21–5. Muraro, L. (2002), ‘The passion of feminine difference beyond equality’, in G. Parati and R. West (eds), Italian Feminist Theory and Practice. Equality and Sexual Difference, Madison NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pp. 77–87. Nannicini, A. (2006), ‘Sguardi e movimenti di donne sul lavoro che cambia’, in T. Bertilotti, C. Galasso, A. Gissi et al. (eds), Altri femminismi. Corpi, culture, lavoro. Rome: Manifestolibri, pp. 55–68. Ongaro, S. (2001), Le donne e la globalizzazione. Cosenza: Edizioni Rubbettino. Pepino. L. (2003) Attacco ai diritti. Giustizia, lavoro, cittadinanza sotto il governo Berlusconi. Rome: Laterza. Radio Vaticano (2005), ‘Fra una settimana, Italia al voto sulla procreazione assistita’, broadcast on 5 June. Repubblica (2005), ‘Pillola RU 486, interviene Storace, “è un incentivo all’aborto” ’, 12 November. Scaraffia, L. and Roccella, E. (2004) (eds) Italiane. Dizionario biografico delle donne italiane dall’Unità ad oggi. Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri e dipartimento per le Pari Opportunità: Rome. Scarparo, S. (2004), ‘Feminist intellectuals as public figures in contemporary Italy’, Australian Feminist Studies, 19, (44), pp. 201–12.

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Sconvegno (2002), ‘Quali soggettività femministe oggi?’, available at: www.universitadelledonne.it/ sconvegno.htm. Accessed 25 April 2008. — (2007), ‘A snapshot of precariousness: Voices, perspectives, dialogues’, Feminist Review, (87), pp. 104–12. Spinelli, S. (1986), ‘Je ne regrette rien’, DWF. DonnaWomanFemme, (1), pp. 22–8. Stampa (2005), ‘L’aborto non è civiltà. Pera contro Prestigiacomo’, 28 November. Superson, A. J. and Cudd, A.(eds) (2002), Theorizing Backlash. Philosophical Reflections on the Resistance to Feminism. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Inc. Time Europe (2003), ‘Politics: The trouble with quotas’, 14 September. Valanzuolo, I. (2004), ‘Una questione di libertà: Procreazione assistita tra legge e desiderio’, Dossier 1, available at: http://archivio.carta.org/campagne/diritti/procreazione/pma.pdf. Accessed 12 March 2008. Vento, S. (2008), ‘Famiglia e lavoro femminile in Italia’, Conquiste del lavoro, 8 March, p. 7.

Webography (All websites mentioned here were active as of 27 November 2008) Comunicattive: www.comunicattive.it European Social Forum: www.fse-esf.org/ Forum of Women: www.rifondazione.it/forumdonne/ Law 30, 2003: www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/03030l.htm Law 40, 2004: www.parlamento.it/leggi/04040l.htm NextGENDERation: www.nextgenderation.net/ Orlando (Bologna): www.women.it/orlando/ Sexyshock: http://atelierbetty.noblogs.org/summary.php Usciamo dal silenzio: www.usciamodalsilenzio.org/home.php World March of Women: www.marchemondialedesfemmes.org/

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Collective Association in the LGBT Movement Charlotte Ross

The Italian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual/transgender (LGBT) movement has increased in size, strength and visibility since the early 1970s (Cristallo 1996; Rossi Barilli 1999). The movement comprises many different components seeking a variety of objectives from civil rights to radical social change, but above all to combat homophobia, transphobia and related prejudice. These phobias manifest themselves not simply as a fear of homosexuals/transsexuals or ‘queer’ individuals who challenge binary, heteronormative understandings of sex/gender/ sexuality, but as a desire to marginalize, criminalize and repress such people (Pedote 2007: 13). Unlike some forms of opposition considered in this volume, whose origins sprang from specific events during the ‘Berlusconi years’, the LGBT movement’s response to Berlusconi forms part of an established activist project that continued under the subsequent Prodi government. Sergio Lo Giudice, president of the national organization Arcigay from 1998–2007, remarks that Italy has never had a ‘gay-friendly’ government; indeed the experiences of the LGBT population under Berlusconi fall into a ‘legislative continuum’ since their rights remained unprotected before, during and after this period.1 Moreover, arguably the most long-standing opponent of the LGBT population is not the government but the Catholic Church. However the character and sociocultural impact of ‘Berlusconismo’, especially Berlusconi’s overt support for the Church during a period when it was extremely outspoken against the LGBT population (Pedote 2007: 14–17), had particular repercussions, which activists sought to address in specific ways. This chapter first provides a brief overview of the movement, then details the main ways in which Berlusconi’s actions impacted on it, and subsequently explores and analyses responses and resistance to Berlusconi and Berlusconismo. Material for this chapter is drawn from textual sources, as well as from interviews conducted in 2007.2 I make no claim to present an exhaustive picture of the movement under Berlusconi, but through my focus on a range of groups I trace commonalities in their experiences during this period, and identify significant dominant and counter discourses within the movement. I suggest that while the perceived hostility of Berlusconi’s government to LGBT rights united differing elements of the movement, failure to achieve their main collective objectives (obtaining equal rights, including the legalization of civil unions) has inspired some more radical factions to forge activist alliances elsewhere.

The LGBT Movement from Left to Right There are four parliamentarians who are openly gay, lesbian and bisexual: this is a clear sign of the progress made by the Italian gay and lesbian community [. . .] All four were elected on the left, which is not a coincidence, even though this does not render the issue of the

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relationship between the gay rights movement and the various political alliances any less problematic (Lo Giudice et al. 2001: 15).3 Like LGBT movements elsewhere, the Italian movement is ‘not an organization; rather it is a social movement community which is composed of a variety of movement organizations each with potentially competing agendas’ (Engel 2001: 184). One such agenda is the ongoing debate among LGBT movements across Europe and North America on assimilation versus revolution (Young 2001). Since the 1980s, there has been a perceptible shift in dominant LGBT activist politics across the west, from a radical critique of institutions such as marriage and the nuclear family, towards campaigns for equal legal rights within liberal society (Eng et al. 2005: 11). In contrast, the queer radical subject revels in outsider status and seeks to deconstruct the social structures and institutions of patriarchal capitalism (Gamson 1996: 402). These complexities also animate the Italian movement, whose development has been described as a shift from ‘anti-capitalist revolutionary transformation’ to a ‘practical’ goal: ‘how to improve the quality of life for millions of gay Italians’ (Grillini 1990: 115). Arcigay, the first and largest national Italian association, founded in 1985 as a branch of the leftist recreational association Arci, is broadly assimilationist.4 Franco Grillini, parliamentary deputy for the Democratici di Sinistra (DS, 2001–07; now affiliated to the Partito Socialista5), was National Secretary (1985–86), President (1986–98) and is now Honorary President of Arcigay. Grillini’s political profile and long-standing involvement with Arcigay have made him somewhat of a figurehead for the movement in terms of its institutionalized presence. Grillini contrasts strongly with the deliberately eccentric, revolutionary stance associated with the writer and activist Mario Mieli. Mieli’s suicide in 1983 led to the founding of the Circolo Mario Mieli in Rome, an autonomous LGBT association which is active on a national level.6 Thus alongside the ‘practical’ goals of Arcigay, the radical objectives of what Lo Giudice defines as the movement’s ‘more antagonistic elements’ still bristle. These include the lesbian group Fuoricampo (Off-field), founded in 2003, and Antagonismo Gay, founded in 1997, both based in Bologna. Aside from highlighting differences within the LGBT movement, it is also important to distinguish between the ‘movement’ and the LGBT population as a whole, since not all LGBT individuals are activists or associated with a ‘community’. Moreover, there is a widespread, but erroneous, presumption that all LGBT individuals are politically left-leaning, crystallized in Berlusconi’s remark that ‘all the homosexuals are on the other side’; that is, the left (Repubblica 6 February 2007), a position that Grillini, for one, emphatically denies (Sabelli Fioretti 2007: 47–9). LGBT individuals are ‘transversal’ (Trappolin 2004: 17); they exist in all social classes, in all political groups. Consequently one cannot assume a uniformity of political allegiances or socio-cultural values. For some, the question of LGBT rights transcends political affiliation; Aurelio Mancuso, president of Arcigay (2007– ), states that ‘being gay is neither left- nor right-wing [. . .] there are many homosexuals amongst the electorate of the centre-right’ (ibid.: 115). For others, an LGBT identity is incompatible with a right-wing political agenda (Golinelli 2005: 47–8). Within the LGBT movement, the issue of political affiliation and the relationship between activist groups and political parties is a source of tension. Arcigay has historically assumed a position of tentative, critical alliance with the left, comparable to Arci’s trajectory.7 While maintaining that an LGBT identity remains distinct from political beliefs, the committee acknowledges that in the west, left-wing parties have been most active in securing LGBT rights; indeed the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) backed Arcigay’s battle for its headquarters, the Cassero Centre in Bologna (Rossi Barilli 1999: 135–40). Therefore the organization has supported left-wing candidates like Grillini and Titti De Simone (deputy for Rifondazione Comunista [RC], 2001–08). However, Arcigay have also commented that during their five

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years in government preceding Berlusconi’s re-election in 2001, the centre-left coalition lacked both ‘the political majority and the will’ to fully support the movement’s objectives, such as passing anti-discrimination legislation advocated by the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty (Lo Giudice et al. 2001). In contrast to Arcigay’s support of the left, Gaylib, founded by Enrico Oliari (Alleanza Nazionale) in 1997, explicitly criticizes both what it deems the ‘monopoly of the left over the gay world’ and the homophobia of ‘part’ of the right, preferring instead to seek dialogue with ‘the secular elements of the centre-right’.8 Support for or discrimination against LGBT communities never comes uniformly from one political source, especially given the level of movement between parties in Italian politics. On the right, Forza Italia (FI) included individuals such as the former member of the Partito Liberale (PLI), Alfredo Biondi, who proposed legislation for civil unions (Resto di Roma 9 October 2003); on the left, obvious non-allies affiliated to the 2006–08 Prodi government included Rosi Bindi, a former member of Democrazia Cristiana (DC) and supporter of the organization Alleanza Cattolica (Catholic Alliance),9 who notably excluded the LGBT community from ‘Family day’, an event which promoted a view of the family as based only on heterosexual marriage (12 May 2007).10 Yet while the issue is far from clear-cut, Lo Giudice argues that it is ‘not a coincidence’ that the only openly LGBT deputies in the Italian parliament remain on the left; indeed after the 2008 elections the only openly LGBT deputy is Paola Concia from the Partito Democratico (PD).

What Berlusconi Did Political analysis of Berlusconi’s strategies has identified incoherencies, not least among his ‘disparate coalition of political supporters’ (Bellamy 2006: 351). Perhaps because of Berlusconi’s ‘incoherence’ the LGBT population experienced both gains and losses in the battle against homo/lesbo/transphobia between 2001 and 2006. This section details the main ways in which Berlusconi and his government impacted on the movement, and offers an overview of several key activists’ perceptions of the situation. Prior to the elections of 2001, the year 2000 witnessed a historic moment for the Italian LGBT movement, as despite the protestations of the Vatican, Rome hosted World Pride. Months of media attention greatly increased the visibility of the LGBT population and the Pope’s condemnation of the parade, widely perceived as anti-democratic, provoked a swing of public opinion in support of the event, in which many heterosexuals participated (Golinelli 2005: 49–50). Lo Giudice recalls that Berlusconi’s re-election in 2001 dealt a sudden blow to the movement’s high spirits. Maccarrone of the Circolo Mario Mieli comments that in terms of LGBT rights, from 2001 the movement seemed blocked in a broader context of cultural stagnation and fear which effectively prevented change. Indeed, Pasquino argues that Berlusconi sought not to change but to reinforce often problematic social attitudes (2007: 51). However, as an individual, Berlusconi was perceived by several interviewees as not essentially homophobic, but as a canny opportunist who was led to make homophobic statements by his desire to forge a beneficial alliance with the Church (Lo Giudice, Grillini, Battaglia). Berlusconi’s ‘constant and exaggeratedly stated respect for the Catholic Church’ was his way of ensuring the support of the Vatican, through whose doors ‘all Italian politics’ passes (Ginsborg 2005: 126). In the wake of the demise of the PCI and DC parties in the early 1990s, an alliance with the Church was also a way for Berlusconi to shore up his electoral sway by targeting floating Catholic voters, capitalizing on the influence that the Church retains over the population: 87.8 per cent of respondents to the Eurispes report 2006 identified as Catholic (Repubblica 17 January 2006). Echoing the Vatican’s line (Ratzinger 2003), Berlusconi opposed the LGBT movement’s campaign for civil unions or PACS (‘Patto civile di solidarietà’, Civil Solidarity

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Pact11) which gathered impetus after 2001. Both Berlusconi and the Vatican expressed their opposition to PACS through a rhetoric of the ‘danger’ posed to the family unit based on (heterosexual) marriage enshrined in Italy’s Constitution. The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family published a Lexicon in 2003 that explicitly identified homosexuality as a menace to the traditional (heterosexual) family structure (Pontificio Consiglio 2003; Pedote 2007: 14–17). Berlusconi directly opposed the Left’s proposed PACS legislation as an ‘attack on the institution of the family’ (Corriere della Sera 5 March 2007); yet even on this issue he assumed an ‘incoherent’ stance, simultaneously – although tokenistically – stating that homosexuals should not be discriminated against (Giornale 28 January 2006). This last example of incoherence smacks of an attempt to sweet-talk the 68.7 per cent of Italian Catholics who have reconciled their religious beliefs with a progressive social outlook and are in favour of PACS (Repubblica 17 January 2006). As Pasquino has argued, Berlusconi’s tactic was not one of ‘leading the people, but adjusting his message to the perceived preferences and beliefs he divined in surveys’ (2007: 50). Ultimately however, whether his motivation was ideological or opportunist, he assumed a fundamentally homophobic position, which, if the survey cited above is representative, was also more conservative than that of a broad swathe of the population. Aside from Berlusconi’s alignment with the Church, other alliances were also negative for the LGBT population; he empowered explicitly homophobic right-wing parties including the Lega Nord (LN), and individuals such as Rocco Buttiglione, creating a climate in which it seemed possible to express homophobic feelings with greater impunity than before.12 As a consequence of this implicit sanctioning of discriminatory views, the bounds of ‘acceptability’ appear to have shifted to the point that when in 2007 the vice-mayor of Treviso, Giancarlo Gentilini, declared the need to perform ‘ethnic cleansing’ on the gay community he was regarded as simply expressing his opinion (Repubblica 9 August 2007). In this context, it is sadly unsurprising that violence against LGBT individuals is reported to have increased exponentially (Radaelli 2007). Berlusconi directly incapacitated numerous LGBT projects and collaborations; for example, the Commissione per le pari opportunità e per i diritti degli omosessuali (Commission for Equal Opportunities and for the Rights of Homosexuals) that had been established under the Ulivo coalitions’ Ministers for Equal Opportunities Laura Balbo and Katia Bellillo, with Franco Grillini as President, was dissolved in 2001. Although its scope had been limited, the Commission had produced concrete results (the revision of protocols by the Ministry of Health to allow homosexuals to be blood and organ donors; Repubblica 2 August 2000). When at Arcigay’s request the commission reformed in 2002 under Berlusconi’s Minister for Equal Opportunities Stefania Prestigiacomo, as the study group Commissione sulla sessualità, discriminazione e integrazione sociale (Sexuality, Discrimination and Social Integration), it was led by Ferdinando Aiuti, an immunologist affiliated to Alleanza Nazionale, rather than by members of the movement. This raised concerns as to its scope, subsequently confirmed by the inadequacy of Decree 216 regarding equality of treatment in the workplace (Decreto Legislativo n.216 2003). Precarity in the job market is a severe difficulty for the LGBT population; coming out, or being ‘outed’ at work has always carried risks, which became heightened as job security was eroded between 2001 and 2006 (Altieri et al. 2006: 16). Some transsexuals are particularly vulnerable since unless they have had sex reassignment surgery, which not all transsexuals opt or are able to do, Italian law does not allow the alteration of identity documents to reflect the lived as opposed to birth identity of an individual, often preventing them from gaining legalized employment (Crisalide Azione Trans 2007; Law 164/1982). Admittedly there is a certain irony (or further incoherence) in the fact that LGBT campaigns under a centre-left government failed to secure any anti-discrimination legislation, thus the only piece of legislation that theoretically protects LGBT rights, Decree 216, was passed under Berlusconi. However, the decree itself was judged by the LGBT community to be radically inadequate and actually discriminatory against

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homosexuals since the various exceptions detailed in the law effectively undo any protection it might have offered, allowing subjective judgement to determine whether an individual’s ‘religion, personal beliefs, handicap, age or sexual orientation’ might prevent them from performing the job in question (Art. 3: 3). For Lo Giudice, Maccarrone and Grillini, the decree’s homophobic character derives from Berlusconi’s desire to avoid alienating the Church, and the Church’s political influence. Decree 216 filled the previous ‘legislative void’ with a directive that created problems where there had been flexibility; for example, members of the forces had not previously been subject to discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation as a form of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy had been adopted. While this is not ideal, in practical terms it might be seen as preferable to the effective regularization of discrimination. Indeed, some lesbians and feminists support a strategy of maintaining the ‘legislative void’ rather than campaigning for protective legislation; if there are no discriminatory norms this can allow individuals to live more freely (AAVV. 1998: 124). In addition, the LGBT population was significantly affected by Law 40, 2004, which prohibits access to artificial insemination for same sex couples (see Chapter 14), and by the 2003 school reform by Letizia Moratti (Law 53) which effectively increased the presence of the Catholic Church within the school system, privileging their condemnation of LGBT identities as ‘unnatural’ over the valorization of diversity (Maccarrone13). It seems important to emphasize that in the opinion of all those I interviewed, these political developments were predominantly shaped by the presence and continuing influence of the Vatican, enabled by Berlusconi’s strategy to forge reciprocally beneficial relations that would shore up both his own and the Church’s power. The LGBT population certainly suffered as a result of this. Berlusconi’s ‘incoherence’ did have more productive consequences, although these remained limited: Arcigay’s courses sensitizing schoolteachers to LGBT issues were allowed to continue; National Pride in Bari, 2003 was sponsored by the region, province and local council, thanks to Marcello Vernola (FI), then President of the province of Puglia; Marcello Pera (FI), President of the Senate 2001–06, sent goodwill messages to several Pride celebrations, including Milan, 2001. For Lo Giudice, this partial support stemmed from Berlusconi’s desire to create an image of liberalism that appealed to everyone, by including ‘the whole country’ in his coalition, from right-wing extremists to radicals. Yet Berlusconi’s liberalism was fundamentally superficial, exemplified by his failure to refute LN’s attacks on the LGBT population, and the Church’s vociferous condemnations of homosexuality, while providing ‘a smiling Minister for Equal Opportunities to smooth things over’ (Lo Giudice).

