•
Rating: The recent Italian history (1991-2009) certainly cannot be understood if explained to a young person or a foreigner without carefully focusing on the socio-political phenomenon of the Lega Nord and the autonomism of the northern regions within the framework of the evolution of the contemporary Italian state.
As is well known, autonomist phenomena have always been characteristic of our major islands (Sicily and Sardinia), both for self-evident ethnic-cultural, historical-anthropological reasons, or linked to prominent figures, sometimes even linked to crime (Salvatore Giuliano), as well as for physical reasons due to the insular and isolated nature of these places.
A separate discussion should be made for the South Tyrol, which is distinguished by historical events that make it a Germanic enclave in Italian territory, especially considering its secondary valleys (Pusteria, Gardena, etc.), inhabited by German-speaking populations.
In all three of the cases mentioned, there exists a fracture with respect to the culture and characteristics of Italy, which exists in reality, so the contrast with these centrifugal forces is resolved within the scope of negotiations aimed at recognizing, through a compromise, more or less wide margins of maneuver for the social components of Sardinia, South Tyrol, and with probably wider concessions, as some suggest, Sicily.
However, it has never happened as in recent years that the main regions of the North (Lombardy, Veneto, and, with different nuances, Piedmont) have claimed for themselves areas of broad legislative, administrative, and even political autonomy to the point of threatening their secession from the Italian state. They have found in a political movement, and in a figure of undeniable charisma and populist instinct like Umberto Bossi, the spokesperson for these requests and the discontent underlying them, thus raising much more complex political issues than those raised by Sardinian, Sicilian, and South Tyrolean autonomism.
Let's think, just to give examples, of the needs to control internal immigration, to introduce wage cages to protect northern workers, to more intensely guarantee public order in large and small northern cities increasingly threatened by pockets of poverty, also through broad-spectrum training interventions.
All discussions revolve around an underlying intuition that only partially coincides with the autonomist push: to revive the communal myth of small homelands and interpret it in a modern and economic key, suggesting the idea that autonomism and separatism are functional to a reduction in public spending, greater control of public investments, an increase in savings, a decrease in the pressure of the Leviathan State on private life and entrepreneurial activity.
Note that the Lega has been strongly influenced by the theories of the well-known political scientist Gianfranco Miglio of the Catholic University of Milan, being a less improvised and unprepared phenomenon than is usually believed.
The fact that the Lega Nord has had enormous popular support, even among southern immigrants and foreigners, explains well how, beyond the often vulgar and disrespectful manners of Bossi and his major collaborators (Borghezio, Comino, Rocchetta, Speroni, Maroni, Pivetti, lately also the Salvini of the homonymous video), the problems raised are real, and how the responses profiled by this political movement, deeply rooted in the territory, have been, if not right, persuasive and suggestive (although simplistic), involving entire popular classes in a kind of militancy and ideological koinè not seen in Italy since the days of the great demonstrations of right and left-wing people.
The risks of a movement drift have been so far contained both by Bossi himself, capable of riding the tiger of the people and knowing how to tame it, never being a rabble-rouser for his personal interests, but rather an authentic political animal able to negotiate with center-right men (Berlusconi, who initiated with the Lega a policy of "parallel convergences" analogous to that of Moro with the PCI) and the left (D'Alema, who not coincidentally renamed the Lega as a "rib" of the left), making the Lega a constant presence in almost all the municipal councils of the North-Center, as well as a movement that must always be reckoned with when it comes to deciding something in Italy.
It may seem paradoxical that political and economic action in Italy is closely linked to a movement that does not recognize itself in Italy as such, but of these paradoxes, as Machiavelli warns us, politics itself is nourished, so we should not be too surprised, hoping instead that the ways (most recently, the exit, also in the opinion of a Lazio supporter and certainly not a Leghist like me, regrettable, of Salvini) are more balanced and respectful of the population's needs, without excessive gratuitous attacks towards certain categories of citizens.
This book, very precise and accurate, explains to us the reasons why neither the center-right nor the center-left can act without the alliance, or "non-belligerence", of Bossi's movement. It probably teaches us to take the Lega Nord and its representatives seriously, as a balance point for Italy's development and for that Republic in which we all, from every region, autonomists or not, immigrants or locals, from Piedmont or Lazio, must necessarily recognize ourselves, hoping for the end of all divisions and the search for agreed-upon solutions to problems, which are problems for everyone and not just for one part of Italy.
Loading comments slowly
