I Predict a Riot: Italy After Berlusconi

Alexander Lee: Italy After Berlusconi

LATE LAST month, Silvio Berlusconi was at last struck by the full force of the opposition to his premiership. It was a literal blow–a statuette to the nose—and as he tumbled to the floor, even il cavaliere, as the flamboyant Berlusconi is known, was forced to recognize the violent passions that have been aroused by his dogged refusal to resign.

The attack deserved condemnation, but it is hard not to agree with Antonio di Pietro–the leader of the centrist Italia dei Valori–that the climate of hatred that provoked the attack had been generated by il cavaliere himself. The prostitution scandals, the trials for fraud and corruption, the constitutional skulduggery, and the accusations of mafia links have created an atmosphere of deep resentment in recent months. Berlusconi’s determination to cling to power has only made matters worse. His approval ratings have plummeted in recent weeks, and it is perhaps no surprise that tempers have flared.

But Berlusconi himself is only part of the story. Caught in a political whirlwind, few commentators have stopped to consider either the violent protests that formed the backdrop to the attack or the implications these might have for what Italy would be like after Berlusconi.

Contrary to the way it has been portrayed, the violent attack was no isolated event. When the blood-soaked premier fell to the ground, Milan had already suffered a day of civil unrest and violent clashes. Although these clashes were partly an expression of the exasperation felt at Berlusconi’s corrupt and incompetent leadership, they were also a reflection of a deep rift opening up within Italy’s left-wing opposition.

Coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of the infamous Piazza Fontana bomb, which left seventeen people dead at the height of the anni di piombo (“The Years of Lead”), the clashes were born out of a cleavage between the parties of the center-left and those who have been worst hit by the economic crisis. The bricks were thrown by students unable to find jobs; the police lines were battered by blue-collar workers facing redundancy; and the chants were shouted by unemployed men and women desperately searching for work.

While these are the people who have been most let down by Berlusconi’s inaction in the face of the economic crisis, they are also those who have, in recent years, been disappointed by the center-left. But instead of pursuing peaceful political processes, instead of working through the ballot-box, they have now turned to violence.

AT FIRST this seems paradoxical. After an ugly leadership election, the Partito Democratico (PD)—Italy’s largest center-left opposition party—looks like it is getting back on its feet. Its new leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, has galvanized the party and has been vocal in his opposition to Berlusconi, and as il cavaliere’s position gets weaker, there seems to be every reason for those who voted for the center-left to look to the democratic process with confidence.

But yet it was the people who supported the PD at the last election who brought violence to the streets of Milan. In part, the clashes in Milan can be explained by the nature of the PD’s strategy. For Bersani—as for his predecessors Dario Franceschini and Walter Veltroni—the key to the PD’s success lies in taking voters away from Berlusconi’s governing Popolo della Libertà (PdL). It is a strategy based on capturing the center ground of Italian politics. While this strategy has been employed with great success by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, it is actually part of the problem. In concentrating so exclusively on the middle ground, the PD has lost sight of precisely the people who are depending on it most strongly: the young, the unemployed, and the struggling workers.

In this way, Bersani’s PD seems to be repeating the mistakes of Enrico Berlinguer, the leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1972 until his death in 1984. Desperate to get the PCI into power after decades in the wilderness, Berlinguer was the architect of the compromesso storico (“historic compromise”), a tactic designed to edge his party into government by adopting a more moderate, centrist approach to deal with a mounting economic crisis.

Although sensible in some ways, it also alienated students, factory workers, union members, and the unemployed—the very people who most enthusiastically opposed to the mismanagement of the ruling Christian Democrats. The result was an escalation of violence and unrest. In 1977, Milan was rocked by student protests. In 1978, the Red Brigades kidnapped and killed Aldo Moro. In 1980, Turin was brought to a standstill by the Mirafiori strike, and thousands of jobs were lost. By 1983, the PCI was dead in the water.

LOOKING AT the clashes that erupted last month, it seems that while resentment of Berlusconi is running high, the PD has also failed to engage with those who have been worst hit by the ailing premier’s government and is therefore heading down the same road as the PCI. If Berlusconi were to resign—which increasingly seems likely—this has frightening implications for what would come next. Not only does Italy seem fated to be dragged even further towards the right, but there is also good reason to expect that it would also slide further into chaos as the left becomes more radical and violent.

In the short term, the vacuum left by Berlusconi could be filled relatively easily. The center-right coalition—comprising the PdL, the anti-immigration Lega Nord, and the Movimento per le Autonomie–has a robust majority in both chambers of parliament and could continue to function under a new leader.

Gianfranco Fini—currently the president of the Chamber of Deputies—is the most likely to succeed Berlusconi as prime minister and has already set out a program for a future government. Fini is a troubling figure. Despite the remarkable effort he has made to project an image of respectability, his views would shock even the most entrenched of Berlusconi’s opponents.

Although it has been absorbed into Berlusconi’s PdL, Fini was previously the leader of the neo-fascist Alleanza Nazionale. For years, he courted controversy by publicly heaping praise on Mussolini and branding his party as the standard-bearer of modern fascism. He has introduced harsh new immigration laws and called for compulsory hospitalization of all drug addicts. With Fini at the helm, Italy would possibly be jerked back towards its fascist past, and there would be little to stem the swelling tide of violence and unrest.

But even when elections are called, there is little hope that the PdL and its political allies would be swept from power. While it is reasonable to expect the PD to benefit from an election, it suffered dramatic losses in the crucial European and administrative elections in June despite the fact that Berlusconi was already becoming mired in scandal. After the Milan riots, it seems to be in an even more unfavorable position. Even with an energetic new leader, the split that has emerged between the PD and its grassroots base suggests that the party will continue to hemorrhage support. On the basis of the most recent polls, the governing coalition—under Fini—might win a future election.

But even more worryingly, a Fini victory would exacerbate civil unrest and violence. On the one hand, the resilience of a government that is likely to move ever further towards the right will only antagonize those who protested. On the other hand, the PD’s continuing exclusion from power, coupled with its increasingly centrist approach, is likely to alienate those worst hit by the economic crisis. Divided against itself, and with an increasingly radicalized electorate sensing their distance from the center-left parties, Italy would possibly plunge deeper into chaos.

If Italy is to avoid this, it’s not enough for Berlusconi to resign: the PD needs to learn from the past. Although many commentators have called for the PD to continue moving toward the center ground and to emulate Barack Obama’s bipartisan aspirations, this would risk disaster both for the PD and for Italy. The PD needs to rethink its identity and return to addressing the hopes of the young, the hard-working, and the unemployed. It needs to move not to the center, but to the left; and it needs to embrace policies that will not only address the broader economic crisis but that will also improve the lives of ordinary men and women who struggle to put food on the table. If the PD fails to do this, it won’t just be Berlusconi who’s left with a bloody nose.

Alexander Lee is a specialist in Italian history and is a research fellow at the University of Warwick (UK). He is the editor of The Utopian and the co-author of The End of Politics: Triangulation, Realignment and the Battle for the Centre Ground (London: Methuen, 2006).