United in Activism? Resistance to discriminatory actions authorized by Berlusconi’s government and responses to his lack of support for LGBT rights took several forms, ranging from large-scale demonstrations (such as the annual Pride parades in numerous cities), to individual action (same-sex couples attempting to register civil partnerships with their local authorities), to the establishing of social networks and alliances (the Circolo Mario Mieli’s social events, for instance). Key objectives were to obtain equal rights and dignity (including the right to register a same-sex partnership), to facilitate collective association and to increase visibility. Evidently, difficulties such as invisibility, isolation and widespread homophobia were not caused by Berlusconi; they have a long and established genealogy (Pedote 2007). The LGBT movement resisted Berlusconi’s actions and influence insofar as he incapacitated their projects, failed to support adequate legislation, and reinforced homophobic attitudes. Collective association is deemed vital for the LGBT population by Arcigay and the Circolo Mario Mieli, as well as by the Rome-based Di Gay Project. It creates a space in which individuals

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can come to consciousness and develop an awareness of the ways in which they are oppressed because of their LGBT identities (Engel 2001: 45). Rather than fulfilling a purely therapeutic function, however, collective association and the organizational framework it requires are viewed by theorists as ‘resource aggregates’ that foster subsequent mobilization (Engel 2001: 178); this in turn leads to increased visibility. Undoubtedly the moment of greatest collective visibility for LGBT individuals is the Pride Parade, which usually has a festive character. Pridegoers avoid assuming a position of victimhood, preferring to express energy and vitality, and are always non-violent. After the first Italian Pride, which took place in Turin in 1978 with the participation of around 100 people (Anon. no date), attendance was bolstered by the establishment of ‘National Pride’ in 1994, intended to raise the profile of the LGBT movement and to attract participants from across the peninsula. There was a significant leap in attendance between 1994 and 2000 for World Pride in Rome, from 10,000 to between 500,000 and 700,000 (Anon. no date). Moreover the number of events has steadily increased between 2001 and 2006: Milan and Rome now have an annual Pride event, whether or not they are hosting ‘National Pride’. Pride events unite the two levels of intervention historically adopted by the movement: political and social. LGBT associations employ a dual strategy of political lobbying for changes to legislation, combined with the provision of social facilities ranging from club nights to discussion groups. This conforms to established patterns of resistance by what are known as the ‘new’ social movements, based on the development of identity rather than class affiliation (Engel 2001: 12). Additionally, alliances with non-LGBT movements and organizations outside Italy have opened up new possibilities, as have efforts to encourage heterosexuals to support their protests and projects. Within the movement, differences in strategy arise predominantly from varying views on the relationship between activist groups and institutionalized politics; assimilationist groups like Arcigay see the movement as a kind of ‘trade union’ (Lo Giudice); more radical groups seeking social transformation include the Circolo Mario Mieli, Antagonismo Gay, Azione Gay e Lesbica and Fuoricampo. The Circolo Mario Mieli certainly develops relationships with political figures, but attempts to retain a critical autonomy, and to continue the legacy of Mieli’s stance as a deliberately eccentric figure (Maccarrone); Antagonismo Gay see the LGBT subject as a harbinger of a new revolutionary modality of subjectivity (Busarello). Like the Circolo Mario Mieli’s position, Lo Giudice’s ‘trade union’ approach is also intended to be autonomous from, but in dialogue with political institutions, since in his experiences of dealing with the Partito Comunista (PCI) and DS, firm alliances with political parties result in LGBT issues taking second place: ‘First we change society, then we think about gay rights’. For the more radical groups, however, Arcigay’s stance is already compromised since they are perceived to have allowed their links with political parties, such as the support of individual candidates, to dictate their actions; for example, the political party is said to have decided when the collectives were able to demonstrate, effectively ‘forbidding’ demonstrations in the run up to elections so that association with the perceived excess or immorality of the LGBT movement would not damage the party’s electoral chances (Busarello, Marcasciano). Yet on Berlusconi’s election, far from being in the left’s pocket, Arcigay initially adopted a strategy of political autonomy; while Arcilesbica declared themselves ‘in opposition by definition’, Arcigay attempted to work with the Berlusconi government, in particular through the reformed Commissione sulla sessualità, discriminazione e integrazione sociale (Lo Giudice). Similarly, the Di Gay Project sought in 2003 to organize a conference with Berlusconi, Veltroni and Storace, convinced that dialogue had to continue, even in a hostile climate (Battaglia). Unfortunately, these proved unfruitful efforts and subsequent initiatives were based on opposition to the government. Internal disagreement, such as that regarding relationships with political parties, is not a failure on the part of the movement, since ‘democracy should not assume that unity is necessarily the starting point or ultimate goal’ (Young 1996: 122); indeed in a queer optic, which seeks

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to dismantle rigid understandings of the relationship between aspects of our identities including biological sex/gender/sexual orientation, the ‘destabilization of collective identity is itself a goal and accomplishment of collective action’ (Gamson 1996: 412, original emphasis). However, ‘destabilized’ activism can be difficult to manage, exemplified in Italy by the campaign for PACS. This built over the years to a climax in 2006, combining large-scale collective protest with individual actions: couples attempting to register their union with their local councils, whose requests were refused but who generated publicity (Maccarrone, Grillini). The campaign was eventually publicly backed by the different components of the movement in that they supported most of the large-scale demonstrations. However, not all groups wished to prioritize a campaign for same-sex partnerships, believing that individual rights are more important than those of a married couple, and that the state should not legislate on private relationships (Olivieri, Fuoricampo, Busarello). The problematically conservative character of civil unions has been criticized across the west and in Italy, as it reinforces the traditional family structure, especially monogamous partnerships, as the only recognized form of kinship (Butler 2004: 102–30; Giansiracusa 2005; Ross 2008: 253). There were some boycotts of demonstrations; for example, the Di Gay Project and Arcilesbica Romana did not support Rome Pride 2004 in protest at the choice of PACS as the key objective (Occhipinti 2004). For some, Pride parades are not about asking to have equal rights, but about challenging the bounds of heteronormativity – the imposition of heterosexuality as the socio-cultural norm (Maccarrone). Ultimately, however, many of those who disagreed with the decision to focus on civil unions still demonstrated ‘to make up numbers’, but also because of the homophobic backlash from the Church and government provoked by the campaign for PACS (Pontificio Consiglio 2003), which in Busarello’s view ‘criminalized’ the entire LGBT population. Between 2001 and 2006 many differences in the movement were minimized since the recognition of a significant common enemy facilitated unity (Busarello, Marcasciano). Productive consensus was achieved on key issues, such as the importance of a secular state and of claiming equal rights before the law. However, while there was a ‘strategic value to uniting behind the majority discourse of the PACS campaign’, for some this entailed ‘a minority battle within the movement’ in order to ensure that alternative views were recognized and legitimized (Busarello). Previously, other groups within the Italian movement had felt compelled to establish autonomy from what Lo Giudice terms the ‘mother ship’ of Arcigay, in order to make their mark. Cristina Gramolini, president of Arcilesbica (2002–06) explains that this organization was established as separate from Arcigay in 1997 because they were simply not being seen or heard: ‘without our own association it would have been impossible to express the lesbian view’ (2000: 120). Lo Giudice characterized the relationship between Arcigay and the organizations it has spawned, or which followed it, as Oedipal, suggesting that the (partial) consensus of the recent past is temporary, and implying difficult tensions and power hierarchies that may ultimately be ‘resolved’, following Freud, through some form of patricidal displacement. Busarello echoed this feeling, albeit in a more measured fashion: The LGBT family is a transitional phase; it has positive potential but ultimately remains a transitory union due to the differing aims of its component parts. The tensions between respecting differences within the movement and the need to achieve some degree of consensus remain volatile and threaten to hamper collaboration, yet rather than forcing confrontation and infighting within the movement, smaller associations seem to have turned away seeking allies elsewhere, or to have withdrawn from collective association at a national level. Some of the more radical groups, who were ambivalent towards the PACS campaign, have largely opted out of battles lobbying institutions in favour of discussion groups exploring

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subjectivity and identity. Practices of relationality are essential forms of resistance for many LGBT groups since one also resists by elaborating a personal political philosophy (Olivieri). Using practices such as ‘collocazione simbolica’ (symbolic location) adopted by feminist groups in the 1970s (Bono and Kemp 1991: 12), Olivieri co-ordinates seminars which examine the relationships that can be nurtured between generations of women, ensuring the transmission of silenced or marginalized histories and knowledges.14 In their very privileging of relationality, these feminist practices constitute an essential form of resistance to the rampant individualism encouraged by Berlusconi’s liberalism (Bertozzo). Broadening this logic, other elements of the movement exploited their transversal identity by establishing collaborative alliances with non-LGBT activist groups who shared object ives such as the secular state, peaceful society and individual autonomy; for example, lesbian col lectives mobilized with feminist groups (among others) to protest against Law 40 (see Chapter 14); LGBT groups in Turin joined with the ‘San Precario’ network, which began to mobilize to protest against the precarious living and working conditions experienced in Italy (De Sario 2007); some groups and individuals aligned themselves with the No Global movement during and after Genoa 2001, convinced that ‘the values of freedom and solidarity which inspire gays to demand their rights are shared’ with ‘anti G8’ activists (Golinelli 2005: 51). Arcigay resisted this, concerned that LGBT issues would be squeezed out of the picture, but Graziella Bertozzo (Azione gay e lesbica) believes that in order to ensure that LGBT issues are included, one should take part in a broad range of cultural debates. Bertozzo was LGBT spokesperson for Florence Social Forum at the 2002 European Social Forum (ESF). Likewise, for Antagonismo Gay, who led a workshop at the ESF (8 November 2002), rather than marginalizing LGBT concerns, the No Global movement has opened up supplementary political spaces (Antagonismo Gay 2002). The Social Forum’s innovative forms of organization include ‘affinity groups’ and the ‘consensus process’ in which no votes are cast (Bertozzo; Graeber 2005: 213), offering ‘destabilized’ approaches to conventional democratic methods, forged by alternative subjects, such as that envisaged by Antagonismo Gay. Within Italy a further important transversal activist group linked to the LGBT movement is Facciamo Breccia (Let’s break through!). Launched by Porpora Marcasciano of the Movimento Identità Transessuale (the Transsexual Identity Movement; MIT) in 2005, this group seeks a secular, peaceful society and individual autonomy for all citizens: the bonds it seeks to breech are those between Church and state. Significantly, rather than feeling marginalized within this collective, as had previously been the case for Arcilesbica as part of Arcigay, lesbian activists of Fuoricampo identify with the object ives of Facciamo Breccia, and feel represented by its philosophy, actions and slogans (Personal interview). Rather than masking LGBT issues then, this collective has translated the battle for LGBT rights into a campaign that speaks across specific identities, avoiding the ‘minority battles’ waged within the movement over the PACS campaign.

The Swings and Roundabouts of Progress During the Berlusconi years, in Grillini’s view, ‘no political progress’ was made. For Maccarrone, the battle for PACS turned into a sort of ‘boomerang’, since the failure to gain legal recognition on this key issue has left the movement effectively empty handed: the ‘Contratti di unioni solidali’ (Stable Union Contracts; CUS) proposed in 2007 have been criticized as a poor substitute for the desired PACS legislation, since inheritance rights are only activated after nine years, among other shortcomings. Alliances with EU and global projects such as the ESF, or the International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA), promised to provide the Italian movement with vital sponsorship and support. However, while these alliances may have been experienced

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as positive by certain individuals, they have not (yet) had a concrete impact on legislation. This becomes particularly apparent on reading the ‘pact’ drafted by Arcigay for the 2008 elections, inviting electoral candidates to show their support for LGBT rights. The pact lists the several EU directives on equality that have not been implemented in Italy, as well as the much contested Decree 216, discussed above (Arcigay 2008). As regards social changes however, Grillini is positive: greater visibility, ironically including the continuous denouncement of the LGBT population by the Church, has encouraged people to come out and be militant in larger numbers. Thus although in terms of individual rights LGBT people are effectively worse off, socio-culturally speaking he believes they are in a stronger position, since the movement managed to convince thousands of people to take a stance against the government on LGBT rights. Theorists have argued that the issue of coordination constitutes a significant problem facing social movements: ‘How are disparate organizations to present themselves to political elites and potential supporters as integrated, goal-oriented, and rational?’ (Engel 2001: 184). Of course, for radical groups such as Antagonismo Gay, the assumption that ‘rationality’ should be a key characteristic of activism is anathematic. The difficulties of achieving consensus continue to challenge the LGBT movement. In an appropriately ‘destabilized’ fashion, elements of the movement have responded to this challenge by diversifying further. Activism ranges from mass demonstrations, such as Pride, to individual modes of being. On a larger scale, alliances within and beyond Italy have opened up transversal spaces for dialogue and for developing a productive blend of shared values and strategies. On an individual level, single acts can change people’s everyday experiences, and may accumulate to reveal a broader potential. As one member of Arcigay Milan wrote: ‘another world is possible, or in construction, as the well-known slogan goes: we’ve been building that other world for a while, simply through our daily lives’ (Anon 2002: 13).

Conclusions In his discussion of new forms of associationism in Italy, Andrews notes the challenges they pose to the status of the political parties and envisions ‘a new kind of relationship between associations and parties [. . .] In the future the associations can play an important role in facilitating public debate, as intermediate channels of communication’ (2005: 176). For the LGBT movement in Italy, this system has effectively been in place for some time, particularly in the case of Arcigay, but has resulted principally in major frustration with political parties and a lack of concrete progress. In a changing global political and economic landscape, the status and scope of political parties is also in transition. In Klein’s view, they are being slowly squeezed out of the mainframe: ‘modern activists are not so naïve as to believe change will come from electoral politics. That’s why they are more interested in the structures that make democracy toothless’ (Klein 2005: 225), such as the Vatican. Facciamo Breccia is a good example of this type of intervention, since it targets not only the government but also the Church, which is seen by LGBT activists as preventing the government from providing the legal protection and recognition of personal dignity they have been demanding for so long. Without a doubt, Italian LGBT organizations provide essential social, emotional and often practical support to those who seek it, performing a vital community-building function. As regards their ability to influence legislative processes, the presence of a handful of openly LGBT deputies in 2001 (e.g. Grillini [PS], Titti De Simone and Vladimir Luxuria [RC]), and the ‘trade union’ efforts of Arcigay seemed to augur well, but the LGBT political presence in the Chamber of Deputies was significantly reduced in the 2008 elections, arguably due to the fact that leftwing parties like Rifondazione Comunista now have no representatives in the Chamber of Deputies. As Bolognini suggests, perhaps the LGBT presence in parliament is limited by a lack

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of visible gay deputies on the right, whose activities have proved vital in other countries in altering socio-cultural opinion (2007: 185). However, this leaves precious little space for the radically alternative subjectivity potentially offered by LGBT individuals, marginalizing the more antagonistic components of the movement. For the moment, internal differences seem to have been minimized and, in Lo Giudice’s view, the various components are moving forward ‘separately but together’, in the hope of achieving their key objectives through united activism. This was indeed the message of National Pride 2008, that took place in Bologna, often viewed as somewhat of an LGBT capital. The editorial in the Pride guide reveals that even the ‘golden’, tolerant environment of Bologna has suffered in the recent ‘backward’ political climate, and on behalf of the many and various groups, the committee asks for equal rights for all, and a truly secular approach to social change. Significantly, this request is directed not only at institutions, but at the person on the street (Bologna Pride Committee 2008: 3). I have suggested that Berlusconi’s agenda was not overtly homophobic, indeed he stated that it was just ‘not worth legislating’ on PACS (Giornale 28 January 2006), indicating a general disinterest in LGBT issues as opposed to open hostility. However, his homophobia is apparent in his lack of interest in dissolving culturally enshrined discrimination against LGBT subjects, and in the steps he did not take to protect their rights. Judging by Berlusconi’s unwillingness to champion LGBT rights in the past, perhaps the possibility of improved socio-cultural status for LGBT subjects now resides principally with fellow citizens. Lo Giudice may be right in his assertion that what is really required to fundamentally change social norms is a critical mass of transversally visible LGBT subjects, who, together with their friends, peers and colleagues would act as ‘antibodies’ (Sylos Labini 2003: 6), to cure the homophobia that persists in Italy’s system.

Notes 1. Personal interview. 2. I am grateful to all those who agreed to be interviewed for this project in October–November 2007. I spoke to: Sergio Lo Giudice; Franco Grillini; Porpora Marcasciano, activist, writer and long-term member of the Movimento Identità Transessuale (Transsexual Identity Movement (MIT), founded Bologna 1979); Giovanni Olivieri, Centro Femminista Separatista (Feminist Separatist Centre (CFS), founded Rome 1985); Andrea Maccarrone, Circolo Mario Mieli, Rome; Imma Battaglia, President of the Di Gay Project (founded Rome 2001); Graziella Bertozzo, founder of Arcigay Donna (Arcigay Women), who has collaborated with Arcigay-Arcilesbica and Azione Gay e Lesbica, Florence (a breakaway group that established autonomy from Arcigay-Arcilesbica in 1997), as well as the Florence European Social Forum (2002); members of Fuoricampo Lesbian Group, founded Bologna 2003; Renato Busarello, Antagonismo Gay, founded Bologna 1997. 3. The four parliamentarians were Franco Grillini (Democratici di Sinistra), Titti De Simone and Nichi Vendola (Rifondazione Comunista), Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio (Federazione dei Verdi). This and all other translations, including interviews, are my own, unless otherwise specified. 4. For a history of Arcigay, Arcigay Donna (1989), and Arcilesbica (1996) see www.arcigay.it; for a history of the Cassero Centre in Bologna, where the first national group was founded, see Ramina (1994). 5. The Partito Socialista Italiano was dissolved in 1994, but reformed in 2007. Grillini is on a committee seeking to promote the reformed party. See www.partitosocialista.it 6. See Mieli (2002) for an account of his ‘Gay Revolutionary Project’. After Mieli’s death, the existing ‘Coordinamento degli omosessuali romani’ adopted the name ‘Circolo Mario Mieli’ (Rossi Barilli 1999: 150). See also www.mariomieli.org.

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7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

See www.arci.it/testo.php?codice=STORIA See www.gaylib.it/chisiamo/noi.html www.alleanzacattolica.org/ See Politi 2007; see also www.forumfamiglie.org/manifestazione/piufamiglia1.html The term ‘PACS’ mirrors the French ‘Pacte civil de solidarité’ introduced in 1999. Buttiglione, Berlusconi’s Cultural Minister from 2005–06 and vice president of the Chamber of Deputies since May 2008, was Italy’s candidate for the EU’s Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security in 2004, but withdrew when his homophobic and sexist remarks drew criticism from several Members of European Parliament (MEPs). 13. For a critique of the closed selection processes for teachers of religion see also Sylos Labini (2003: 164, note 10). 14. Her activities link with the issues discussed at the 2007 Arcilesbica conference, ‘La storia che non c’era. Il movimento delle lesbiche in Italia’ (Missing History. The Lesbian Movement in Italy), Casa Internazionale delle Donne, Rome, 1–3 June. See also Marcasciano’s work (2002) collecting the testimonies of trans individuals.

