The mass shootings in Utoya, Norway seemed to have shocked the average person, who has never noticed the trends and the blunt comments on television made by politicos in which racism camouflages itself as snide commentary.

Society has become complacent and tolerant of such digressions because we are well past that P.C. threshold. Because being tolerant is bad and not politically expedient. The real and imagined problems created by certain media and then regurgitated by a manufactured vox popoli, result in these issues being always tagged onto questions of “national security” to frighten a fearful, feeble-minded electorate.  In the past two decades, xenophobic politics has been normalized.

In fact, there seems to be a resurgence of Race Panic like the fear of miscegenation in D.W. Griffiths’ Birth of A Nation (1915) where a white girl is pursued by a freed slave and jumps to her death; the Klansmen kill him. In the book, which inspired it, a differently named character is explicitly raped. In the film, it is vague. It is similar to Gay Panic when a heterosexual male kills a gay man out of a panic that threatens his identity in a primordial sense. Race Panic predates that panic. It is fear that eats the soul like the title of a Fassbinder film, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) about an intergenerational love story between an elderly German woman and young Moroccan man.

Now Multicultural Panic instigated by the Conservative leaders of Europe has captured the pulse of their peoples, claiming that multiculturalism has been a failure. Echoed in lands of low immigration, where people have seen their homogeneous populace change all of a sudden, but also in lands which long exploited colonies, the ones that were the first to accept immigration from their third world fiefdoms, such places as Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has stated, “For too long, immigration was too high.” Angela Merkel, who grew up in a homogeneous East Germany, has deemed Multiculturalism a failure only after living in a multicultural society herself since 1989.

In times of economic crisis, we see knee jerk reaction number one: blame Others. Deprivation in the minority creates riots, while deprivation in the majority creates navel-gazing racist movements. Protectionism is the gentlest face of it. The job stealers can be educated or not, vying for jobs natives want and those they don’t. Supply and demand dictates. Canada during the Great Depression halted immigration in 1930.

When right-of-centre parties align themselves with far-right parties and govern in tandem in coalitions, they get pulled further to the right, tugging the whole political spectrum along, shifting ideologically, and radicalizing the moderate parties. Anti-immigration parties in governments influence legislation; they shape the discourse, future election results and the popular sentiment in polls.

For a brief second, Italy’s Centre-Left Partito Democratico even wanted to be an ally with the Northern League if it made the Berlusconi government fall but the government won’t fall since Berlusconi and the League cannot survive without one another.

As examples, the Northern League in Italy, Geert Wilders in Netherlands, Denmark’s Danish People’s Party –which had been in a Con-Lib Coalition Government since 2001 until their electoral defeat on September 15, 2011(incorporating the extremist islamophobic defunct Progress Party– with a name change in 1995) — and Austria’s Freedom Party; all gained legitimacy from their perceived fringe marginality once they govern in coalitions.  (Haider founded a breakaway party, moderate on immigration, called the Alliance for the Future of Austria before dying.)

Denmark’s Progress Party, and its spawn Norway’s Progress Party, both were born as anti-tax Libertarian parties; the latter was, and is, the fastest growing amongst young Norwegians, before we ever heard of Breivik, a member from 1997 to 2007.  True Finns became the official opposition in Finland in the last election in April 2011 thanks to talks about bailing out Portugal. Also, women are playing important roles in these parties. As leaders of the Far-Right parties, in Denmark, Norway, Hungary and France, where Marine LePen inherited the Front National leadership from her father, their presence makes the rhetoric palatable to their non-traditional voters.

Meanwhile, Eastern Europe has reverted to the persecution of Roma, who have been stigmatized in Western Europe as well, since there isn’t much of immigration to exploit politically. The Slovak National Party even was in coalition with the Social Democrats, such that it was suspended from the E.U. Socialist grouping. A fledging movement in the Czech Republic might consolidate a Far Right party with the current President. In Hungary, the governing Centre-Right party Fidesz has recently developed a new constitution where Christian roots of the nation was written-in since the leader is devoutly Protestant. In local politics, it co-governs with Far-Right Jobbik which has its own militia inspired by the infamous Arrow Cross fascists from the Second World War and now its founder runs state media nominated by the Fidesz government.