References AAVV. (1998), Il mondo da fare. Sul ruolo politico del movimento delle lesbiche. Atti del convegno. Roma, 20–22 giugno 1997. Rome: Casa Internazionale delle Donne. Altieri, G., Carrieri. M. and Megale, A. (eds) (2006), L’Italia del lavoro oggi. Condizioni e aspettative dei lavoratori, IRES-CGIL, 5 September, available at: www.ires.it/node/442. Accessed 12 March 2008. Andrews, G. (2005), Not a Normal Country. Italy after Berlusconi. London: Pluto Press. Anon. (no date), ‘Le origini del Gay Pride’, available at: www.arcigaymilano.org/dossier/movimento/ stonewall/stone.asp. Accessed 15 October 2008. — (2002), ‘Pride Milano ’02: Esistere, resistere’, gap: gay.and.proud (4), April, pp. 12–13. Antagonismo Gay (2002), ‘Soggettività GLBT, neoliberalismo e movimento’. Unpublished document for a workshop at the European Social Forum. Arcigay. (2008), ‘Il patto di Arcigay con i candidati’, available at: www.arcigay.it/patto-arcigay-candidati-2008. Accessed 12 March 2008. Bellamy, R. (2006), ‘An Italian story? Berlusconi and contemporary democratic politics’, Modern Italy, 11 (3), November, pp. 347–51. Bologna Pride Committee (2008), Bologna Pride 2008, available at: www.bolognapride.it. Accessed 12 March 2008. Bolognini, S. (2007), ‘Visibilità gay ed istituzioni’, in P. Pedote and N. Poidimani (eds), We will survive. Lesbiche, gay e trans in Italia. Milan: Mimesis Edizioni, pp. 167–86. Bono, P. and Kemp, S. (eds) (1991), Italian Feminist Thought. A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Butler, J. (2004), Undoing Gender. London and New York: Routledge. Corriere della sera (2007), ‘Berlusconi: “Pacs: Attacco alla famiglia” ’, 5 March. Crisalide Azione Trans (2007), ‘Perchè noi trans al Pride ?’, available at: www.crisalide-azionetrans.it/ romapride2007_volantini.html. Accessed 12 March 2008. Cristallo, M. (1996), Uscir fuori. Dieci anni di lotte omosessuali in Italia: 1971/1981. Milan: Teti. De Sario, B. (2007), ‘Precari su Marte; an experiment in the activism against precarity’, Feminist Review, (87), pp. 21–39. Decreto Legislativo n.216 (2003), Gazzetta Ufficiale, 13 August, available at: www.camera.it/parlam/leggi/ deleghe/testi/03216dl.htm. Accessed 12 March 2008. Eng. D. L., Halberstam, J. and Muñoz, J. E. (2005), ‘Introduction. What’s queer about queer studies now?’, Social Text, (84–85), pp. 1–18. Engel, S. M. (2001), The Unfinished Revolution. Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Gamson, J. (1996), ‘Must identity movements self-destruct? A queer dilemma’, in S. Seidman (ed.), Queer Theory/ Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 394–420. Giansiracusa, L. (2005), ‘Dialettica pacsiana’, Towanda, (18), June–August, pp. 21–2. Ginsborg, P. (2005), Silvio Berlusconi. Television, Power and Patrimony. London and New York: Verso. Golinelli, A. (2005), Il mio pride. Sono cambiati gli italiani o gli omosessuali? Viterbo: Nuovi Equilibri. Graeber, D. (2005), ‘The new anarchists’, in T. Mertes (ed.), A Movement of Movements. Is Another World Really Possible? London and New York: Verso, pp. 202–15. Gramolini, M. C. (2000), ‘Appendice: Arcilesbica perché’, in M. Consoli (ed.), Independence gay. Alle origini del Gay Pride. Bolsena: Massari Editore. pp. 115–27. Grillini, F. (1990), ‘Appendice: La via italiana all’orgoglio gay di Franco Grillini, Presidente Nazionale dell’Arci Gay’, in M. Consoli, Stonewall. Quando la rivoluzione è gay. Rome: Casa Editrice Roberto Napoleone, pp. 112–21. Giornale (2006), ‘Berlusconi: “No ai Pacs, tuteliamo la famiglia” ’, 28 January. Klein, N. (2005), ‘Reclaming the Commons’, in T. Mertes (ed.), A Movement of Movements. Is Another World Really Possible? London and New York: Verso, pp. 219–29. Lo Giudice et al. (2001), ‘Far crescere la comunità. Progettare in Europa’, presentation available as part of the Minutes of the 10th National Conference of Arcigay, available at: www.arcigay.it/taxonomy/term/141/ all. Accessed 16 October 2008. Marcasciano, P. (2002), Tra le rose e le viole. La storia e le storie di transessuali e travestiti. Rome: Manifestolibri. Mieli, M. (2002), Elementi di critica omosessuale. Turin: Einaudi. Occhipinti, M. (2004), ‘Gay Pride, un corteo colorato per chiedere “unioni di fatto subito” ’, Repubblica, Roma Cronaca, 3 June. Pasquino, G. (2007), ‘The five faces of Silvio Berlusconi: The knight of anti-politics’, Modern Italy, 12 (1), pp. 39–54. Pedote, P. (2007), ‘Per una genealogia dell’omofobia’, in P. Pedote and N. Poidimani (eds), We Will Survive. Lesbiche; gay e trans in Italia. Milan: Mimesis Edizioni, pp. 13–26. Politi, M. (2007), ‘Family day, Bindi e Di Segni fanno infuriare gli omosessuali’, Repubblica, 8 May. Pontificio Consiglio per la Famiglia (2003), Lexicon. Termini ambigui e discussi su famiglia, vita e questioni etiche. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane. Radaelli, A. (2007), ‘Attacchi sempre più frequenti a gay e trans’, in D: La Repubblica delle donne, 18 November, available at: www.arcigay.it/show.php?2875. Accessed 12 March 2008. Ramina, B. (ed.) (1994), ‘Ha più diritti Sodoma di Marx? Il Cassero, 1977–1982’, Special issue of Quaderni di critica omosessuale, (10). Ratzinger, J. (2003), ‘Considerazioni circa i progetti di riconoscimento legale delle unioni tra persone omosessuali’, available at: www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_ doc_20030731_homosexual-unions_it.html. Accessed 12 March 2008. Repubblica (2000), ‘Gli omosessuali doneranno sangue e organi’, 2 August. — (2006), ‘Cattolici italiani favorevoli ai Pacs e anche a divorzio e aborto’, 17 January. — (2007), ‘Non parlo più di donne e i gay sono tutti dall’altra parte’, 6 February. — (2007), ‘Gentilini: “Pulizia etnica contro i culattoni.” Il prosindaco di Treviso dichiara guerra ai gay’, 9 August. Resto di Roma, (2003), ‘Forza Italia “libera” le unioni civili’, 9 October. Ross, C. (2008), ‘Visions of visibility. LGBT communities in Turin’ Modern Italy, 13 (3), pp. 241–60. Rossi Barilli, G. (1999), Il movimento gay in Italia. Milan: Feltrinelli. Sabelli Fioretti, C. (2007), Gay; molti modi per dire ti amo. Claudio Sabelli Fioretti intervista Franco Grillini. Reggio Emilia: Aliberti Editore. Sylos Labini, P. (2003), Berlusconi e gli anticorpi. Diario di un cittadino indignato. Rome: Laterza. Trappolin, L. (2004), Identità in azione. Mobilitazione omosessuale e sfera pubblica. Rome: Carocci. Young, I. M. (1996), ‘Communication and the other: Beyond deliberative democracy’, in S. Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference. Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 120–35. — (2001), ‘Justice and the Politics of Difference’ in S. Seidman and J. C. Alexander (eds) The New Social Theory Reader. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 203–11.

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Webography (All websites mentioned here and in the footnotes were active as of 1 June 2008) www.arcigay.it www.arcilesbica.it/ www.azionegayelesbica.it www.digayproject.org www.facciamobreccia.org www.fuoricampo.net www.gaylib.it www.mariomieli.org www.mit-italia.it

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Political Cleansing and Censorship in Public Television – A Case Study of Michele Santoro and Enzo Biagi Nina Rothenberg

30 years from now, Italy will be formed not in the image of its governments, but in the image of television. (Flaiano 1956: 34)

The Bulgarian Edict During a press conference on 17 April 2002, while on a state visit to Bulgaria, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi heavily attacked the Italian public service broadcaster, RAI, and some of its major household names; in particular, the journalists Michele Santoro and Enzo Biagi, both anchormen of successful current affairs programmes, and the comedian Daniele Luttazzi, host of the late night talk-show Satyricon.1 Berlusconi said, ‘Biagi, Santoro . . . what’s the other one called? . . . Luttazzi, have used public television, paid for by everyone, in a criminal manner. And I believe that it is a specific duty of the new management to ensure that this won’t happen again’ (TG 1 17 April 2002). His words would create political turmoil. What came to be known as the ‘Bulgarian edict’2 followed months of attacks against these journalists from politicians of the centre-right coalition Casa delle Libertà (CdL) and from sections of the press close to Berlusconi who had lambasted the programmes as openly biased, leftwing propaganda that allegedly aimed to damage him in his role as the leader of the opposition and to diminish his chances in the general election of May 2001. Berlusconi’s public criticism of RAI and of some individual journalists would have enormous consequences for Italian state television. Within only six months of his declaration, not only would the incriminated media workers be suspended, but the internal governance of RAI, its administrative structure and its programme output would be heavily remodelled in favour of Berlusconi’s political agenda. Michele Santoro and Enzo Biagi, who would both eventually disappear from Italian television for almost five years, became the symbols of Berlusconi’s stranglehold on the country’s media and what some interpreted as an authoritarian project for Italian society. However, the censorship of these two journalists, together with the marginalization of many less prominent media workers in RAI, requires a more complex analysis of the structure of Italian television, going beyond a critical evaluation of Berlusconi and his enormous media power – the main symptom of the Italian anomaly, but not its main cause. This chapter explores the professional experiences of Michele Santoro and Enzo Biagi within

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the cultural and political context of post-war Italian society. It traces the growing antagonism between them and Silvio Berlusconi and delineates how this affected the two journalists when the confrontation culminated in the notorious Bulgarian edict. I argue that although Berlusconi’s declarations in Sofia were part of a deliberate attempt to consolidate his power by isolating and repressing critical voices on Italian state television, the Bulgarian edict has to be conceptualized within a wider analysis into political interference and censorship in post-war Italy.

From Samarcanda to Sciuscià: The Journalism of Michele Santoro Michele Santoro is one of Italy’s most contentious journalists, who has been creating popular current affairs programmes since the 1980s and whose personal and professional development reflected the social and cultural upheavals of late-capitalist Italy. Within the context of the student movement and his political militancy in extra-parliamentary left-wing groups, his professional biography was influenced by the journalism of the new Italian left that was strongly anti-establishment and radical in its requests for counter-information. The criticism targeted in particular the state television broadcaster RAI and the daily newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, which were both considered emblems of capitalist manipulation (Murialdi 2000: 209). Santoro’s activism of the early days profoundly shaped his concept of politics. Distrust of the political bureaucracies, including the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) and the political formations that would follow its dissolution in 1991, would remain a guiding feature of his journalism. Santoro thereupon developed an ambiguous relationship to the party that would support and protect him in the years to come. Santoro entered the state broadcaster RAI in 1982 and developed his first television show Samarcanda (Samarcand) four years later – a programme that was a watershed within RAI’s traditional political coverage, which include shows like Tribuna Politica (Political Broadcast), a dry political question time of the 1960s and 1970s. Tribuna Politica was the symbol of the state television of the 1960s and early 1970s: a medium that was the pedagogical instrument to educate the citizens within the narrow ideological and social frame of the post-war setting in order to alleviate Italy’s profound social and political divisions through the gradual construction of a national value consensus and shared cultural practices. To guarantee the status quo under its political and cultural leadership, the Democrazia Cristiana (DC) used RAI as an instrument to reinforce Catholic and anti-Communist values (Mannucci 1962: 11). This TV of the ‘Ancien Régime’ (Ortoleva 2002: 99) dominated Italian society until 1975, when the gradual decline of electoral consensus of the DC triggered a process by which more political and programmatic pluralism was granted through a reform of public television that passed control of the RAIboard from the government to parliament. To reflect the pluralism of Italian society, RAI’s governmental structure was widened to include the PCI, which was given control over the third channel. In the 1980s political affiliation became a fundamental prerequisite for a career in RAI, a fact that employees sarcastically dubbed with the motto: ‘In RAI they hire one from the DC, one from the PSI, one PRI and finally a good journalist’.3 However, more important than the rigorous adherence to a specific party was the journalist’s cultural and political affinity with the dominant ideology. The threat of censorship and exclusion was a powerful weapon that stifled dissent in a system in which journalists were tied by an oppressive web of relations to the politicians in charge. These hegemonic frames, which Gramsci analysed as ‘philosophical currents that transform the practical, everyday consciousness’ (Gramsci 1971: 28) imposed a widely accepted behavioural code of conformism that was rarely questioned. In 1986 Indro Montanelli,

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the eminent liberal-conservative journalist, described how these subtle forms of self-censorship operate: In Italy there is freedom, but one is not used to it. Before writing their pieces, most journalists ask for permission from the censor. Which censor? The one that has been inside themselves for centuries and without which they cannot survive. (Murialdi 2000: 198) The third channel, RAI 3, dominated by the PCI and therefore oppositional and sometimes even antagonistic in its political outlook, developed into a breeding ground for emerging young journalists and experimental formats.4 It was in this effervescent cultural and political environment that Santoro developed his programme. Samarcanda’s innovative format as the first talk-show that focussed on community issues and on civic society, giving people and social groups the opportunity to participate and to voice their opinions, was successful and later adopted by the BBC for its programme Words Apart. Santoro’s team would often gather opinions on demonstrations and political sit-ins and travel the country to investigate issues of social concern. Live connections with the piazza, projected on a huge screen in the studio helped to further enhance the seemingly authentic, almost unmediated character of the programme. Santoro described the format as ‘a different way of making television. It was a noisy and vocal piazza’ (Santoro 1991: 145) – a style that would become his trademark. His journalism was opinionated, engaged and critical, and opened a new political arena in a country in which the partitocrazia 5 dominated every sphere of the public discourse. All aspects of Santoro’s programmes were however planned, the participants carefully chosen and the documentaries often framed to support the supremacy of left-wing values – social justice, solidarity, pacifism and grass-root politics. Criticism that Santoro was too polemical, one-sided and opinionated was frequent. The media historian Peppino Ortoleva described him in an interview with the present author as an integral member of a television oligarchy, which practised a journalism that was politically biased and characterized by ‘improvisation and demagogy with the tendency to judge and not to inform’ (Ortoleva 2008). Santoro admitted that his political beliefs have provided a strong basis for his work – an aspect that has given his critics ample opportunity to contest his lack of political objectivity. His privileges, star persona and high salary also often promoted negative perceptions. However, it seems ungenerous to label the journalist as a paladin of the institutional left or a simple expression of the old vices of Italian journalism. His staged representations of public discontent on Samarcanda and his self-confident posture towards politicians were expressions of the growing detachment between the political system and the citizens, which promoted the media to the role of compensating for the increasing loss of face-to-face interactions within the classical channels of political aggregation (Mazzoleni 2004). Angelo Guglielmi, at the time director of RAI 3, pointed at the impact of Santoro’s journalism: ‘Political representatives discover with great indignation that they are on the same level as, and count only as much as everyone else’ (Crapis 2006: 38). The ascent of the private television of Silvio Berlusconi from 1980–84 forced RAI to completely revise its programme output, often by imitating the commercialized broadcasting of its private competitor. The emergence of what Umberto Eco dubbed ‘Neo-Television’ (1990) reflected the commercialization of television in an era in which the media became the main agents of political discourse and substitute for interpersonal exchange (Mazzoleni 2004). ‘Trash television’, from the Miss Italia beauty contests to carnivalesque Sunday variety shows full of beautiful girls, recipes, astrology and quizzes became the dominant feature of Italian broadcasting in the 1980s and 1990s. The unstoppable wheel of consumerism and the imperative pursuit of happiness and personal fulfilment became the medium’s main source, and Berlusconi the ultimate personification of a new hedonist spirit that exalted the nation. The centrality of

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entertainment invaded television with the informal, the banal and the ordinary, artificially recreating the cheerful noisiness of the extended family life of small town villages – a cosy memory of the past in an urbanizing society with low birth rates. The political relevance of these cultural changes lies in the individualistic and consumerist values that were promoted and that would later benefit Berlusconi’s neo-conservative agenda more than any direct political propaganda. The specific structure of the television duopoly further reinforced the tendency to political conformism that characterizes Italian journalism, by impeding the development of a more clearly market-oriented approach to the medium, in a system that can hardly be described as competitive. RAI and Mediaset attract around 45 per cent of the audience share each – an almost cartel-like situation that has impeded innovation and substantial investment in programmes and that offers journalists a very limited number of potential employers. Rather than introducing legislation to boost pluralism and competition, the political parties did their best to freeze the status quo, despite sentences from the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice, which had ruled that the television market should be opened to new players. The process of homogenization of public and private television exacerbated the crisis of the medium. While television in post-war Italy had acted as an important generator of modern cultural patterns that unified and educated the public within the cultural void that the incomplete process of unification, high illiteracy rates and the devastations of Fascism and war had opened, television in the 1980s reinforced cultural uniformity, in a process that is described by most domestic scholars as a strong decline of the nation’s system of communication (Monteleone 2006: 16). Politics became more accessible but also enmeshed with entertainment and turned into a banal ritual, in which ‘political candidates and porn stars, comedians and MPs, advertisements for biscuits and ideas blended together in a blurry mix’ (Cavallari 1990: 50). However, this process of ‘dumbing-down’ left space for some experimental and highbrow programmes that were exceptions rather than the rule, but nevertheless successful and watched by the educated and more dynamic sections of Italian society. Michele Santoro operated within these minority frames of public television that continued to offer an engaged political debate and that regularly encroached on those ‘contested dimensions’ of public discourse that often trigger heavy-handed responses from the institutions (Gamson, Stuart 1992: 382). His shows often set the agenda in a country where newspapers usually follow up television events. Having become a media star and boasting high ratings, Santoro was able to work in a vacuum that was relatively detached from those clientelistic dependencies and structural limitations that characterized the work of most journalists in RAI. His extraordinary autonomy was partially determined by his celebrity status that allowed him to use his close, yet sometimes tormented relations to the PCI for his own benefit, without succumbing to the party apparatus. His critical attitude towards the political system was supported by and protected within the constant oppositional frame in which the PCI was forced to operate in Italy’s blocked democracy until its dissolution in 1991. Protected by the PCI within the left-wing enclave of RAI 3, Santoro’s professional privileges did not reflect the condition of the majority of journalists in RAI, who were tied to their political protégées and heavily conditioned by a system that rendered them weak and dependent. Paolo Mancini described Italian journalists as ‘in a subordinate, or even passive position with regard to the decisions of the political apparatus and characterised by limited autonomy of analysis and evaluation’ (Mancini 1984: 12). Santoro admitted to his and Enzo Biagi’s exceptional position in RAI: ‘We were never liked very much by the other journalists in RAI because we were freer than them. Our freedom was considered inappropriate given the lack of freedom which characterises normal journalistic activity in this country’. During the Tangentopoli corruption scandals of the early 1990s, Santoro earned himself credit as one of the few TV-journalists who backed the anti-corruption enquiries of the Milanese Mani pulite investigative team at a very early stage. He heavily criticized the parties for

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trying to curtail the freedom of the press and to manipulate the political discourse (Repubblica 30 May 1992). By trying to give the medium an active role and by putting himself at the head of public opinion, Santoro was criticized for transforming television into a party in its own right and for destabilizing the political system by staging media trials against politicians. There were frequent calls for his show to be discontinued, such as in 1991, when a programme dedicated to the Sicilian businessman Libero Grassi, who had been killed by the Mafia, suggested that the DC was infiltrated by organized crime. According to Giulio Andreotti, then Prime Minister, these programmes ‘poisoned Italy’s youth and depicted some of the country’s problems as farcical entertainment’ (Repubblica 10 October 1991). The attempts by the parties to impose their political authority over journalists who enjoyed ever greater autonomy within the political crisis that was caused by the Tangentopoli scandal led neither to the suspension of Michele Santoro nor to substantial changes to his programmes. However, as the political forces reformed after the crisis, the lack of autonomy of the Italian media made itself felt once again, determined by some historical and structural peculiarities: the country’s long-standing tradition of a journalism that defended bourgeois values rather than the public interests, the historical limitations on press freedom that Fascism had imposed on newspapers and radio broadcasting and the hegemony of the post-war political system and its tendency to systematically occupy the institutions. When Berlusconi entered the political scene in 1994, Santoro started heavily criticizing the media magnate for his private media monopoly, claiming that his political role was illegitimate in light of the conflict of interests (Repubblica 4 February, 1994). His position became increasingly vulnerable after the victory of the centre-left coalition under Romano Prodi in 1996. Having finally entered government, leading politicians of the left started to resent Santoro’s criticism of the political class, his irreverent attitude in interviews with politicians and his vivid support of prosecuting magistrates, who enjoy vast autonomy in Italy and frequently clash with the political parties. His position in RAI became increasingly uncomfortable and in 1996 he left after a controversy about his editorial autonomy. Santoro moved to Berlusconi’s Mediaset company, where he was given full autonomy and a lucrative contract to conduct the talk-show Moby Dick until 1999. Santoro justified this controversial career step by his conviction that the centreleft government in the meantime would have tackled the conflict of interest to either impede Berlusconi’s return to political office or to force him to sell his company. In Mediaset Santoro featured provocative topics, such as a critical portrayal of the NATO-bombardment of Belgrade in response to the Serbian invasion of Kosovo in 1996, in the process angering the left-wing Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema. A programme on the alleged Mafia connections of one of Berlusconi’s closest collaborators in 1999 caused a storm of indignation within the centre-right coalition. In 1999 he returned to RAI ‘because of Berlusconi’s lasting political relevance’, where he started presenting Il Raggio Verde (The Green Light) which received high ratings of 20 per cent, but was increasingly the target of criticism and accused of damaging the centre-right coalition CdL and its leader Silvio Berlusconi in the upcoming electoral campaign. Antonio Socci, neo-conservative commentator for Il Raggio Verde, left the show in protest and accused Santoro of being politically biased in favour of the centre-left coalition. He defined the programme: ‘An ambush with a single, predetermined outcome, which is driven home by long reports and deeply biased debates’ (quoted in Gomez, Travaglio 2004: 103). Relations with the opposition and its powerful leader were further worsened when a programme hosted by the provocative showman and comedian Daniele Luttazzi triggered controversy. In March 2001, just two months before the general elections, Luttazzi had invited the investigative journalist Marco Travaglio onto his talk-show Satyricon on RAI 2 to interview him about the presumed connections between Berlusconi and the Mafia. The programme gained its highest ratings ever but caused uproar among Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia (FI), and led to an

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emergency meeting of the parliamentary watchdog committee. The party leaders of Berlusconi’s centre-right coalition decided to give the case centre stage and to protest against the ‘lack of institutional guarantees’ by eventually boycotting all RAI programmes (Repubblica 21 March 2001). Engulfed in a profound political crisis, the RAI-board decided to suspend Luttazzi’s programme and both he and the director of RAI 2, Carlo Freccero, were dismissed. When Santoro dedicated his show to the case, in which the Mafia allegations were again discussed, a furious Berlusconi called into the live broadcast, accusing the journalist of anti-democratic political propaganda and famously urging him ‘to contain himself’. Santoro was troubled by the acrimony with Berlusconi: ‘Just by virtue of being the object of such a strong accusation, a journalist loses a degree of credibility. There is one leader, and behind him are millions of other people who share his ideas’. Each show was now met by a storm of criticism from Berlusconi’s political allies. In April 2002 an episode of Santoro’s new programme Sciuscià (Shoeshine) on labour relations descended into debacle, when shortly before the live broadcast, two representatives from the centre-right decided to boycott the programme. The media watchdog, a parliamentary body composed of politicians, subsequently fined state television, claiming that the show had violated the par condicio law6 – an accusation that would become the justification of the eventual suspension of Santoro’s programme.

Enzo Biagi: A History of Resistance As one of the veterans of Italian public television, Enzo Biagi’s departure from RAI was the most contentious result of the Bulgarian edict and a move that clearly damaged Berlusconi’s self-constructed reputation as a paternalistic, yet lovable Sun King. His recent manifestations of regret can be interpreted in this light. Berlusconi denied ever having pronounced the Bulgarian edict, claiming on television that an innocent chat between him and some journalists ‘in a semiofficial context’ had been blown out of proportion (Porta a Porta 31 March 2005). In February 2008 he claimed Biagi had voluntarily dropped out of RAI to collect his generous compensation (Repubblica 16 February 2008). The dismissal of the 81-year-old journalist has clearly become a black spot on Berlusconi’s conscience. Biagi had experienced censorship at various points in his career. In 1942 he started writing for the local newspaper Carlino Sera and shortly after joined the anti-Fascist resistance movement within the Catholic brigade ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ (Justice and Freedom). After the war he was fired from Il Resto del Carlino after having publicly adhered to the Stockholm Manifesto against the nuclear bomb. In 1960 Biagi started a prestigious career in RAI as the director of the news programme TG 1 – the only TV-news at the time in Italy. He overhauled the format, dedicated less space to institutional politics and employed talented journalists, but quickly clashed with RAI’s board of management over his requests for more editorial autonomy and subsequently resigned (Biagi 2005a: 208). Following his dismissal from the TG 1, Biagi created the current events programme Rotocalco televisivo (TV Magazine) that produced one of the first documentaries on the Mafia on Italian television. He was again forced to resign in 1963, after accusations of being a Communist by the government. His frequent clashes with politicians alleviated however in the 1970s and he was often criticized by the Italian New Left for being an integral part of the ‘partitocrazia’. Michele Santoro accused Biagi in his autobiography of providing one-sided interpretations to sustain the DC’s conservative hegemony (Santoro 1996: 67). The two journalists only became closer after the Bulgarian edict. After having hosted a series of successful broadcasts, in 1995 Biagi started a five-minute commentary on current affairs in a high-rating slot just after the news. Il Fatto di Enzo Biagi (Enzo Biagi’s Fact) would become one of the most successful programmes of Italian television.

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It was probably for this very reason that the broadcast, watched daily by up to eight million Italians, became one of the foci of Berlusconi’s criticism. The bones of contention were two interviews: one with the liberal-conservative journalist Indro Montanelli, who took the opportunity to denounce Berlusconi’s presumed totalitarian project for Italian society; the other, just days before the election, with the much-loved actor and comedian Roberto Benigni, who emphasized, in his usual clownesque style, his intention of voting for the left. Benigni also said, ‘Things are happening that have never been seen before [. . .]. The Pope in a mosque, genetically modified babies, Berlusconi looks set to become Prime Minister, unnatural things’ (Il Fatto 10 May 2001). The programme made the headlines and was attacked by the centre-right. Riccardo De Corato, (Alleanza Nazionale) wrote: ‘Biagi, who lacked the courage and professionalism to represent the views of Berlusconi and the CdL, has shown that he has descended to the level of daily insults against the CdL’ (Ansa 2001). The journalist had indeed never made a secret of his open rejection of Berlusconi’s political agenda. In his autobiography he wrote: ‘Ever since he went into politics I haven’t missed an opportunity to let him know that I did not share his views; I believed that he was serving the interests of his company rather than those of the country’ (Biagi 2005b: 104). Berlusconi felt offended by the antagonism of one of the country’s most popular journalists – a feeling that was shared by many of his supporters and reinforced by a long history of contempt and distrust towards the state broadcaster, RAI, of which Biagi was a symbol. A further target of Berlusconi’s criticism was the left-wing president of RAI, Roberto Zaccaria, who according to the centre-right encouraged and protected the political activism of some of his most famous anchormen against the leader of the opposition. Used to the hierarchical management of his corporations, Berlusconi had taken great offence at the critical coverage on some programmes on RAI prior to and after the 1994 elections. In 1995 he had complained: ‘In the RAI there is a Soviet atmosphere, but as long as the disinformatja does not take over, we will win’ (Repubblica 4 May 1995). After the electoral debacle in 1996, he had convinced himself that he could consolidate his political power only by overcoming the ‘Communist conspiracy’ against him in RAI (Giannini 2001). Having won another election in 2002, Berlusconi attacked Biagi on various occasions culminating in his inclusion in the Bulgarian edict – a move that was greeted positively only by his most radical political allies.

The ‘Mediasetization’ of RAI After the victory of the centre-right coalition in May 2001, Berlusconi expressed vague intentions for what he symptomatically referred to as his RAI, emphasizing that he did not aim for a complete political roll-over of state television. He took the opportunity to further attack individual journalists: ‘In my RAI there will be no centre-right Santoro, no centre-right Biagi, no centre-right Travaglio,7 because the centre-right has a truly liberal soul and will never come remotely close to the scandalous and anti-democratic use made of public TV by the left in government’(Repubblica, 9 February 2002). Almost one year after Berlusconi’s electoral victory, however, the Bulgarian edict, would reinforce a process of profound restructuring of RAI that defied his projection as a liberal. In February 2002 the government had agreed on a new board of management of RAI, with Berlusconi’s ally Agostino Saccà as the General Director and the conservative former member of the Constitutional Court, Antonio Baldassarre, as the president. After Berlusconi’s declarations in Sofia, Saccà promptly presented declining ratings of Biagi’s programme and suggested a transfer of Il Fatto to a less prominent time slot. Baldassarre initially rejected Berlusconi’s scolding of the RAI journalists, emphasizing that both were ‘a professional patrimony’ of the company, which would do ‘anything in its power to keep them in RAI’ (Repubblica, 23 April 2002).

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Widespread criticism of Berlusconi suggested that he had gone too far and that his attacks would eventually backfire. Eugenio Scalfari, founder and editor of the newspaper Repubblica, emphasized that the criticism against the premier from some of his own supporters made the censorship of the journalists an impossible endeavour (Repubblica 21 April 2002). The centreleft opposition also rejected Berlusconi’s ‘totalitarian drive’ and organized demonstrations to defend public television in all major cities (Repubblica 4 May 2002). The profound remodelling of RAI’s personnel structure suggested however a concise strategy by the Berlusconi government to control the state broadcaster. Besides the board of management, all directors of the channels RAI 1 and RAI 2, including those of the various news programmes were replaced, confirming the rule that RAI had become, what the journalist of the TG1 Roberto Olla called, ‘the ultimate prey of the spoils system’. A member of Forza Italia, Fabrizio Del Noce, became director of RAI 1. The Berlusconi-faithful Clemente Mimun, who had previously been vicedirector of the news of Mediaset’s Canale 5, took over the TG 1 – the most widely watched news programme in Italy. Former collaborators of Berlusconi at Mediaset were placed into key positions within RAI, further enhancing the concerns that the public company had become subordinated to private interests. In 2002 Deborah Bergamini was appointed director of marketing after having managed Berlusconi’s electoral campaigns since 1999. In 2007 she was suspended together with Agostino Saccà after police telephone tappings revealed backstage agreements between RAI and Mediaset over the coverage of news events with the aim of benefiting the centre-right (Repubblica 21 November 2007). Bergamini has been elected member of parliament for Berlusconi’s new political formation, Il Popolo della Libertà, in the 2008 General Elections. While it has been common practice by all political parties for a newly elected government to restructure RAI by placing its supporters in key positions, in light of Berlusconi’s media empire, the systematic occupation of RAI seemed to be a dramatic sign of political homogenization. Eighty-five per cent of audiences would now watch news-programmes managed by professionals who had been appointed directly or indirectly by the owner of Mediaset, the new Prime Minister of Italy. This disequilibrium would heavily affect the system of information in the years to come, denying the citizens access to a diversity of opinions, therefore demeaning the interactional negotiation of consent and dissent that should characterize the democratic public sphere (Habermas 2001). Many media workers themselves operated within a conflict of interest that cast doubts on their professional objectivity. Francesco Pionati, Political Editor of the TG 1, and Bruno Vespa, host of the television show Porta a Porta, both wrote weekly columns for Berlusconi’s news magazine Panorama. That the Pope’s strong admonition against war in Iraq was not featured by the TG 1 in February 2002 and that Berlusconi’s speech at the United Nations was modified in September 2003 by replacing the images of the empty floor by a full audience, were just the most striking example of a long list of manipulations (Messina 2004). This infuriated the majority of the editorial team of the TG1, who complained several times to the board of management and the President of the Republic about the repressive climate and frequent impositions under the new director (Repubblica 9 March 2005). Berlusconi and his party also attacked the TG 3, the only news programme that had remained under a director from the centre-left, for reporting the Premier’s appearance in court to testify on charges of corruption, and the Director General of RAI eventually subjected the team to an internal investigation. The programme Report was also heavily attacked for a relatively mild inquiry about Cosa Nostra in Sicily that according to the centre-right demeaned Sicily’s reputation as a tourist attraction (Ziniti 2005). More than engaging in constant and direct propaganda for the government, television during the second Berlusconi government alleviated social tensions, smoothed the

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most problematic aspects of social reality and ‘aestheticised the country’s everyday life by subjecting it to a continuous face lift’ (Diamanti 2004: 59). The manipulation of the television output and the lack of competition between the two duopolies RAI and Mediaset is especially problematic in light of the centrality of television as the main source of information for the majority of Italians and the structural weakness of the print press (see Chapter 12). During the aggressive debate, in a note to parliament the President of the Republic, Azeglio Ciampi, admonished that pluralism and editorial autonomy are basic elements in a democracy (Repubblica 19 April 2002), but the imminent closure of Biagi’s programme became increasingly evident. Sluggish negotiations between Biagi and the RAI board were interrupted by long periods of silence from the state broadcaster. The evasive attitude of the RAI management profoundly offended the veteran journalist, who felt that he deserved more respect after 41 years of successful service. Silences were followed by public expressions of mutual distrust. Biagi told newspapers: ‘It feels like the RAI-board is currying political favours’ (Corriere della Sera 22 May 2002). In the newspapers owned by the Berlusconi family, the journalist was attacked as arrogant and redundant (Ferrara 2002). Biagi was semi-officially offered the chance to stay on TV, with a programme that avoided any references to political issues, which he refused. He also declined offers to move to a less prominent time slot before the news. At the end of the television season in July 2002 Santoro’s programme Sciuscià and Biagi’s Il Fatto were both suspended by the board of management; Biagi’s contract was rescinded and he was paid €1.2 million in compensation. Santoro, bound to the company by a full-time contract, was asked to explore ‘different formats’ of a less political nature. While RAI continued to pay his large salary, it refused to give him a programme that would fit his contract. After the suspension, Santoro sued the RAI board for breach of contract. The courts decided in his favour in 2003, 2004 and 2005, urging RAI to reintegrate him according to the contractual directions that conceded him ‘full autonomy over a programme of political information and the composition of the editorial team in a prime-time slot’ (Tribunale di Roma 26 February 2005). The journalist started travelling the country to organize political protests against the Berlusconi government and decided in 2005 to stand in the European elections for the Democratici di Sinistra (DS). His venture into party politics was interpreted by many as a confirmation of his political bias and his resignation after only a few months of office caused widespread polemics about his apparent opportunism and the betrayal of his voters. Santoro has ever since regretted his brief political adventure. Enzo Biagi reacted to his dismissal from RAI with bitterness that was heightened by the fact that no parliamentary commission has taken up the case and that, within RAI, protests on the issue had been weak (Annozero 8 November 2007). He would have a late acknowledgement in 2003, when to the great embarrassment of the RAI board, a committee of television critics voted Il Fatto the best current affairs programme in the history of RAI. Santoro’s show Samarcanda was in third position. In 2007, one year after the victory of the centre-left in the general elections, both journalists were reintegrated in RAI: Biagi with a programme that was named after his first television show Rotocalco televisivo; Santoro with Annozero (Year Zero), a successful talk-show with documentary sections that is reminiscent of his previous formats and that covered highly contentious issues such as political corruption and the Mafia. The show regularly triggers criticism from politicians of all affiliations and has been heavily attacked by Berlusconi before the 2008 elections as overtly aggressive and ‘unacceptable for a modern democracy’ (TG 7 10 April 2008). Santoro is, however, also attacked from the left. The fear that critical journalism which features the most abysmal spheres of national politics will bring the country to the brink of institutional dissolution is widespread among the political elites and has

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recently been expressed in a front page editorial in the newspaper Repubblica, which accused Santoro of fostering the tendency towards ‘collective suicide’ with his ‘destructive’ programmes (Repubblica 6 October 2007).

An Evaluation of Berlusconi’s Media Policy In 2004 Italy’s rating by the media agency Freedom House moved downward from ‘Free’ to ‘Partly Free’ as a result of concentration of media ownership and political pressures on media outlets and journalists (Freedom House 2004). This warning increased national and international concerns about Berlusconi’s conflict of interest after his second electoral victory in 2001. This damaging analysis of press freedom in Italy was also based on Berlusconi’s personal attacks on journalists, the Bulgarian edict and the subsequent suspension of a number of media workers from RAI.8 Besides the international protests, his declarations in Sofia have damaged Berlusconi’s reputation among the moderate electorate and have infuriated the left-wing sections of civil society, which saw its worst fears of a totalitarian roll-over confirmed. Numerous intellectuals interpreted Berlusconi’s stance on the media as a postmodern version of a Fascist regime. Umberto Eco (quoted in Jaggi 2002) and Giovanni Sartori (2007) both pointed at the devastating impact of Berlusconi on Italian democracy. Rather than an example of Berlusconi’s tendency for off-the-cuff remarks, the Bulgarian edict was a carefully staged attack on Italian journalism. With the dramatic gesture in Sofia, which is unprecedented in the history of Western democracies, Berlusconi hoped to create a maximum impact that would work as a signal for thousands of journalists that any resistance to the new government would damage their careers. This reinforced traditional dynamics of conformism and self-censorship and left the few enclaves of investigative and critical journalism further isolated. Both journalists gave Berlusconi and his political supporters tangible reasons for indignation. They operated in a framework that was clearly antagonistic towards Berlusconi’s political project and used their programmes on occasions to attack him heavily on very sensitive grounds: Santoro with a broadcast that discussed Berlusconi’s presumed connection to the Mafia; Biagi with two programmes, shortly before the general election, that were more than indirect appeals to vote against him and that approximated his political project to Fascism. Biagi felt justified in his use of public television that was often directed against the leader of the opposition, by the implications of Berlusconi’s conflict of interest and his various judicial troubles. He feared the media magnate’s detrimental impact on Italian democracy and compared his engagement on many occasions to his anti-Fascist resistance. Santoro was adamant that Italian voters should know more about Berlusconi’s past and frequently featured those most ominous aspects of his biography that had generally been ignored by the media. At the heart of his strategy for counter-information was the conviction that Berlusconi’s campaign for political power was illegitimate. Santoro’s struggle against Berlusconi was reinforced by the fact that, according to him, the centre-left was unwilling to challenge the media magnate turned politician appropriately. Both journalists saw their role therefore as an oppositional substitute to the moderate approach of the centre-left within a highly politicized arena that demanded a clear taking of sides. The fundamental disequilibrium of media and political power in Italy lies at the heart of this conflict. As the leader of the centre-right, Berlusconi is politically legitimized by millions of voters, while the numerous judicial enquiries against him, the blatant conflict of interests that his enormous media power entails, trigger strong resistance among minority sections of Italian society, which regard Berlusconi as a threat to democracy and his appeal the result of media manipulation. This resistance was poorly absorbed by the institutional left, whose politicians

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continued to reject any attempts at what they called the ‘demonization’ of Berlusconi. Ultimately, Berlusconi’s popularity among the wider population forced the left onto the defensive and isolated the most critical sections of the Italian intelligentsia, while justifying to some extent Berlusconi’s radical rhetoric against anti-conformist journalists, who were seen as troublesome to the political class in general. Within a television system that is dominated by politicians, these individual figures could easily be isolated. The Prime Minister knew that Michele Santoro, in particular, was unpopular not only with his core voters, but also with politicians from the centre-left. The in-depth restructuring of personnel within RAI in 2002, the subsequent Bulgarian edict, the consistent efforts to change the editorial line of the Corriere della Sera in 2003 (see Chapter 12) and the scandals about the Premier’s direct interference into RAI’s programme output during his second government testify to a strong inclination to use his political influence to manipulate the media more directly after the general elections of 2001.