In this atmosphere, the difficulties of integration, the politics of fear, the new level of migration, shit-scared Mainstream politicians steal from the Far Right parties’ repertoire whenever those parties’ rise in popularity.

In France, Sarko started leaning in on Front National territory. And when the repatriation of the Roma took place, the E.U. Commission had harsh words but no repercussion ensued.

In Canada, the Tories aren’t the Tories of yore. But the parties of yore were also tainted. Racism was prevalent during the old wave of immigration: federal legislation limited flows of undesired peoples by introducing specific immigration legislation and head taxes. If one reads the Canadian newspapers of a hundred years ago, one would see the same kind of raw irrational fear present in Europe today, just the immigrants’ faces would be different. Also there were Immigrant Acts, –Chinese Laundries inducing cities to adopt municipal laws limiting them , because they were seen as eyesores by the locals, and the various internments of enemy aliens (from Ukrainian World War I internments to all those of World War II).

Canada has denied entry to various ships with Asian migrants. In 1907, the Monteagle ship with 901 Sikhs triggered anti-Asian riots in Vancouver’s Chinatown against Chinese and Japanese merchants and that coincided with lumber workers being laid off during the 1907 recession. In 1914, the Komagata Maru (a. k. a. “the Singh Ship”) with 376 Punjabis was denied entry due to “continuous passage” laws to prevent Asian immigration. The ship had to return to Colonial India where the British kept them onboard for 6 months; some were arrested and some shot. Canada would also deny the MS St-Louis entry with German Jewish refugees in 1939.

Yes, in economic crisis, the scapegoats are found, the same who have lived there for decades. Sometimes the scapegoats of yesteryear are forgotten, but there’s a new batch to lay blame. When the financial Armageddon comes, scapegoatism always re-appears since mankind forgets the ebb and flow of economic downturns and previous historical hysteria, and once again persecutes society’s weakest members, minorities.

We see the average German on the street on Euronews resenting Greeks for ruining the Eurozone and “punishing” their fiscally responsible citizenry who were always civic-minded by paying their taxes.

“Is nationalism a driving force in European politics?” asks a BBC journalist as I write this piece. The Schengen Agreement about the free movement of goods and people is kaput. Italy was left alone while Libyan/Tunisian refugees were drowning in the Mediterranean; Denmark closing its borders with Germany during the mysterious sprout “e. coli crisis” which opportunely presented itself after Germany erroneously blamed Spanish cucumbers; Vaals, a town in Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party controlled Limburg area in the Netherlands, deciding that even E.U. members without a job can be denied residence, affecting 300 out the 10,000 inhabitants, and specifically targeting Poles and Romanians.

The BBC journalist brings up the fact that E.U. members are failing in their basic obligation: the Greek/Turkey border is the entry for all of E.U.’s illegal migrants, yet the E.U. is not sharing the burden and not interested taking in refugees, backlogging the process of 60,000.

When major crises occur that involve xenophobia, those most responsible often escape blame and responsibility. After World War II, there were not any real repercussions for those names and families who headed companies which were chin deep with the Nazis, like that German industrial family portrayed in Visconti’s The Damned (1969). Or, those who got recycled in postwar Germany as industrialists as seen in The Odessa Files (1974) or many German New Wave films.

Fascist organizations like France’s Cagoule, an underground Fascistic Masonic group in France, counted as its founders people who created the world’s biggest cosmetic empire, the founder of a French car company and heir to a tire company. The son of the founder of the British Union of Fascists ran the Formula 1, the affiliation re-emerged with his titillating Nazi costume photo scandal. No such heads hanging in shame there!