Conclusion Besides Berlusconi’s persona and his centrality for Italian politics, structural dispositions offered his populist agenda and tough hold on television ample space. His approach to RAI relied on some main characteristics of the Italian media: the strong subordination to political power; the concentration of ownership and the strong mediatization of the political contest in recent years that affected Italy, as it did most Western democracies (Mazzoleni, Schulz 1999). These characteristics have prevented the development of substantial autonomy that could have promoted the media’s essential role as the watchdog of the political system (Gundle 1997: 67). Berlusconi’s hold on the media needs to be conceptualized in this specific void that no major political force has so far been willing or able to fill. The Italian case contradicts research which strongly suggests that ‘attacks on press freedom are a dangerous expedient for those wishing to remain in office’ (Humphreys 1996: 52). One of the paradoxes of censorship is that it usually triggers parabolic and oppositional readings, which specifically resist what the censor wants. This is the main reason why interdiction is most powerful when it is ambiguous and not spelled out in acts of institutionalized repression (Holquist 1994: 444). Cultural and political resistances to the direct censorship and the increasing homologation of Italian television to Berlusconi’s political agenda did however develop in those sections of Italian cultural life – specifically cinema, theatre and internet culture – that targeted the educated minority strata. The highly centralized structure of Italian television only offered these resistances an appropriate outlet very occasionally. A free press seems to be a threat to most Italian politicians. This fear partially derives from the authoritarian political heritage of Fascism, Catholicism and Communism that have prevented a more liberal attitude towards the media, determining a high level of political control and conformism that distinguishes Italy from other European countries. The lasting relevance of these historical roots, which have generally been interpreted in terms of a backwardness of Italian journalism (Asor Rosa 1981), coincide with postmodern developments that affect the media globally in very similar terms. The historical heritage of a repressed fourth estate could therefore reveal a future perspective – a heavily controlled media that are used as a political and cultural instrument to mould the construction of social reality and to manipulate public opinion in Western democracies. Alexander Stille has argued that Berlusconi has forged a new political paradigm and that the manipulation of the media for political purposes is a growing phenomenon in the Western world (Stille 2006: 33). Ginsborg has also pointed at the potentially prototypical relevance of the Italian case (Ginsborg 2004: 10).

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Berlusconi’s conflict of interest and the severe distortions this has produced in terms of the country’s political culture are part of the systemic structural determinants of the Italian media that I have outlined in this chapter. These are reinforced by trends towards a reduction of the educational and informative potential of the media, the growing depoliticization of the public sphere and the increasing concentration of media ownership that characterizes most Western democracies and that find in Italy its most exemplary case.

Notes 1. I am grateful to Michele Santoro (RAI), Peppino Ortoleva (University of Turin), Daniele Luttazzi, Roberto Olla (RAI), Carlo Rognoni (RAI), Maria Cuffaro (RAI), Milena Gabanelli (RAI) and Tana Di Zulueta (Federazione dei Verdi) for agreeing to be interviewed for this chapter. Unless otherwise stated, any references to the opinions of these people found in this chapter are references to these interviews. 2. The term was coined by the journalist Simone Collini in the leftist newspaper L’Unità. 3. Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI); Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI). 4. The third channel of RAI was created in 1975 as a result of the broadcasting reform, starting off with regional programming under the name Rete 3. In 1982 the channel was renamed RAI 3. The director of the TG was Sandro Curzi from the PCI. The channel was dubbed ‘Telekabul’ because of its strongly leftist orientation. 5. ‘Partitocrazia’ (particracy) refers to ‘the abnormal, excessive and suffocating presence of parties both at the level of interest articulation (hence within civil society) and in decisionmaking (where parties expropriate state institutions)’ (see Pasquino 1989: 34). 6. The par condicio law was introduced in 2000 by the centre-left government to guarantee equal time on television to all political parties that are represented in parliament during the electoral campaign. Violations of the law can lead to sanctions by the parliamentary body Agcom (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni) (see www.agcom.it/L_naz/L_220200_28. htm). 7. Berlusconi refers here to the investigative journalist and writer Marco Travaglio. 8. Beside Michele Santoro and Enzo Biagi, a large number of journalists lost their jobs, were downgraded or marginalized within RAI. The most famous victims were Carlo Freccero, director of RAI 2 and the philosopher Massimo Fini, whose programme Cyrano was cancelled. There is a long list of journalists who are paid by RAI but who no longer work for the broadcaster.

References Asor Rosa, A. (1981), ‘I giornalisti, appunti sulla fisiologia di un mestiere difficile’, in Storia d’Italia, Annali 4, Intellettuali e potere, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 1228–57. Ansa (2001), ‘Riccardo De Corato, Franco Pontone e Salvatore Ragno, An’, 27 March. Biagi, E. (2005a), Quello che non si doveva dire. Milan: Rizzoli. — (2005b), Era ieri. Milan: Bur. Cavallari, A. (1990), La fabbrica del presente. Milan: Feltrinelli. Corriere della Sera (2002), ‘Programmi Rai, a rischio il fatto di Biagi’, 22 May. Crapis, G. (2006), Televisione e politica negli anni novanta. Rome: Meltemi. Diamanti, I. (2004), ‘Dal partito di plastica alla Repubblica fondata sui media’, Comunicazione Politica, 5, (1), pp. 51–63. Eco, U. (1990), ‘Neo-television’, in Z. Baransky and R. Lumley (eds), Culture and Conflict in Post-war Italy. London: Macmillan.

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Ferrara, G. (2002) ‘Lettera aperta a Enzo Biagi’, Panorama, 1 February. Flaiano, E. (1956), Diario notturno, Milan: Bompiani. Freedom House (2004), Country Report, available at: www.freedomhouse.org/inc/content/pubs/pfs/ inc_country_detail.cfm?country=2955&pf. Accessed 4 July 2007. Gamson, W. and Stuart, D. (1992), ‘Media discourse as a symbolic contest’, Sociological Forum, 7, (1), pp. 55–86. Giannini, M. (2001), ‘Le ossessioni del cavaliere’, Repubblica, 14 November. Ginsborg, P. (2004), Television, Power and Patrimony. London: Verso. Gomez, P. and Travaglio, M. (2004), Regime. Milan: Bur. Gramsci, A. (1971), Quaderni del carcere. Rome: Edizioni Riuniti. Gundle, S. (1997), ‘Television in Italy’, in J. A. Coleman and B. Rollet (eds), Television in Europe. Bristol: Intellect books. Habermas, J. (2001), Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Holquist, M. (1994), ‘The paradox of censorship’, PMLA, 109, (1), pp. 14–26. Humphreys, P. J. (1996), Mass Media and Media Policy in Western Europe. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jaggi, M. (2002), ‘Signs of the times’, Guardian, 12 October. Mancini, P. (1984), Videopolitica, Rome: Eri. — (2001), Il sistema fragile. Rome: Carocci. Mannucci, C. (1962), Lo spettatore senza libertà. Bari: Laterza. Mazzetti, L. (2007), Il libro nero della RAI. Milan: Bur. Mazzoleni, G. (2004), La comunicazione politica. Bologna: Mulino. Mazzoleni, G. and Schulz, W. (1999), ‘Mediatization of politics: A challenge for democracy’, Political Communication, (16), pp. 247–61. Messina, S. (2004), ‘Il dictat del “panino” ’, Repubblica, 26 January. Menduni, E. (1996), La più amata degli italiani. Bologna: Il Mulino. — (2007), Fine delle trasmissioni. Bologna: Il Mulino. Monteleone, F. (ed.) (2006), Televisione ieri e oggi. Venice: Marsilia. Murialdi, P. (2000), Storia del giornalismo italiano. Turin: Gutenberg. Observer (2003), ‘Britain isn’t Italy . . . yet’, 19 January. Ortoleva, P. (2002), ‘La televisione italiana 1974–2002’, in V. Castronovo and N. Tranfaglia (eds), La stampa italiana nell’età della televisione. Bari: Laterza. Pasquino, G. (1989), ‘Unregulated regulators: Parties and party government’, in P. Lange and M. Regini (eds), State Market and Social Regulation – New Perspectives on Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Repubblica (1991), ‘Parliamo di Mafia con Maurizio Costanzo’, 10 October. — (1992), ‘Santoro: Questi politici sfruttano la Tv’, 30 May. — (1994), ‘E Silvio scherza con Santoro’, 4 February. — (1995), ‘Brelusconi: Mi gioco tutto’, 4 May. — (2001), ‘La sinistra attacca: La solita cultura censoria’, 15 March. — (2001), ‘Satyricon: Il centro-destra diserterà i programmi RAI’, 15 March. — (2001), ‘Stop in RAI alla satira e ai programmi politici’, 21 March. — (2001), ‘L’Italia di Berlusconi è la peggiore mai vista’, 26 March. — (2002), ‘Berlusconi: “Nella mia RAI non ci sarà un Santoro di destra” ’, 9 February. — (2002), ‘Ciampi: Alla Rai servono autonomia e pluralismo’, 19 April. — (2002), ‘Non saranno licenziati, non saranno depurati’, 21 April. — (2002), ‘Baldassarre: Niente interferenze, neanche dal premier’, 23 April. — (2002), ‘L’Ulivo torna in piazza per l’information day’, 4 May. — (2005), ‘Bufera sul TG1, il Cdr contro Mimun’, 9 March. — (2007), ‘Su Biagi calcai la mano’, 25 April. — (2007), ‘Messaggi barbarici’, 6 October. — (2007), ‘Consulto Del Noce-Rossella sulle elezioni’, 21 November. — (2008), Walter sposta più voti, Silvio più simpatico, 16 February. Santoro, M. (1991), Oltre Samarcanda. Milan: Sperling & Kupfer.

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Santoro, M. (1996), Michele chi? Milan: Baldini & Castoldi. Sartori, G. (2007), Homo videns. Bari: Laterza. Stille, A. (2006) ‘Silvio’s shadow’, Columbia Journalism Review, September/October, pp. 33–41. Tranfaglia, N. (2005), Ma esiste il quarto potere in Italia? Milan: Baldini & Castoldi. Tribunale Civile di Roma (2005), Note autorizzate, hearing 26 January, Michele Santoro versus RAI S.p.A, Rome. Valentini, G. (2003), ‘Nel regno del conflitto d’interessi Mediaset affonda RAI e giornali’, Repubblica, 9 July. Ziniti, A. (2005), ‘Caso Sicilia, la RAI sconfessa Report’, Repubblica, 18 January.

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CONCLUSIONS

Splinters of Resistance Clodagh Brook and Charlotte Ross

In this concluding chapter, we offer our reflections on the multiple forms and strategies of opposition and resistance analysed in this volume. Although we will mention institutional politics, our focus here, as in the volume itself, is mainly on actions, texts and experiences that are outside institutional politics; that is, on the various social movements and cultural practices that arose in Italy in these years. These are the areas which, as we argued in the Introduction, are yet to receive due critical attention. We first explore what it is that groups and individuals resist, whether Berlusconi as symbol of certain values, or instead his policies and legislation. We then consider a number of factors that we identify as being central to the impact of opposition: unity and disunity among social movements and cultural players; the rapidly changing channels for the distribution of knowledge; the challenge to the monolinguism and hierarchy of the government and the traditional media associated with it by the pluralism present in the opposition. Finally, we offer some brief and preliminary observations about what seems to have happened to resistance since the re-election of Berlusconi in 2008.

Berlusconi: The Splintered Icon? Not all those resisting are resisting the same thing. Berlusconi has been interpreted very differently in the three different spheres which this book analyses (institutional politics, cultural resistances and social movements), and indeed within those spheres. We therefore open the Conclusions by asking what the focus of opposition really was among the various movements and practitioners in 2001–06. Cultural practitioners have tended to focus more on the figure, personality, and values represented by Berlusconi, than do other forms of resistance. The iconic status of the multimediated image of Berlusconi, ubiquitous in the years 2001–06, has become a key cultural signifier, not just for a set of policies, but for a set of values which it is seen to embody. Berlusconi’s determination to play the personality card in the political arena, and the resultant creation and projection of a distinctive, almost unchanging, physical image and recognizable personal characteristics, have resulted in the creation of an iconic image that appears unified and constant, one that belies the shifts in his policies or incoherencies in his value system. For artists, it is this image that often attracts attention, over and above the outlooks of his parties (Forza Italia, later Popolo della Libertà), or even, sometimes, over and above his politics. Many, if not most, of the cultural texts examined in this book grapple with the problems of dealing with a ubiquitous figure made familiar from decades of media exposure, and of imagining him anew. In such texts Berlusconi is many times named, and transformed, chameleon-like, into Commedia dell’Arte’s

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stock character Pantalone, Putin, Gigetto, Cavalier Enrico Magnoni, the Duke of Mantova, Napoleon, Mascelloni, Mussolini, or, in the tradition of Manzoni’s Unnameable, referred to simply as ‘he’ by Paolo Rossi. The Premier has been portrayed as sinister and diabolic (Nanni Moretti’s caiman), grotesque (Dario Fo’s two-headed anomaly), ridiculous (Sabina Guzzanti’s comic impersonations) and dictatorial (Beppe Grillo’s Berlusconi-Mussolini and Consolo’s confusions of the two characters in his Cavalier Mussoconi and Mascelloni). In re-imagining the image, these artists are following a principle, often used in political critiques, of defamiliarization, or making strange. They are taking an image which has been so overused in the media as to have become, to use Barthes’ designation, a myth (Barthes 1957), an image that seems natural, a sign of the way things are, not because this is necessarily the way things are, but just because, through repetition, this has come to seem so. On some level, defamiliarizing this image therefore aims to break the spell of naturalness, and to force spectators to really ‘see’ Berlusconi again, to rethink his position, and to challenge it. Re-imagining the icon is therefore always on some level a political strategy, an attempt to attack and break the icon’s hold. At times – as in Moretti’s Il caimano – this means literally de-facing it, so that we can see its ‘real’ face (as far as the artist is concerned) beneath the multimediated image; at other times – as in Dario Fo’s ‘anomalo bicefalo’ – this means stealing from it its carefully constructed unity by splintering it, merging it with other characters, or distorting it. By transforming the representation of the image of Berlusconi, artists take control away from the official image maker (Berlusconi, his publicity team, his party), and, risking censorship to do so, manipulate it themselves. The focus of much of the opposition on the part of cultural practitioners is therefore representation. This is reflected not only in the reworking of Berlusconi’s image, but also in the unusually high presence of metanarrative, metacinema and metatheatre found in oppositional cultural texts (see below). This is more than just a sign of endemic postmodernism, but exposes a concern about representability, both on an artistic/philosophical level (how to represent Berlusconi anew), but also on a practical one: how to represent Berlusconi in a period in which censorship has made the ability to represent him on some of the most important mediums for communication in Italy today, especially television, extremely difficult. We do not want to overstate the case here, however. Cultural practitioners, just like sociopolitical resistance both inside and outside parliament, have also discussed, and in depth, Berlusconi’s politics and policies: Biagi and Santoro, as political commentators, have sought to analyse Berlusconi’s position rather than devise a modified representation of him; Moretti’s Il caimano deals not just with the figure of Berlusconi, but also with Berlusconi’s ad personam legislation and attacks on the law courts; Rossi used theatre to discuss Berlusconi’s legislation. The premier’s wielding of power over the media, discussed in both Chapters 2 and 12, became a central focus for attacks in this period: from Guzzanti’s Viva Zapatero! to critiques on the pages of the Corriere della Sera and other newspapers; from the protest resignations in the media to Luttazzi’s blogs and sketches in the wake of his dismissal from television. However, it is worth highlighting, we think, that, while cultural practitioners do tackle many, if not all, of the issues dealt with by the social movements and also reflect criticisms made in parliament, most of these artists are also particularly drawn to the iconicity and myth of Berlusconi, and many of their political strategies are centred on trying to understand, defamiliarize and explode it. While cultural texts have frequently sought to resist the power of Berlusconi’s iconicity by reflecting it back in various forms – often either parodic or deconstructed through satire or through a fragmenting of the icon – opposing his influence by refusing to be won over by his image, social movements and political activists have on the whole engaged with the impact of his policies rather than with his persona. If Berlusconi has always implicitly been evoked in actions and statements that have opposed the policies of his governments, these actions have

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largely been focussed on perceived injustices enshrined in particular laws or policies, and on giving voice to those individuals and communities affected negatively by legislation (or lack thereof), identifying the ways in which their civil rights are compromised or unprotected. Some of these struggles have sought equal status for marginalized communities: the LGBT movement asked for equal rights to be extended to LGBT individuals (in particular, anti-discrimination legislation and the public recognition of partnerships); immigrant communities asked for the right to be valued as full members of society, not simply as a workforce of caretakers; the feminist movement (and other concerned groups) strove to ensure and improve women’s right to autonomy over their bodies. Other forms of resistance, both cultural and social, have tackled broader issues of precarity in the workplace, Italy’s involvement in Iraq, Berlusconi’s conflict of interest and ad personam laws, or the degree of militarization at the 2001 G8 in Genoa. To sum up, we can say that social, political and cultural resistance channels its criticisms in multiple directions, from attacking Berlusconi himself, as icon and figurehead, to attacking the values associated with him, as seen to be epitomized in his Mediaset channels, to attacking his policies and actions and targeting elements of government (such as the LN) or institutions (such as the Church) with whom Berlusconi has been seen to align himself. These targets are taken up to different extents in the different forms of resistance – with more emphasis on the iconic nature of Berlusconi found in cultural texts, an emphasis on value systems in cultural texts and in some social movements, and an emphasis on policies and legislation found as a common denominator throughout the various kinds of opposition. If these are the wide-ranging targets of opposition, the next questions are how opposition towards them was articulated, what strategies were used, and what impact this may have had.