Northern Europe was homogeneous they tell us, but so was Southern Europe. They were also lands where people emigrated FROM – to leave for North America.  Welfare States’ safety nets were possible with a small population to sustain, thanks to the previous century’s mass exodus. Many of these anti-immigrant parties in Europe on the Far-Right still believe in the Welfare State mixing in populism, traditionalist Conservatism, euroskepticism and anti-globalization. The True Finns, which rose to official opposition (although more moderate than Finland’s Freedom Party) and Sweden Democrats (nationalists, anti-multiculturalism, anti-Sami minority) are examples of these oddball creatures resorting to the unemployed base like most populists do.  Stieg Larsson as a journalist signaled the rise of extremist right wing parties in Scandinavia in the last 20 years and was targeted for doing so.

Chinese Laundry Mural in Vancouver’s Chinatown

Myths from the Left

Unions have never been immigration friendly, or for diversity for that matter. The Trades and Labour Congress of Canada at the turn of the last century demanded for the government to raise the Head Tax to 1000$ from 500$, from the 100$ 1903 fee, while the leader of Quebec’s Jacques Cartier Typographical Union contended at the 1906 T.L.C.C. convention that, “the actual tax imposed upon Chinese immigration does not prevent the great overflowing of yellow workers to injure especially the laundry workers of our country.” When Chinese workers’ membership in the dominant unions was rejected, the Chinese Laundry Workers’ Union was formed in Vancouver in 1906 demanding higher wages in order to fight against their own ethno-exploitation. The same Trades and Labour Congress of Canada persuaded Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1912 to ban white females in Chinese Laundries. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1923 to halt Chinese immigration, which replaced the 1885 Chinese Immigration Act as well as head tax, which were specifically designed with one group in mind. Only the advent of modern washing technologies, and not legislation, destroyed this industry.

Many immigrants in Canada preferred to have British-origin persons as union leaders to dissipate anti-foreign sentiments. When ethnic unions started to advocate for themselves, like Montreal’s Jewish Labour Committee chapter, they advocated for the non-discrimination against other ethnicities in Canada.

Today Canada has found a way to import badly needed agricultural farmhands and workers in the fisheries by issuing seasonal contracts to Mexican workers (who have a special accord) and Central American workers, bypassing immigration altogether, like guestworkers. A 48 month limit in Canada, no protection over wages, passports confiscated and no overtime; like that Guatemalan tomato picker who got deported after he complained about pesticide burns and unpaid overtime overdue. He didn’t know Quebec labour laws protected him. Think about those hands when you are savouring your greenhouse tomato, strawberries, Canadian wine or admiring your Christmas tree.

Quebec, which has its own special immigration process under federalism, wanted Francophone immigrants in the late 1980s which included North Africans for easier linguistic integration. Then, they posed religious issues to a now secularized Quebec which has replaced Catholicism with secularism as the new religion/ideology. We can safely assume white immigration was and will be preferred by most governments (with the exception of European wariness of white Eastern Europeans newly accepted into the E.U.). That is why Canadian policies were finagled throughout the years.

It seems almost “normal” for countries with a Fascist past to have resurgence in Fascist sentiments. They always remind us in every facet of our culture, whether warranted or not. They never let us forget, even though there are laws barring Nazi salutes in Germany, as a dimwitted tourist from Quebec found out in front of the Reichstag. Italy’s law on Fascist apology was created in 1952, but its reinforcement is lax since people freely flaunt it in public, on TV, on the internet. At beachside shops in Rimini, Fascist and Nazi paraphernalia is sold. Some politicians, from ex-neo-fascist parties and now governing with Berlusconi’s party, naturally want to scrap this law.

Yet, no one remembers other nations’ brush with Fascism. Everyone seems surprised in a rise in Scandinavia because the word, resurgence, is never used and its history seldom revisited. The Nazi-occupation of Norway and Denmark was annexed.  Sweden experimented with eugenics (forced sterilization) on undesirable minorities and mentally ill (1934-1975), occurring simultaneously in Finland (1934-1955), Norway (“consent-based” by legal guardians 1934-1977) and Denmark (1929-1967). All cite hygiene health policy as reason and the practice pre-dates the Welfare States even if implemented by the Social Democrats. But was the nations’ political culture or the ignorance of that period to blame since the practice was worldwide?

Entire Lap towns in Finland were burned down by Nazis after surviving their Civil War (1918). The internal fighting between Communist Finns and White Finns post-Civil War played out in the Canadian Hinterland. The reason Canada admitted White Finns, even if they later were Nazi supporters, in the 1940s was to neutralize Canada’s older Left-leaning Finns. One wonders if Anglo-Canadians in Thunder Bay or Sudbury at the time, felt the Finns’ lifestyle being foisted upon them with their radical politics, radical newspapers, Finnish Labour Temple and sauna they brought with them. They were surely seen with suspicion since the 1919 Immigration Act introduced the exclusion of ideological undesirables (Bolshevists). As an idea, how politically committed the Finns in Canada were, they joined the Republicans in Spanish Civil War alongside the C.C.F. recruits and Ukrainian-Canadians. Two Finnish lumber union leaders from Thunder Bay, Rosvall and Voutilainen disappeared in 1929 and their bodies were found in 1930 where the community suspected hired Finnish henchmen.

In North America, past immigrants were either blamed by unions for being too subservient, ignorant of their rights, working for nothing or worse, for being strikebreaking scabs. Few pockets of politicized immigrants were deemed shitdisturbers of their time. There was the famous protest in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the Bread and Roses strikes led by Ettore and Giovannitti, Maria and Pietro Botto of Haledon, New Jersey and the anarchist and socialist stone carvers of Barre, Vermont.

Many activists remain anonymous, like the victims of the Colorado’s Ludlow Massacre’s fire, mostly children and women while the Greek mining camp leader, Louis Tikas, was shot. Three immigrant (Ukrainian and Lithuanian) coalminer strikers on parade were shot by the RCMP in the Estevan riots (1931) in Saskatchewan. The bickering factions of Ukrainians in Myrnam, Alberta, as that Heritage Minute Commercial reminds us, brought a system of free health care (by creating a non-sectarian hospital) with the blessing of the authorities. The Wobblies had immigrant members like Joe Hill, who was Swedish and the Finns in Ontario and Northern U.S.

But the majority of immigrants took shit from the majority, “being strangers in a strange land,” since it was felt that one shouldn’t raise your voice even for a legitimate concern such as being unpaid.

I once met two older women from France with a Lombard father (Northern Italy, the birthplace of the Northern League) and Polish mother, “You couldn’t say anything back then in France, no vindication of your rights, they’d remind you of your place,” and in the same breath, “Not like these North Africans.” The irony is lost…

When Mexican illegals get brand new schools in California which invested in infrastructure to resuscitate their economy, Tea Partiers say, “We pay taxes” while the illegal parents do not. The irony is lost on them too, complaining these illegals enlist in the army “to get U.S. citizenship,” while their boys die as patriots. Some blood is more precious than others.

Further information:

A brief review of European Far Right parties: http://fr.myeurop.info/2011/07/25/d-oslo-a-milan-la-montee-de-la-nouvelle-droite-radicale-3053

http://www.praguepost.com/news/10206-organized-far-right-party-could-emerge.html

Jobbik: http://www.economist.com/node/13871359

Vaals: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/0729/1224301563283.html

Chinese Laundries in Canada: http://www.tgmag.ca/magic/mt41.html

Estevan Riot: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/llt/52/br_1.html

Myrnam Hospital Heritage Minute: http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10207

What if a Ted Turner or a Rupert Murdoch, who already controls public opinion globally, was head of his respective country? The irony is that one turns to Murdoch’s Sky for free information in Italy.

Laws that prevent a citizen of owning no more than three newspapers or a network owner to possess a newspaper in Italy have not thwarted Berlusconi. True, in attempts to camouflage his conflict of interest, he transferred his Milan A.C. and private Mediaset network empire (Canale 5, Italia 1, Rete 4 channels) to his son. His gave his Arnoldo Mondadori book publishing (including historic Einaudi) and Medusa film production to his daughter. And now she threatens to enter the political scene since there are many Mediaset trials that will continue with or without her father’s parliamentary immunity that he has created for himself, his lawyer and for ex-Mediaset directors who are also politicians.