Collaborative and Individual Resistance Not all those resisting use the same strategies of resistance. Resistance to Berlusconi during 2001–06 operated on multiple levels, both individual and collective, with many initiatives characterized by both significant individual and group contributions. Different modalities of articulating resistance (e.g. cultural texts, or protest action) may lend themselves more or less easily to collective engagement, but individual social and cultural actors have intervened both singly and as part of a collective. Of the texts and actions analysed in this volume, social movements are the clearest example of collaborative resistance; however changing understandings of identity, influenced by the thought of Stuart Hall among others (Hall 1990: 222–3), have placed an ever-increasing emphasis on the intersectional quality of our selves, with the result that individual concerns and identities have gained greater currency within movements in recent years. Two main forms of association can be identified: within movements or communities, and between movements (or between movements and political parties). The shifting constituencies of the new social movements, described as ‘segmented’ and ‘reticular’, with ‘hidden’ structures, render such collaborations, and the associations they produce, productively flexible but vulnerable to fragmentation (Melucci 1996: 115–16). Increased emphasis on variegated individual rather than monolithic collective objectives ideally still encourages a sense of collective purpose, with adherents ‘united in diversity’ (as Vittorio Foa discovered, see Chapter 6), rather than fragmented in purpose. Yet, as Ginsborg argues, effective association within movements and among cultural practitioners relies on an ability to ‘compromise’ (2005: 174), while the very multiplicity of perspectives and motivations embodied by the radically variegated and constantly evolving constituencies of new social movements and cultural texts may render this difficult. The dissolution of the No Global movement due to its evolving focus exemplifies this. Moreover, the compromise required for

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unity may feel like a step too far for some, and push them to choose ‘individual mobility’ as an alternative to collective activism, potentially leading to the breakdown of movements. This is especially the case in instances when the context is favourable to improving individual circumstances and where ‘the costs of [collective] mobilization are high’ (Melucci 1996: 31), or it seems less likely to achieve the desired effects. Within social movements, some activists have indeed opted for ‘individual mobility’, stepping back from collective action through frustration or disagreement with collective objectives, or a desire to direct their energies into localized action such as community groups, which in their view offer a better chance of tangible results than a larger campaign. On a negative note, the momentum of a movement can be slowed or dissipated by this type of fragmentation. However, the small-scale actions undertaken by such individuals are arguably just as vital to improving the experiences of marginalized or disadvantaged groups as a large-scale lobbying for legislative change may be, since they offer day-to-day support and possibilities for existential self-realization. Taking a broader view, some collaborative alliances between movements have proved effective and productive in terms of fostering a sense of solidarity (for example the alliance between the Women’s Movement and the Movement of Movements), but this has not ultimately enabled them to achieve their concrete goals. Despite the significant value of collective association as a supportive experience, frustration at the lack of concrete progress has contributed to fractures and disagreements, particularly surrounding the modalities of what has been called ‘state-movement interpenetration’ (Jenness, Meyer and Ingram 2002: 294). Melucci argues that movements cannot function without political representation (1996: 117), but this could come from outside institutionalized politics. In the Italian context, we might tentatively identify a desire by movements to manage their own political representation, rather than align themselves with one ‘side’ or another: for example, the LGBT movement is seeking ever more autonomy from political parties (despite a continuing desire to lobby parliament); some feminist communities have been mistrustful of support offered by state feminism; affiliation between associations and political parties, such as between immigrant activist associations and the left, has at times been marked by a struggle of competing agendas, which risks blunting the edge of potentially powerful demonstrations or campaigns through a form of in-fighting comparable to that manifest in the political parties of the left. There seems to be a growing disillusionment with the limited impact of mass demonstrations or the lobbying of political institutions which has increased resentment towards the political class as a whole, resulting in the actions by Beppe Grillo and others who are forging new channels through which to express their frustration. With regard to cultural texts and artists, these years saw little coordinated and united work emerge, and the emphasis on the variegated individual rather than the monolithic collective is even more striking. Some artists, like Vincenzo Consolo, seem to have chosen to work largely on their own. Some, on the other hand, seem actually to have worked against each other or failed to give due support: Umberto Eco launched the idea of Pasta Cunegonda, but did not get involved while others were organizing the online protest inspired by his proposal; Moretti recently distanced himself from popular comedians like Sabina Guzzanti and Beppe Grillo. In addition to those who appear to have made a personal choice to work alone, there must also be added the names of those TV personalities like Enzo Biagi and Michele Santoro, who were excluded from the RAI, and thus found themselves isolated. Only rarely, therefore, was any kind of collective stand made: Comedian Sabina Guzzanti aligned herself with fellow comedians and actors Dario Fo, Beppe Grillo, Daniele Luttazzi and others in both her TV programme, Raiot, and in her film Viva Zapatero!; Nanni Moretti aligned himself with a small group of film directors and producers in his film Il caimano; writers Umberto Eco, Antonio Tabucchi and Vincenzo Consolo made a collective stand when they refused to be considered the official Italian delegates

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at the Salon des Livres in Paris. However, these are exceptions to the general trend of this period, which instead sees individual artists, rather than collectives, contesting Berlusconi’s position (although it should be remembered that these individuals are not working alone in an absolute sense, in that they had to attain a certain level of infrastructural support in order to bring their endeavours forward). Among cultural practitioners, what emerges, whether through personal choice or through constraint, is a ‘resisting Pantheon’ (see Chapter 7), not a unified forum. Given the gravity of the threat to freedom of expression and the inability of the institutional left to mount an effective opposition (see Chapter 5), it is perhaps tempting to ask why there has not been greater collaboration, and to regard with some cynicism the ambition of particular artists to follow a specific career path. The tendency towards splintered rather than united opposition might be seen as a factor that has prevented actions and cultural texts from gathering the momentum that one might have thought they would generate as potentially transformative phenomena. Yet it must be recognized that while they have not necessarily effected concrete transformations, some cultural practitioners and activists, such as Grillo and Guzzanti, have attracted a phenomenal amount of attention, and some texts have gained extremely high degrees of political significance: Moretti’s Il caimano, for example, was hailed as a film that might have the power to swing the results of the general elections (see Chapter 8). However, the determination of individuals to carve out a personal, existential space, and to insist on a plurality of oppositional voices means that their shared resistance to Berlusconismo has been prevented from crystallizing into homogeneous oppositional communities, encouraging constant reinvention and a multiplicity of perspectives, just as multiple perspectives have been and continue to be expressed across social movements.

Distribution and Media Crucial to the visibility, and therefore impact, of oppositional players in this period are the transformations in the kinds of distribution available to political groups, social movements and cultural practitioners, and, importantly, their ability to use the available distribution creatively, extending and adapting it. The increasing presence of the internet in the years 2001–06 and the rapid global developments in its technological capacity and social use has revolutionized and rapidly expanded oppositional space. Whereas in 2001 television was still the most important medium for distributing political messages and the internet was having little impact, by 2006 the picture has changed, as internet usage reached more than 30 per cent of the population. The internet, a growing medium for distribution, has provided a new home for refugees from television, such as Luttazzi and Grillo. It is, as Vaccari has argued (see Chapter 10), also a space where variegated forms of new protest are finding a forum for expression and organization. It is not just the increasing presence of the internet that is significant, but the porous nature of the contact between mediums of communication that characterizes the period from 2001–06. Television programmes become theatre plays, theatre becomes television, or is recorded onto DVDs which are then distributed in bookshops and newspaper stands. Writers turn from writing books to producing articles in newspapers. Journalists write novels. Although it is true that interpenetration of the arts has been a feature of twentieth century Italy – best embodied perhaps in the figure of Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose work spanned theatre, poetry, narrative, film, and journalism – the explosion of distributive solutions in contemporary Italy has seen a rapid escalation on the crossing of traditional boundaries between mediums. In the period in question, oppositional material was distributed through internet blogs, smart mobs, satellite tv, oppositional magazines, dvds sold through traditional channels and the internet, dvds screened at political meetings and – through the distributor Cinedance – in nightclubs, and so on. In other words, whereas what has traditionally been thought of as the mainstream

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media – newspapers, tv, magazines – has been used by institutional actors for getting their ideas across, oppositional actors have begun to use an archipelago of increasingly important distributive solutions, which while currently still far from rivalling the visibility of the traditional media, were growing remarkably rapidly during this period and are capable of reaching a wide audience, both national – and through the internet – international. As outsiders to the political system, the social movements and cultural practitioners are using strategies that differ radically from institutionalized ones, and these are less mainstream, more experimental and avant-garde. Censorship, rather than being a wholly negative phenomenon, has had the positive benefit of encouraging practitioners and movements to consider new media and to use it to their strategic advantage. In effect, this means that they have been tendentially more inclined to use the internet and, to a lesser extent also satellite, which with the increasing visibility of both mediums, means that censorship has actually been indirectly advantageous – in allowing opposition to progress further in mediums that are fast becoming the mainstream. The effect of this, as we will argue later, is evident in new protests during the fourth Berlusconi government. Social movements and smaller collectives have adopted the internet as an economic means of disseminating their views and reaching out to enter into dialogue with those who share their views. Websites, discussion forums and listservs have proved vital to many of those who feel disenfranchised in Berlusconi’s Italy, or who wish to construct support networks and develop specific initiatives, for example. However, while it undoubtedly provides a valuable forum in which to begin mobilizing, or in which to enable and valorize alternative identities and positions to dominant discourses (as discussed in the next section), the problems inherent in current modes of internet use need to be highlighted. The internet remains a deterritorialized, virtual sphere, and decisive steps may be required to translate internet exchanges into concrete, physically visible articulations of dissent. Oppositional initiatives such as smart mobs and the Pasta Cunegonda boycott are clear examples of temporary collaborations which soon atrophied on both a virtual and a ‘real’ level, perhaps because they lacked a pre-internet territorial origin in existing activism or social networks. Some interactive websites launched by political parties also failed to excite significant levels of interest: Prodi’s ‘La fabbrica del programma’ and ‘Incontriamoci’ exemplify an unsuccessful attempt to use the internet to compensate for a lack of real party infrastructure, and proved markedly less successful than traditional door-to-door campaigning (see Chapter 3). Of course, some internet-based initiatives, especially those which seek to build virtual bridges between people that are then put into place in the ‘real’ environment, or which triangulate new and mainstream media, have proved less transient than the Pasta Cunegonda boycott; for instance, Grillo’s blog, the ‘Sono un coglione’ campaign (see Chapter 10), and the numerous feminist web communities have displayed far greater longevity (see Chapter 14): yet their ability to impact on the socio-cultural panorama beyond the personal sphere of members’ individual experiences remains limited. Associations working to improve the rights of immigrants to Italy have also used the internet to publicize their political opposition to legislation, but face-to-face contact between advisors and their constituency of clients is arguably essential to their work in supporting such individuals, since access to the internet cannot be taken for granted, and the importance of interpersonal relationships in the realm of lived experience as a way to counterbalance the alienating effects of racist and xenophobic treatment cannot be underestimated.

Shattering Hierarchies and Enacting Transgression Opposition to Berlusconi is characterized by a shattering of hierarchies, resultant from social movements and cultural practitioners emphasizing and strategically engaging in spontaneity,

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interactivity and hybridity. This has occurred on many levels: online collaboration has begun to take on the features of bottom-up rather than top-down initiatives (see Chapter 10); theatre, such as Fo and Rame’s and Rossi’s, interacts with its audiences; the girotondi, in their defence of democracy, linked hands in a circle to show solidarity and protection (see Chapter 6). Meetings such as the European Social Forum in Florence (2002) have enabled many Italian activists to participate in globally-networked, alternative forms of non-hierarchical political communities, giving them vital experience of how to channel their frustration with existing political structures in a positive direction. Rather than power being conceived of as centralized in government, we have a situation in which non-specialists and those outside the traditional structures of power seek out and disseminate knowledge and information. While not a new phenomenon, this is still significant and suggests widespread dissatisfaction with the hierarchy of traditional politics. Similarly, the postmodern techniques of hybridism, interactivity, and plurality are used, sometimes explicitly, as a way of demonstrating dissatisfaction with the general lack of interactivity of the traditional mediums of political communication used by the political institutions: televisions, magazines, and newspapers. Audience participation in Rossi’s theatre challenges the non-interactivity of TV with its univocal messages which maintain the status quo – supporting both the political elites and a set of values expressed through Mediaset programming and the copycat RAI programming, which has absorbed much of ethos of Berlusconi’s channels. The ‘authoritative, oppressive, and vacuous monolinguism’ (see Chapter 11) of the Italian government is undermined by narratives, like Consolo’s and Grillo’s, which are linguistically plural and varied, merging divergent discourses. Closely related to the shattering of hierarchies is the transgressive nature of some of the cultural production and activist initiatives in these years, which ‘go beyond’ a series of conventions in various different ways. Cultural texts in these years push limits in their portrayal of Berlusconi. This represents a going beyond in terms of the medium itself – of language or image – through metatheatre (Rossi), metacinema (Moretti), metalanguage (Consolo), where the role of the medium itself is in question and seems to be pushed to its limit in order to contain the problematic enormity of the icon. The meta-art of much of the work on Berlusconi, is a way of drawing attention to the medium itself as not-television and therefore beyond the limits of Berlusconi’s power. Transgression figures too in a pushing out of the boundaries of taste. The ‘I am a moron’ internet smart mob, Grillo’s often obscene carnivalesque language, Fo’s grotesque satire all fall into this category. So too does the ultimate transgression, repeatedly found in cultural texts, of the murder or death of Berlusconi, which transgresses not so much taste as civil order. The excess that Berlusconi’s figure has attracted is somewhat paradoxical, however. On one level it overturns him, showing the disgust and anger that he creates; on another level, however, it in fact mirrors Berlusconi’s own methods: his politically incorrect gaffes, his own bad language. Transgression, in fact, finds its origins in Berlusconi’s own figure as a transgressive politician. The adoption of Berlusconi’s own tool – transgression – by oppositional players, is nonetheless useful in awakening subjects from the ‘sleep caused by Berlusconi’s cultural as well as political propaganda’ (see Chapter 9), and, in exposing the limits of, and therefore countering the power, of Berlusconi. Echoing challenges to the limits of genre enacted by cultural texts, as well as the linguistic pluralities of narratives criticizing Berlusconi, social movements and activist communities have transgressed boundaries by challenging monolithic categories of identity. Just as their articulations of dissent have focussed predominantly on those afflicted by perceived social injustices rather than on the iconic figure of Berlusconi, so their transgressions have focused on their own identities and not the medium or the Premier himself. For particular communities who feel disenfranchized and marginalized as ‘other’, transgressing the discursively constructed and often

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deeply prejudiced boundaries separating them from other ‘legitimate’ citizens has involved a blurring of dominant social categories: feminist collectives have sought to redefine the category of ‘woman’ as traditionally conceived, rendering it radically plural and fluid; LGBT associations have sought to involve those outside the movement in their demonstrations, encouraging heterosexuals to participate in Pride parades; likewise, campaigns to improve the rights of immigrants and migrant workers have sought to dissolve the stigmatizing category of criminalized ‘other’ imposed on them by the discourses of the LN, for example.

The Impact of Opposition It is hard to measure in precise terms what has been achieved by the articulation of discontent in this period. However, we can say that the concrete effects appear to have been few, and to have involved or touched a minority of the population: socio-political resistance, which sought to change legislation, largely failed to achieve its key objectives (the introduction of civil unions sought by the LGBT movement, or the amendments to Law 40/2004, for example), and groups such as No.Di admit that although they are successful in helping a small number of individuals, their actions are having little effect on nationwide policy or the overall experience for immigrants to Italy. In the cultural sphere, personalities affected by the Bulgarian edict and censorship more generally had to work hard to regain visibility; some, like Guzzanti and Santoro did not make it back onto television until after the fall of Berlusconi in 2006 (although throughout the 2001–06 period their extra-televisual presence continued to be highly influential and gain coverage in the press); others, like Biagi, never returned to television at all. Despite this lack of concrete progress, some positive impact can be identified. Importantly, solidarity has been enhanced and a sense of productive collectivity has come about even in situations of precarity, through opposition taking the form of community building and socio-cultural support networks that were established and reinforced at local level. Indeed, many groups who identified their interests as ‘marginalized’ by the government systematically refused to assume the position of victim, instead insisting on their value as themselves, and even using humour in their activism (feminist collectives), or celebrating the aspect of their identities which had led to them being discriminated against (Pride parades). Similarly, figures like Biagi refused to compromise their positions to regain their former status and remained important icons of resistance. Activist groups and associations have sought through large and small-scale protest, voiced in a variety of forums including the piazza and the internet, to bring the concerns of marginalized groups, or of those on whom legislation has impacted negatively, to the awareness of the population as a whole. It is certainly not the case that only large scale mobilization, or change at the level of nationally valid legislation counts as ‘successful’ resistance; indeed, individual or smaller initiatives are equally vital, and may have much more profound effects on those involved. Circulation of documentaries like Quando c’era Silvio (Cremagnani and Deaglio 2005) were initially limited (100,000 copies), but still had an important impact, creating debate. Although audiences for oppositional material are smaller and more splintered than mainstream audiences, there is still an audience. In a similar vein, the feminist practice of partire da sé may touch a smaller number of people than a national demonstration, but its ongoing character as a modality of being in the world means it is enacted with much greater frequency. When one begins to examine microcosms of opposition, the line between resistance and non-resistance becomes blurred, so that, even the existence of those who seem not to rebel is a warren of minute, individual, autonomous tactics and strategies which counter and inflect the visible facts of overall domination,

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and whose purposes and calculations, desires and choices resist any simple division into the political and the apolitical. (Gordon 1980: 257) On the one hand this might suggest that individual resistance is dissolved into apparent acquiescence, as individuals faced by the apparently insurmountable inflexibility of political structures quietly retreat into the ‘reassuring frustration’ identified by Agamben (quoted in D’Avanzo, 2008); however, it also opens the way to explorations of ‘evasion’, for example, as a form of resistance on a continuum with direct action, broadening the networks and modalities of opposition. Given that Berlusconi has now returned to power, with a convincing majority, these broad networks may well prove vital.

Berlusconi 2008 Ultimately, with Berlusconi’s re-election, it appears that opposition has failed to fulfil its most central aim. Moreover, longstanding voices of political opposition are no longer represented in Parliament: these include Rifondazione Comunista. Nevertheless, at the time of writing (November 2008), oppositional voices have not gone away, and have again attained visibility. Although it is too early to hazard observations about what opposition might look like under the fourth Berlusconi government, there are a few points worth making in relation to discontinuities and continuities with what we have found in the 2001–06 period. Production of texts that criticize Berlusconi look set to continue with new films (such as Gian Luca Rossi and Daniele Giometti’s Ho ammazzato Berlusconi (2008)) and other cultural texts already beginning to emerge. Some of the movements considered in this volume, such as the LGBT and Feminist movements, have continued to mobilize, and cultural practitioners like Dario Fo and Moretti are still involved politically. In 2008, mediums for protest have continued to be in constant evolution and are having a significant effect over the dissemination of political attacks. The piazza is still a key focus for protest in a country where the word is used as a synedoche for popular protest. Increasingly, real space is interacting with virtual space: the organisation of protests takes place on the web; video recordings of events are disseminated through YouTube, and through online papers and websites of protest groups; discussions of protests take place before, during and after the event in dedicated weblogs. Even violent acts, such as sabotage, become virtual, as seen in the blacking out of MP and Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti’s home page by a slogan on the part of left-wing students on 2 November 2008. However, there are also signs of new developments. The wave of student protests, which arose in the Autumn of 2008 against cuts to secondary and university education proposed by Berlusconi’s government (Law 113/2008), has been a significant development. Students and teachers have held classes in the open air, organised sit-ins and mass demonstrations in public spaces. On 29 October 2008, Piazza Navona became the focus for protest, as a mass antigovernmental rally took place. The reappearance of a vocal student movement, which had had a relatively insignificant presence during 2001–06, may be seen as signalling a new phase of radical protest. A second notable development is the return of political satire, blocked by Berlusconi in 2001–06, to television, with numerous shows satirizing politicians from the Berlusconi camp. Much new satire has emerged and Sabina Guzzanti is back on television through her occasional appearances on Santoro’s current affairs programme, Annozero. She is joined on the networks by her sister Caterina, by Paola Cortellesi, and other satirists who critique politicians of the right (and also of the left) on their shows (Palestini 2008a; Palestini 2008b). The return of satire to television – the main medium through which the majority of the population gathers political intelligence in a

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country where the market (and the influence) of newspapers is relatively modest – alongside the rapid development of internet protest is clearly a significant development. Overall, the impression that emerges at the beginning of the fourth Berlusconi government is that, while radical left-wing opposition has been wiped out from within the political institutions by the absence of parties like RC in the Chamber of Deputies, oppositional protest – after a brief lull in the wake of the elections – is present once again in the piazza, on the internet, and – after being denied a position there for many years – on television, through satire. On the other hand, despite oppositional protest, Berlusconi’s position seems stronger than ever. Although it is not unusual for a newly-elected Prime Minister to enjoy a honeymoon period, this popularity seems more solid than before since, unlike in 2001–06 when his leadership was questioned from within his own coalition (see Chapter 4), he is now governing at the head of a coalition of which he appears more in control than previously: the UDC is not longer part of the coalition and the AN is in the process of merging with his new PdL party. It remains to be seen to what extent the splinters of resistance that remain, and that may evolve, will manage to resist a further embedding of Berlusconismo in the Italian cultural and political context. Certain oppositional figures and movements seem sufficiently galvanized to at least continue resisting the advances of Berlusconismo, holding back changes and developments with which they disagree. However, the project of successfully opposing and displacing Berlusconi may prove as difficult as holding back the tide.

References Barthes, R. (1957), Mythologies, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Cremagnani, B. and Deaglio, E. (2005), Quando c’era Silvio. Storia del periodo berlusconiano, Luben Production, Diario, Italy. D’Avanzo, G. (2008), ‘La riduzione al silenzio’, Repubblica, 18 June. Ginsborg, P. (2005), Silvio Berlusconi: Television, Power, Patrimoney. London and New York: Verso. Gordon, C. (1980), ‘Afterword’, in C. Gordon (ed.), Foucault, M., Power, Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, Brighton: The Harvester Press, pp. 229–59. Jenness, V., Meyer, D. S. and Ingram, H. (2002) (eds), ‘Conclusion. Social movements, public policy and democracy: Rethinking the nexus’, in Routing the Opposition: Social Movements, Public Policy and Democracy, University of Minnesota Press, pp. 288–306. Hall, S. (1990), ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’, in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.) Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart, pp. 222–37. Melucci, A. (1996), Challenging Codes. Collective Action in the Information Age, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Palestini, L. (2008a), ‘Politica da ridere’, Repubblica, 4 November. — (2008b), ‘Corrado Guzzanti torna in tv: “Con la satira non si spostano voti” ’, Repubblica, 4 November. Rossi, G. L. and Giometti, D. (2008), Ho ammazzato Berlusconi, Collepardo, Italy.

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Index

7Plus

40

abortion 63, 79, 191, 193, 194, 197 Abruzzese, A. 97, 98 Adorno, T.W. 148 ad personam legislation 9, 20, 36, 74, 87, 89, 91, 232, 233 Afghanistan (invasion of) 84, 85, 195 Agamben, G. 11, 239 AGCOM (Autorità per le garanzie nelle comunicazioni) 14n Agnelli, G. 169, 169, 171 Aiti, F. 207 Alberti, F. 111 Grazie Berlusconi! 111 Albertini, L. 163 Albertini, M. 23 Alfano law 14n see also Immunity law Alfieri, V. 132 Della Tirannide 132 Alleanza Cattolica 206 Alleanza Nazionale (AN) 2, 13n, 36, 60–5, 68nn, 73, 154, 159n, 178, 179, 192, 205, 207, 223, 240 Allegrini, A. 194, 198, 199, 200n Amato, G. 71, 83 Amato-Ferrero Circular 185 Amyot, G. 65, 68 Andreotti, G. 127, 178, 221 Andrews, G. 24, 212 Annunziata, L. 8, 104 Anselmi, G. 165 anti-capitalism 25, 84, 205 anti-globalization movement 12, 53, 75, 77, 83–6, 89, 90, 180, 211, 233 Attac (The Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens) 84 ‘Black bloc’ 84 antitrust legislation 4, 6, 10, 35, 42, 43 Apocalypse Now 119 Archibugi, F. 113 ARCI 85, 180, 185, 188n, 205 Arcobaleno 80 Asor Rosa, A. 10, 164

DAlbertazzi_Index_Finals.indd 241

Association of European Journalists 8 autonomy 9, 61, 87, 90, 91, 163, 164, 166, 170, 172, 190, 194, 199, 209, 211, 220–2, 227, 233 Babette Factory 150, 158n 2005 dopo Cristo 150 Baccini, M. 66–7, 68n Bagnasco, A. 22 Balbo, L. 207 Baldassarre, A. 223 Banca d’Italia 182 Banco Ambrosiano 164 Barbagallo, A. 120n Barthes, R. 151, 232 Battaglia, I. 213n Battista, P. 171 BBC 102, 106n, 219 Words Apart 219 Beha, O. 149 Sono stato io 149 Belillo, K. 207 Bellocchio, M. 121 Bellomo, V. 137, 145n Benigni, R. 89, 111, 223 La tigre e la neve 111 Bergamini, D. 224 Berlusconi, S. passim Berlusconismo 1, 10, 12, 33, 86, 199, 204, 235, 240 Berlusconizzazione 8 control on other sectors AC Milan 2, 33 Doris Group 33 Mediadigit 33 Mediolanum Group 33 media control, publishing Einaudi 33 Foglio (Il) 33, 41, 85 Frassinelli 33 Giornale (Il) 4, 33, 41 Gruner & Jahr 33 Hearst Corporation 33 Mondadori 4, 6, 9, 32, 33, 41, 69n, 159n, 166 Panorama 4, 33, 41, 224 Publiespaña 33 Publitalia 6, 32, 33

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242 INDEX

Berlusconi, S. passim – continued Rodale Press 33 Sorrisi & Canzoni 4, 33 Sperling & Kupfer 33 media control, TV, cinema, radio Blockbuster Video Italia 33 Breizh 33 Canale 5 4, 32, 33, 224 Dallas 4 Endemol 33, 43n Fascino 33 Fininvest 4, 6, 33–5, 100, 120n, 141, 159n Italia 1 4, 32, 100 Mediaset 4, 6, 7, 14n, 33, 35, 38–40, 43nn, 86, 88, 98–100, 103, 104, 110–12, 120, 126, 136, 137, 190, 194, 220, 221, 224, 225, 233, 237 Media Shopping Spa 33 Mediavivere Srl 33 Medusa Film Spa 33, 110 MTV Italia 36, 43n Rete 4 4, 32, 33, 40, 41, 103, 104, 143 R.T.I. production 33 Telecinco 6, 33, 166 Videotime Spa 33 Berlusconi’s Mousetrap 121n Bernardi, S. 118, 119 Bertelsmann Group see Gruner & Jahr under Berlusconi, S. Bertinotti, F. 77, 78 Bertolucci, B. 89 Bertozzo, G. 211, 213n Biagi, E. 12, 41, 89, 92, 161, 162, 168, 217, 220, 222, 223, 225, 226, 232, 234, 238 Il Fatto di Enzo Biagi 222, 223, 225 Rotocalco televisivo 222, 225 Biagi, M. 89, 92 Biagi law 84 Big Brother see Endemol under Berlusconi, S. Bindi, R. 206 Biondani, P. 166, 168, 172n Biondi, A. 206 Blob 106nn Bobbio, N. 34, 35, 91 Boccassini, I. 13, 92n, 117 Boccia, M.L. 195 Bolaffi, A. 154 Bonaiuto, A. 117 Bonolis, P. 125 Bonsaver, G. 158 Borelli, C. 111 Lilli e il cavaliere 111 Borghi, L. 192 Borrelli, F.S. 13, 87

DAlbertazzi_Index_Finals.indd 242

Bossi, U. 20, 61, 68n, 178 Bossi-Fini law 62, 84, 177–85, 187 Bradbury, R. 155, 156, 158 Fahrenheit 451 155, 158 Brecht, B. 117, 125 Bremner, R. 102, 115 Bremner, Bird & Fortune 102 Bresso, M. 49 Bruce, L. 125 Bulgarian edict 217, 218, 222, 223, 226, 227, 238 see also censorship Burns, J. 112, 148 Busarello, R. 210, 213n Bush, G. 2, 77, 83, 111, 121n, 139, 141 Buttiglione, R. 207, 214n Buy, M. 114 Buzzati, D. 172n Cairola, A. 111 Citizen Berlusconi 111, 121n Calopresti, M. 111, 120 L’abbuffata 111 Camilleri, A. 89, 150, 154 Il giro di boa 150 Camorra 25 Canfora, L. 115 Canzonissima 99 Capezzone, D. 121n Capitalia 164 capitalism 63, 77, 125, 195, 198, 205, 218 Carboni, B. 111, 119, 120 Shooting Silvio 111, 119, 120 Cardinale, S. 40 Caritas 180, 184–6, 187nn, 188nn Carlino Sera 222 Carrà, R. 155, 159n Caruso, G. 150 Chi ha ucciso Silvio Berlusconi 150 Casarini, L. 180 Casini, C. 201n Casini, P. 59 Castelli, R. 9 Casa della Libertà (CdL) 62–6, 68n, 71, 178, 180, 217, 221, 223 censorship 11, 41, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103–5, 124–6, 129, 130, 132, 153, 158, 227, 232, 236, 238 Chamberlain, N. 141 Chamber of Deputies 55n, 59, 68nn, 74, 79, 190, 212, 214n, 240 Channel Four 102 Che Guevara, E. 142 Christian Democracy see Democrazia Cristiana Church (role of) 25, 30n, 63–7, 79, 104, 193, 194, 197, 198, 201n, 204, 206–8, 210, 212, 227, 233

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INDEX 243

Ciampi, C.A. 21, 29, 225 Cinedance 111, 235 cinema 33, 36, 39, 110–20, 121nn, 227 Cirami law 74, 86, 89 civil society 1, 3, 12, 13n, 48, 81, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92n, 113, 153, 182, 187, 226, 228n civil unions 68n, 193, 204, 206, 208, 209, 238 Cixous, H. 201n Clean Hands see Mani pulite Clinton, B. 2 Cofferati, S. 12, 49–51, 75, 76, 81n cold war 5, 13n, 20, 24, 29 Collini, S. 228n Colombo, G. 13 comedy 98–100, 102, 104, 105, 116, 117, 119, 128, 129 Come On, Italy! see Forza Italia commedia all’italiana 121n Commedia dell’Arte 102, 125, 231 Commissione per le pari opportunità e per i diritti degli omossessuali 207 Commissione sulla sessualità, discriminazione e integrazione sociale 209 Communism 4, 5, 29, 84, 178, 227 Communist Party see Partito Comunista Italiano Concia, P. 206 conflict of interests 2, 8, 11, 21, 34–7, 40–2, 43nn, 60, 86, 87, 103, 141, 143, 161, 168–9, 171, 221, 224, 226, 228 Consolo, V. 148–58, 159nn, 232, 234, 237 ‘Corista a domicilio’ 158 ‘La maschera, il trucco, il fango radioattivo’ 153 ‘La scomparsa delle lucciole’ 157 Lo spasimo di Palermo 150, 153 Nottetempo, casa per casa 159n ‘Replica eterna’ 154–8 Retablo 152, 153 Constitution 2, 21, 30n, 35, 43n, 89, 91, 105, 119, 124–9, 131, 132, 141, 207 Constitutional Court 9, 14n, 32, 35, 43n, 74, 103, 143, 172n, 220, 223 Cordelli, F. 150 Il duca di Mantova 150 Cordero, F. 118 correntone 73 Corriere della Sera 9, 41, 76, 106n, 161–72, 188n, 218, 227, 232 Corsi, R. 195 Cortellesi, P. 239 Cosa Nostra 25, 101, 224 see also Mafia Cosmopolitan see Hearst Corporation under Berlusconi, S.

DAlbertazzi_Index_Finals.indd 243

Council of State 40, 41 Craxi, B. 3–5, 44n, 46, 47, 71, 153, 158n, 165 Craxism 42, 44n Cremagnani, B. see Deaglio, E. CSM (Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura) 9, 91 Cuffaro, M. 228n Curzi, S. 228n CUS (Contratti di Unione Solidale) 211 see also civil unions; PACS Daladier, E. 141 Dalai, A. 131 D’Alema, M. 35, 40, 71, 75, 92, 101, 102, 133n, 167, 170, 221 Dalla Chiesa, N. 88, 90 Dandini, S. 102, 103 D’Annunzio, G. 159n D’Antona, M. 92 D’Antoni, S. 72 D’Arcais, P.F. 88, 91 Davigo, P. 13 Deaglio, E. 110, 111, 119, 120n Diario 110, 111 Quando c’era Silvio 110, 111, 115, 121n, 238 Uccidete la democrazia 120–1n De Bortoli, F. 9, 161–3, 166–70, 172nn De Capitani, E. 115, 116, 118 De Corato, R. 223 Decreto Salvareti 40 De Gregori, F. 89 Della Porta, D. 190, 191 Dell’Utri, M. 105, 132 Del Noce, F. 224 De Luca, E. 154 Democratici di Sinistra (DS) 5, 71–80, 81n, 87, 101, 193, 205, 209, 225 Democratic Party see Partito Democratico Democrazia Cristiana (DC) 4, 5, 7, 25, 60, 63–6, 68n, 78, 99, 158, 164, 206, 218, 221, 222 Democrazia e Libertà (DL) 71 see also Margherita Democrazia Europea (DE) 72 Depardieu, G. 111 De Simone, T. 205, 212, 213n De Vita, T. 195 Diamanti, I. 6 Di Bella, F. 165 Di Cori, P. 192 Di Pietro, A. 5, 13, 78, 91, 143, 146n Di Stefano, F. 40, 41 divorce 99, 191 Di Zulueta, T. 228n documentary film 104, 110, 111, 120, 121n, 225

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244 INDEX

Domenica in 97, 125 D’Onofrio, F. 68, 69 Donovan, M. 68 Draghi law 27 DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) Dulbeccio, R. 193

143

Eco, U.

88, 89, 91, 105, 107n, 136–8, 144, 150, 154, 219, 226, 234 Economist 27, 167, 169 EJC (European Court of Justice) 40 El Mundo 167 Emiliano, M. 49–51 Esposito, R. 154 Espresso (L’) 107n, 165, 171 EU (European Union) 5, 23, 26–8, 41, 42, 61, 63, 121n, 133n, 135, 166, 178, 179, 211, 212, 214n Eurispes 187n Euro 5, 21, 23, 71 Europa7 40, 41, 143 European Central Bank 21 European Commission 21, 27, 28, 76 European Court of Justice 143, 220 European Democracy see Democrazia Europea European Monetary Union 5 European Parliament 76, 214n European Socialist Party 80 Facebook 137 Falcone, G. 92 family 22–4, 33, 64, 67, 179, 181–3, 192, 194, 198, 205–7, 210, 220 Family day 206 Fantone, L. 195, 198, 199, 200n Fascism 9, 131, 150, 151, 158, 159n, 192, 220, 221, 226, 227 Fassino, P. 73 Federazione dei Verdi 35, 72, 77, 78, 101, 141 feminist activism 190–200, 239 A/Matrix 199 CFS (Centro Femminista Separatista) 213n Comunicattive 199 European network NextGENDERation 197 Italiane 192 Maistat@zitt@ 195 Matri_x 195 Milan Women’s Bookshop 191 Orlando association 194 Prec@s 195, 199, 200 Sconvegno Group 12, 198, 200n Sexyshock 194, 198, 201n WMW (World March of Women) 196 Ferrara, G. 6, 170, 172

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Ferrario, D. 111, 120 Dopo mezzanotte 111 Ferroni, G. 149 Fiat 164, 169, 170, 172n FIEG (Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali) 165 Fini, G. 13, 63, 68n, 178 Fini, M. 228n Cyrano 228n Fiske, J. 7 Fo, D. 89, 97, 99, 103, 105, 106n, 115, 116, 124–7, 129, 132, 149, 154, 232, 234, 237, 239 L’anomalo bicefalo 105, 125, 129, 132, 149, 232 Mistero buffo 127 Ubù Bas va alla guerra 132 see also Rame, F. Fo, J. 132 Foa, V. 89, 233 Focus see Gruner & Jahr under Berlusconi, S. Folli, S. 161, 170 Follini, M. 65, 66 Forums ESF (European Social Forum) 84, 197, 199, 211, 213n, 237 Genoa Social Forum 84, 196 Social Forum 180, 211 Third Global Forum 84 World Social Forum 84, 85 Forza Italia (FI) 2, 6, 19, 20, 37, 44n, 47, 53, 60, 62–7, 68n, 71, 85, 86, 113, 132, 154, 159, 166, 167, 178, 192, 206, 208, 221, 224, 231 Fossati, I. 158n Foucault, M. 10 Fougez, A. 159n Francese, J. 149 Frattini law 8, 168, 172n see also conflict of interests Freccero, C. 107n, 222, 228n Fresco, P. 169 Freud, S. 210 Fuentes, M. 181–4, 186 G8 summit 83, 84, 121n, 150, 192, 196, 211, 233 Gabanelli, M. 228n Galasso, G. 165 Galli, C. 154 Galli Della Loggia, E. 169 Gandhi 142 Garrone, M. 121n Garzanti 131 Gasparri, M. 103, 104 Gasparri law 8, 36, 39, 40, 103, 168 Gassman, V. 119 Gemina 164, 169 gender 185, 190, 192, 193, 195–9, 204, 210