The 74-year-old Italian leader

As a token concession to propriety, his brother is the official owner of the newspaper, Il Giornale while Berlusconi still retains a percentage. His suffering ex-wife, his politician and last year’s P3 coup conspirator, each own shares in Il Foglio newspaper, whose founder and editor, Giuliano Ferrara, receives government funding for being a party representative since he leads an anti-abortion party. Ferrara has now been given a nightly RAI 1 show after the nightly news since Berlusconi recycles and shuffles his employees, from Mediaset to RAI, from print to television, at will like chess pieces.

One cannot boycott Berlusconi by-products even if one tried.

From Banca Mediolanum, an insurance and banking holding company (1982) to the Standa market chain before he sold assets in 1998. European TV ventures albeit the short lived Cinq in France (1986-1992) and in Spain (Telecinco in 1988) caused him some legal woes and bad press to which Berlusconi dismissed as mere nationalistic resentment to a foreign investor.

Berlusconi has exclusive rights to American TV shows on his pay-per-view television networks, as well as soccer rights for all the great tournaments. For a man who professes liberal economics, his whole life is one of monopoly, of subverting free market competition, scheming with oligarchies, the ones who have always been the unseen powers of Italy, who collude, criticize him, and then retreat.

Before Berlusconi’s foray into media, he was a real estate developer who developed the Milano 2 suburb (corrupting local politicians to divert the plane paths of the nearby airport). Back then, the PSI (diluted Socialist Party) controlled Milan. His close ties with Bettino Craxi allowed for Berlusconi’s local Milan channel to go national with the private channel reforms in 1984.

Prior to that, there was state television RAI 1 (run by Christian Democrats), while RAI 2 (PSI) and RAI 3 (PCI – Communist Party which increased its role in the Transformismo) were hatched in the 1970s to give more pluralism on TV to political views. The partycracy continues to this day with different political actors, since each political party, no matter how small, has its own party newspaper funded by the government.

Unseen economic–cum-political forces were part of the Italian scene (and we’re not only talking about the many Mafie) as seen in the various strange conspiracies. There were always fears of golpes (coups) in the 1960s. The ridiculous notion of freemasonry was just ritualized folklore until Licio Gelli started Propaganda 2 (P2). Its main goal was to fight communism through the subversion of the rule of law, and to destroy the judiciary, the constitutional safeguards the magistrates uphold and State television through the control of the media and the censorship of journalists.

The P2 secret society’s members included many generals, members of the Italian secret service, and journalists inserted in key places — including the editor of Corriere della Sera and Maurizio Costanzo who left RAI to work with Mediaset, only to return to RAI, and whose wife, Maria De Filippi, who is host of many dumb Mediaset shows. There were also politicians such as Cicchitto who moved from the PSI to Berlusconi’s party, and in 1978 entrepreneurs like Silvio Berlusconi who claims he was enlisted in the P2 circle without his knowledge.

The birth of Forza Italia (now called the Freedom People’s Party – PDL), was co-founded in 1993 by Berlusconi’s friend and employee, Marcello Dell’Utri, who as an early Fininvest / Pubitalia director, provided a mafia henchman as bodyguard to Berlusconi’s children. Berlusconi’s entry into politics coincided with his mounting legal woes concerning bribery and corruption during Tangentopoli, translated as “Bribesville,” a term to describe the pervasive corruption in the Italian political system exposed in 1992-1996 during the Mani Pulite investigations.

The investigations cleaned out party corruption and decimated the DC and PSI, the latter party which Silvio depended on. Thus, RAI subsequently and slowly became re-configured with RAI 1 aligned with the governing party with its appointed directors, while RAI 2 was left in a party vacuum, and RAI 3 remained the last bastion of independence influenced by parties of the left (today’s PD).

In the 1980s, Canale 5 (Mediaset was then called Fininvest) started showing scantily dressed women and outright nudity, when RAI was losing viewers, attempted to copy this vision.

Berlusconi wrestled away the Mondadori publishing house in 1991 from bids by Carlo De Benedetti (Ex-Olivetti CEO and owner of Espresso-Repubblica, the nation’s third biggest media) by corrupting judges on appeal. The truth is that with Berlusconi, reality and news became intertwined, thus obfuscating reality and mirroring his own vision or dictates.

As a politician, Berlusconi passes laws for his own personal salvation but also anything that aides his personal empire. This is why he never mentions the economic crisis when he is in power, for fear his stocks will drop.

In recent times, his new enemy has been SKY, and as a politician he was passing satellite taxes affecting private stations not his own. Rupert Murdoch was singled out, since those pesky Conservative British newspapers dared to criticize Berlusconi, a treatment he was unaccustomed at home except from lefty papers. He called The Economist “Communist.”

Berlusconi has also found ways to do away with internal critique. He wrestled a classical liberal newspaper Il Giornale away from its founder, journalist Indro Montanelli who warned Italians about Berlusconi.

Berlusconi’s monopolizing of print media jutted into a landscape filled with family-run media. La Stampa, run by the Agnelli family, ran an editorial line controlled by family interests (centered on the Fiat factory or the soccer team Juventus).

Corriere della Sera, owned by RCS Rizzoli, is the only other media group which competes with Mediaset in publishing, including the tabloid Oggi magazine which exposes Berlusconi’s sex scandals. The Corriere’s editorial line dithers on Berlusconi. Recently, Berlusconi’s party has planned to change laws so he can buy RCS as well.

Il Tempo is owned by an unknown construction magnate, run by the usual recycled Berlusconi employees, while Il Messagero is owned by the father-in-law of Cassini, a man of all seasons, leader of the UDC, who used to flank Berlusconi in the past and now is in Opposition.

Libero is technically owned by a health sector magnate Angelucci, but is always a repository for Ex-Giornale or Panorama editors that it is considered Berlusconi’s other paper. His news magazine Panorama completes the trifecta of Berlusconi editors who go on political talks shows to defend their owner next to PDL political bulldogs.

Editors of the right, critical of Berlusconi the Prime Minister, have been treated to a smear campaign (and blackmail if they were lucky).

When the editor of l’Avvenire, the official newspaper of bishops, criticized Berlusconi’s moral make-up when the first Noemi scandal surfaced, Il Giornale ran a story that this so-called family man was arrested for stalking a married man. This technique of collecting your enemy’s foibles by amassing dossiers would be called dossieraggio after this initial success.

When his ally ex-neo-fascist Gianfranco Fini was breaking away from the governing coalition, Berlusconi newspapers wrote character assassination stories, including mentioning presumed red light visits. Berlusconi’s intrepid journalists followed the trail of offshore accounts to ‘prove’ a mansion was misappropriated by Fini’s brother-in-law. When Fini’s lawyer proceeded with defamation lawsuits against Il Giornale, her column in another Berlusconi tabloid Chi was yanked.

Only few party papers, the above family-run newspapers, and the centre-left Espresso/Repubblica are not under Berlusconi’s control. Fiercely independent, Il Fatto Quotidano is the only newspaper which doesn’t have a magnate owner or receive government funds since it is not a party paper and solely relies on subscription to insure it remains free from any pressures.

Freedom House, an American organization ranking countries’ Freedom of Speech, ranks Italy in 2010 as partly free, the only nation in the West so classified, a rating which coincides and dips whenever Berlusconi is in power. Reporters Without Borders ranks Italy at number 49 behind Burkino Faso in 2010. Transparency International counts Italy as corrupt, ranking it 67^TH on its 2010 corruption perception index.

But print media doesn’t count at all since Italy is infamous for not being a reading nation and this suits Berlusconi just fine. The hearts and minds are won via television and especially RAI 1’s nightly news where Italians used to get 70-80% of their news. Its director infamously omitted from newscasts the status of Berlusconi Mills’ trial or previous sex scandals. Fluff human interest stories fill in the 30 minutes when the director isn’t doing a monologue or interviewing il Foglio’s editor for seven minutes uninterrupted where these journalists act as Berlusconi mouthpieces. The soundbytes of Opposition leaders (when they are not muted or synthesized by the journalist’s voice-over) are dramatically less in proportion and in length while direct interviews are reserved for government politicians (PDL and Northern League).