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INDEX 245

Gentilini, G. 207 Geronzi, C. 170 Ghedini, N. 168 Giannelli, E. 161, 162 Giardini, F. 195, 200n Genealogie del presente 195 Ginsborg, P. 5, 9, 10, 13n, 87, 89, 227, 233 Giometti, D. 239 Ho ammazzato Berlusconi 239 Giorgetti, G. 68 Giovanardi, C. 66, 67, 68nn Girasole 72 see also Federazione dei Verdi girotondi movement 12, 21, 53, 74, 75, 78, 83, 86–91, 112, 113, 136, 138, 139, 144, 145, 167, 197, 237 Girandole 87, 88 marcia dei professori 74, 87 Sciarpe gialle 87 Società civile 87 Giuffrè, A. 25 Giuliani, G. 194, 200n ‘Giustizia e Libertà’ 222 Givone, S. 154 Gramolini, C. 194, 197–9, 200n, 210 Gramsci, A. 9, 113, 218 Grassi, L. 221 Gray, S. 111 Greens see Federazione dei Verdi Grillini, F. 205, 207, 208, 211, 212, 213nn Grillo, B. 53, 91, 93n, 99, 100, 103, 105, 106n, 136, 140–4, 146n, 232, 234–7 blog 106n, 140–2, 236 ‘V-Day’ event 140, 142, 143 Grimaldi, A. 112, 121n Gronchi, G. 106 Guglielmi, A. 106n, 219 Guzzanti, C. 103, 107n Guzzanti, S. 41, 91, 98, 100, 102–6, 107nn, 110, 112, 113, 115, 117, 119, 124–6, 131, 133n, 136, 232, 234, 235, 238, 239 Avanzi 102, 103, 106n Ottavo nano 103 Pippo Kennedy Show 103 Raiot. Armi di distrazione di massa 98, 102–4, 106n, 110, 115, 124, 125, 133n Reperto Raiot 104 Viva Zapatero! 104, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 131, 232, 234 Haider, J. 27 Freedom Party 27 Hall, S. 233 heteronormativity 190, 198, 204, 210

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Hislop, I. 102 Hitler, A. 141 Holderness, G. 129 homophobia 204, 206–8, 210, 213 homosexuality see LGBT Hopkin, J. 78 Horsley, W. 8 humour 97–106, 114, 115, 117, 124, 153, 199, 238 Hussein, S. 28 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 83 immigration 2, 3, 6, 8, 12, 62, 63, 84, 112, 124, 153, 177–87, 193, 195, 233 CPT (Centri di Permanenza Temporanea) 85, 179, 180 Melting Pot Europa 188n Migrant Commission 180 Migrant Worker’s Convention 182 ONC (Coordination Body for the Policies of the Social Integration of Foreigners) 179 Stranieri in Italia 188n see also Bossi-Fini law; migrant women Immunity law 9, 14n, 74, 93n, 166 see also magistrates (attack on) intellectuals 4, 106n, 113, 148, 149, 151, 157 International Herald Tribune 142 International Labour Office 182 internet 33, 46, 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 84, 88, 105, 111, 115, 132, 135–40, 144, 145, 181, 183, 197, 200, 227, 235–40 internet resistance 135–46, 235, 236 ‘I am a moron’ 136, 139, 140, 144, 236, 237 Incontriamoci 53, 236 La fabbrica del programma 53, 236 Pasta Cunegonda 136, 138, 144, 145n, 234, 236 see also Grillo, B. INVALSI (Istituto Nazionale per la Valutazione del Sistema di Istruzione) 26 Iraq (invasion of) 77, 84–6, 103, 111, 153, 161, 162, 169, 172n, 195, 197, 198, 224, 233 Irigaray, L. 201n Italia 7 40 Italia dei Valori (IdV) 13, 72, 78, 91 Italy of Values see Italia dei Valori IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) 63, 68n, 79, 193, 208 King, M.L. 142 Klein, N. 212 Kohl, H. 2 Kristeva, J. 201n La7 43, 44, 107n Labour Party 48 Lagioia, N. see Babette Factory

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246 INDEX

Landi, G. 178 Lario, V. 190 law 30 192, 193, 195, 199 law 40 193, 195, 197, 199, 208, 211, 238 Left Democrats see Democratici di Sinistra Lega Nord (LN) 2, 20, 60–4, 66, 68nn, 69n, 72, 73, 113, 154, 178–81, 184, 186, 207, 208, 233, 238 Letterman, D. 102 David Letterman Show 100 Letters Rogatory 9, 86–8, 101 lesbianism see LGBT Levi, C. 150, 151, 158n Levi Montalcini, R. 193 LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transexual) 12, 191, 199, 204–13, 233, 234, 238, 239 Antagonismo Gay 205, 209, 211, 212, 213n Arcigay 204–12, 213nn Arcigay donna 213nn Arcilesbica 194, 199, 209, 210, 211, 213nn Azione Gay e Lesbica 209, 211 CFS (Centro Femminista Separatista) 213n Di Gay Project 208–10, 213n Facciamo Breccia 211, 212 Fuoricampo 205, 209, 211, 213n Gaylib 206 ILGA (International Gay and Lesbian Association) 211 MIT (Movimento di Identità Transessuale) 211, 213n Pride parades 206, 208–10, 212, 213, 238 liberal democracy 12, 118 liberalism 63, 64, 68nn, 92n, 171, 208, 211 Ligresti, S. 169 Lincoln, A. 142 Lista Pannella 72 Livolsi, U. 138, 170 Lodo Schifani-Maccanico 74, 166 see also Immunity law Lo Giudice, S. 204–6, 208–10, 213 Longo, F. see Babette Factory Lotta Continua 164 Louis XIV 141 Lucarelli, C. 154 Luchetti, D. 113, 117 Il portaborse 117 Luttazzi, D. 41, 97, 98, 100–6, 107nn, 124, 125, 132, 217, 221, 222, 228n, 232, 234, 235 Barracuda 100 Mai dire gol 100 Satyricon 98, 100, 102, 105, 106n, 107n, 217, 221 Luxuria, V. 212

DAlbertazzi_Index_Finals.indd 246

Maastricht Treaty 5 Maccanico law 35, 36, 40, 43n, 103 Maccarrone, A. 206, 208, 209, 211, 213n Mack Smith, D. 167 Mafia 25, 26, 100, 101, 111, 126, 132, 153, 221, 222, 225, 226 magistrates (attack on) 5, 6, 8–10, 13n, 37, 93n, 101, 117, 118, 126, 141, 166, 167, 171, 232 see also CSM Mallozzi, A. 130 Maltese, C. 129 Mammì, O. 13n Mammì law 13n, 32, 34, 42, 43n see also anti-trust legislation Manca, E. 4 Mancini, P. 220 Mancuso, A. 205 Manfredi, N. 119 Mangano, V. 100 Manifesto (Il) 164, 171 Mani pulite 4, 5, 9, 13, 86, 87, 115, 158, 220 see also Tangentopoli Mannoia, F. 89 Manzoni, A. 152, 158n I promessi sposi 158n Maraini, D. 150, 154 Marcasciano, P. 211, 213n Marcorè, N. 103, 104 Marino, C.G. 172n Margherita 71–4, 76–80 Martelli law 178, 179 Mascia, G. 138, 139, 145n Mastella, C. 77, 78, 121n Mazierska, E. 118 Mazzacurati, C. 113, 121n McCarthy, J.R. 42 McQuail, D. 2 Mediobanca 164, 169 Melucci, A. 234 Men’s Health see Rodale Press under Berlusconi, S. Mentana, E. 41 Messaggero (Il) 41 metacinema 114, 115, 232, 237 metatheatre 232, 237 MicroMega 10, 88, 91, 92n, 154 middle classes 5, 9, 10, 13n, 21–3, 77, 88, 89, 164, 167 Mieli, M. 205, 209, 213n Circolo Mario Mieli 205, 206, 208, 209, 213n see also LGBT Mieli, P. 165, 170 migrant women 177, 178, 180–7, 192, 197, 200, 233 Association No.Di. 177, 181, 182, 184–7, 238 Candelaria 182 Cape Verdean Women’s Association 182

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INDEX 247

Nosotras 182 Philippino Women’s Council 182 see also immigration Mimun, C. 224 Missiroli, M. 163 Mitterrand, F. 2 Molière 98 Monicelli, M. 89 Montaldo, G. 121n Montanelli, I. 4, 163, 218, 223 Montesano, G. 150 Di questa vita menzognera 150 Moore, M. 102, 104, 112, 121n Fahrenheit 9/11 112, 121n Moratti, L. 84, 208 Moratti reform 26 Moravia, A. 163 Moretti, N. 74, 75, 87–9, 91, 92, 110–20, 138, 232, 234, 235, 237, 239 Aprile 113, 118 Bimbi belli 114 Caro diario 118 Il caimano 110–20, 121n, 232, 234, 235 La stanza del figlio 121n L’unico paese al mondo 113 Movement of Movements 234 Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) 2, 13 Muccino, G. 111, 121n Ricordati di me 111 Muraro, L. 191, 195 Murdoch, R. 3, 44n Mussolini, B. 141, 154, 158, 159n, 171, 192 Napolitano, G. 91 National Alliance see Alleanza Nazionale Ndrangheta 25 neo-conservatism 3, 32, 62, 106, 119, 124, 125, 153, 163, 219, 220 neo-liberalism 12, 62, 84, 138, 167, 194 Nessuno TV 126, 127 Newell, J. 73 News Corporation 36 New York Times 85 No Global see anti-globalization movement non-governmental organizations 24 Norris, P. 46 Northern League see Lega Nord north–south divide 62, 66, 135, 149 Nuove Brigate Rosse 89, 92n Nuovo Sacher Cinema 110, 113 Observer (The) 118 OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) 22

DAlbertazzi_Index_Finals.indd 247

OFSTED (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills) 27 Oliari, E. 206 Olivieri, G. 211, 213n Olla, R. 224, 228n Ongaro, S. 195, 196, 198, 200 Donne e globalizzazione 195 Orlando, S. 114, 116 Ortoleva, P. 7, 219, 228n Orwell, G. 106 OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) 8 Osiris, W. 159n Ostellino, P. 166–8 Ottone, P. 164, 165 Ozpetek, F. 121n P2 (Propaganda 2) 165, 172n Pacifico, F. see Babette Factory pacifism 28, 84–6, 140, 169, 196, 219 PACS (Patto Civile di Solidarietà) 193, 194, 199, 206, 207, 210, 211, 213, 214n see also civil unions Page, B. 199 Palcoscenico 98 par condicio 36, 37, 65, 98, 112, 222, 228n Pardi, F. 87 Parisi, A. 76 Parliamentary Supervisory Commission 35 Parmalat 141 Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) 3, 65, 120n, 205, 206, 209, 218–20 partitocrazia 6, 219, 222, 228n Partito dei Comunisti Italiani (PdCI) 72, 76, 77 Partito Democratico (PD) 67, 79–81, 90, 101, 143, 206 Partito Democratico di Sinistra (PDS) 5, 35 Partito Liberale Italiano (PLI) 206 Partito Popolare 65 Partito Radicale (PR) 34, 72, 121n Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI) 218 Partito Socialista 205, 213n Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) 3, 4, 44, 46, 100, 205, 213n, 218 Pasolini, P.P. 151, 235 ‘Empirismo eretico’ 151 ‘Nuove questioni linguistiche’ 151 Pasquino, G. 206, 207 Pazzi, R. 149 Il signore degli occhi 149 Pecoraro Scanio, A. 78, 213n Pecorella, G. 168 Penati, F. 49, 50

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248 INDEX

People of Freedom see Popolo della Libertà Pepino, L. 131 Pera, M. 208 Pericles 97, 125, 126, 132 Pertile, L. 148 Petacci, C. 192 Peverelli, S. 88 Piano Nazionale di Assegnazione delle Frequenze per la Radiodiffusione Televisiva 40 Piccolo, O. 89 Pionati, F. 224 Piovani, N. 89 Pirelli 164 Piroso, A. 43 Pisanu, G. 50 Pivano, F. 89 Placido, M. 114–16 Plowman, J. 102 Poidimani, N. 195, 196–9, 200n Ponte Di Pino, O. 131, 132 Popolo della Libertà (PdL) 2, 14, 59, 66, 67, 68n, 80, 192, 224, 231, 240 populism 2, 5, 6, 19, 24, 28, 29, 51, 55, 66, 91, 105, 159n, 171, 178, 227 Pozzi, M. 102 precarity 84, 190, 192, 193, 195–200, 201nn, 207, 211, 233, 238 Prestigiacomo, S. 192, 207 Previti, C. 6, 9, 13, 65, 69n, 74, 86, 161, 166 Prodi, R. 2, 13, 28, 40, 51–3, 59, 71, 72, 76–81, 143, 145n, 170, 178, 185, 188n, 199, 200, 204, 206, 221, 236 Promoservice Italia 33 Provenzano, B. 25 Publieurope 33 Putin, V. 132n, 141 queer activism

199, 204, 205, 209

Rabelais, F. 125, 127 Gargantua and Pantagruel 125 radio 8, 32, 33, 35–7, 54, 182, 221 Radio NBC 127, 132 RAI 4, 7–9, 33, 35, 38–41, 43, 75, 86, 88, 97–105, 106n, 107nn, 110, 125, 126, 129, 136, 138, 217–27, 234, 237 RAI 1 224 RAI 2 98, 100, 103, 105, 107n, 112, 221, 222, 224 RAI 3 98, 100, 102–6, 107n, 219, 220, 228n Raimo, C. see Babette Factory Rame, F. 99, 106n, 124–6, 129, 132, 149, 234, 237 see also Fo, D. Rascaroli, L. 118, 121nn RCS Media 161, 169, 171

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Reagan, R. 4 reforms Constitution 10, 20, 61, 62, 68nn education 26, 27, 208 see also Moratti reform elections 52–4, 66, 68n justice 25, 60n, 166 pensions 26, 27, 62 welfare state 29, 73 Report 224 Repubblica (La) 41, 114, 118, 136, 137, 154, 165, 167, 171, 188n, 190, 224, 225 Resto del Carlino (Il) 222 Rheingold, H. 139 Ricucci, S. 170 Rifondazione Comunista (RC) 35, 66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 84, 180, 193, 195, 205, 212, 239, 240 Rizzoli 165 Robespierre, M. 142 Roccella, E. 192 Rocco Code 164 Rodotà, S. 154 Rognoni, C. 228n Romiti, C. 171 Ronconi, M. 64, 68 Rose, S. 81 Rosi, F. 117 Rossella, C. 41, 170 Rossi, G.L. see Giometti, D. Rossi, P. 97, 98, 106, 124–32, 133n, 232, 237 Il circo di Paolo Rossi 125 Il Signor Rossi contro l’impero del male 131 Il Signor Rossi e la Costituzione 124–6, 128–31 L’Histoire du soldat 125 Romeo and Juliet ‘Serata di delirio organizzato’ 125 Scatafascio 125 Storie per un delirio organizzato 125 Rosso, B. 124 Rubini, S. 121n Ruffini, P. 104 Rulli, S. 121n Rutelli, F. 7, 71–4, 77, 81n, 180 Saccà, A. 223, 224 Sacher Film 114 Said, E. 148, 149 Salvatores, G. 112 Sanguineti, E. 154 Santer, J. 76 Santilli, L. 195, 200n Santoro, M. 12, 41, 97, 162, 217–23, 225–7, 228n, 232, 234, 238, 239

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Annozero 225, 239 Il Raggio Verde 221 Moby Dick 221 Samarcanda 218, 219, 225 Sciuscià 222, 225 Saraceno, C. 23 Saravia, P. 181–6 Sartori, G. 9, 161, 167–9, 171, 226 satire 41, 98, 101, 102, 104–6, 113–20, 128–30, 133n, 149, 232, 237, 239, 240 Scalfari, E. 224 Scaraffia, L. 192 Schengen Agreement 179 Sciascia, L. 149 Scola, E. 121n Serventi Longhi, P. 162 Settanta in Due 121n sexuality 4, 192, 193, 196, 204 see also LGBT Sgarbi, V. 154 Shakespeare, W. 125, 127 King Lear 133n SIC (Sistema Integrato delle Comunicazioni) 36 SISDE (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica) 13 Sky 36, 39, 44, 105, 112 smart mob 136, 139, 144, 237 see also ‘I am a moron’ under internet resistance SME 6, 74, 117, 166, 171 Smith, A. 63 Socci, A. 221 social cooperatives 24 Socialisti Democratici Italiani (SDI) 72 Socialist Party see Partito Socialista Italiano Solari, G. 125 Sole 24-Ore (Il) 41, 162, 172n Sordi, A. 119, 121n Sorrentino, P. 112, 121n Soru, R. 49, 51 Squillante, R. 117 Stahlberg, J.H. 121n Bye Bye Berlusconi 121n Stajano, C. 162 Stampa (La) 41, 188n Stille, A. 227 Storace, F. 193, 209 Strada, G. 139 Emergency 139 student movement 239 Tabacci, B. 66 Tabucchi, A. 89, 150, 153, 154, 234 Tangentopoli 4, 5, 13, 44n, 106n, 165, 220, 221 see also Mani pulite

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Tapie, B. 13 Taviani brothers (Paolo and Vittorio) 121n Tedesco, N. 149 Tele+ Nero 40 Telecom Group 43 Telecom Italia Media 36, 43 TG 1 222, 224 TG 3 14, 224 Tg5 41 theatre 12, 33, 89, 97, 99, 105, 124–32, 133n, 136, 140, 149, 153, 227, 232, 235, 237 Thucydides 97, 125 History of the Peloponnesian War 125 Tiscali Spa 49 Tognazzi, U. 99, 106n Torelli Viollier, E. 163 trade unions 27, 72, 75, 78, 84, 89, 92n, 179, 180, 181, 187n CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro) 75, 84, 89, 180 CISL (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati dei Lavoratori) 75 COBAS (Confederazione dei Comitati di Base) 84 FIOM (Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici) 84 FNSI (Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana) 161 UIL (Unione Italiana del Lavoro) 75 Tranfaglia, N. 172n transsexuality see LGBT Travaglio, M. 100, 101, 105, 106n, 107nn, 126, 131, 133n, 136, 145n, 154, 168, 221, 223 Tremonti, G. 61, 239 Tribuna Politica 218 Trinca, J. 114 Tunnel 107n Turco, L. 180, 181 Turco, M. 111 In un altro paese 111 Turco-Napolitano law 178–80, 182 Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e Democratici di Centro (UDC) 11, 59–62, 64–7, 68nn, 69n, 73, 240 Unione Democratici per l’Europa (UDEUR) 77, 78 Ulivo 73, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 87, 178, 180, 207 UN (United Nations) 28, 29, 30n, 169, 224 Un due tre 99 see also Tognazzi, U.; Vianello, R. Unione 51–4, 77, 79, 81 Unità (L’) 162, 228n

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universities 84, 87, 131, 151, 194, 195, 228n, 239 Urbani law 145n Vacca, R. 150 Kill? 150 Vaccari, C. 235 Vasini, L. 125 Vecchioni, R. 89 Veltroni, W. 35, 73, 80, 81, 91, 101, 180, 209 Vendola, N. 49, 50, 213n Venice Commission 8 Verde, F. 117 Vernola, M. 208 Verzichelli, L. 65, 68 Vespa, B. 111, 224 Porta a Porta 48, 224

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Vianello, R. 99, 106n Violante, L. 5 Virzì, P. 112, 121n io e Napoleone 112 Volontè, L. 66–7, 68n ‘Web 2.0’ 138 Women’s Movement 234 see also feminist activism World Bank 83, 92 WTO (World Trade Organization) YouTube

83

139, 239

Zaccaria, R. 7, 223 Zamboni, C. 195

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