The censorship of RAI has become unrelenting and ever more apparent in these last two years.

In the past, on behest of Berlusconi, the network yanked seasoned journalist Enzo Biagi as well as shows by comedians mocking Berlusconi. Journalists who conduct investigations on corruption have had their shows threatened with non-renewal such as Annozero, where Travaglio and satirist Vauro have been working this year without contracts and salaries.

Exiled from TV, comedian Sabina Guzzanti has a father who is a Berlusconi politician who has coined the term, mignottocrazia (slutcracy) for the showgirls enlisted as PDL candidates. A ministerial position was given to an ex-Miss Italy contestant with her own sexy calendar, Mara Carfagna, who became Equal Opportunities Minister, while at the local politics level, Nicole Minetti was promoted as councillor, a former dental hygienist-cum-model and part-time Madame, since she was procuring escorts to Berlusconi.

Berlusconi wants to pass custom-made laws on public service television. For example, if you were a politician, you can’t return to journalism on RAI — that would eliminate Annozero’s Santoro, RAI 1 anchors like Lilli Gruber who now passed to indie channel La 7 and David Sassoli, all EU deputies with the PD. In the past, you’d make a blacklist of undesirables to eliminate political opponents.

The wiretappings of conversations between Berlusconi and RAI directors show how the pressures work – to promote showgirls in RAI made-for-TV series (one mistress at least, and another two he’d unsuccessfully cast as candidates).This week another draft was presented by the PDL, claiming investigative political talk shows specifically on Tuesdays (targeting RAI 3’s Ballaro where a comedian mocks guest politicians) and Thursdays (targeting RAI 2’s Annozero) cannot do the same topic and must alternate HOSTS of different ideological colour (one week a right-wing host, next week, left-wing) while pro-Berlusconi RAI 1 shows remain untouched. These shows, even pro-Berlusconi ones for posterity, were pulled off the airwaves a month before the last election while Mediaset was allowed to show politicians that month.

Secret services, dossiers, purges, censorships harken to that dire time in the country’s history when Fascism’s Ministry of Popular Culture enforced censorship. Berlusconi’s friendships with dubious leaders and dictators (Putin, Belarus’ Lukashenko, Qaddafi) have made him diametrically opposed with EU policies.

Emilio Fede, the first RAI anchorman who joined Berlusconi’s Mediaset, is an ardent propagandist and Bunga Bunga buddy indicted for that pesky prostitution ring. Recently, he proclaimed on air, “Qaddafi will make it.”

I once read this succinct quote: “There are two types of Italians, those who work for Berlusconi and those who don’t.” And even anti-Berlusconi intellectuals work indirectly for him. Berlusconi owns a Dutch company which produces two intellectual talk shows on RAI 3. Roberto Saviano’s book Gomorrah is published by Mondadori, had a TV special with the talk show host delayed by RAI appointed director, was scolded by Berlusconi’s daughter when he said he admired judges in Milan. They are often denigrated by Il Giornale for biting the hand that feeds them by publishing their large salaries when in fact, they are paid accordingly by RAI since they have high ratings.

This multiple encroachment of many conflicts of interests is apparent to all but his voters. In a 1995 documentary following his foray in politics and win, showed Berlusconi relied on his own polling company. Whatever the electorate wants, the electorate gets, at least in the party program. That film showed him using psychological marketing tricks, such always appearing in his black tie with white polka dots to show stability which wasn’t ever in the lexicon of Italian Parliamentary politics. He later ditched the tie.

Berlusconi has successfully destroyed the RAI, not just content-wise but financially. Its advertisement revenue hurt due to the aging demographics of RAI viewers and the unlawful dismissals that were pursued by his appointees affect RAI’s coffers. His trashy Mediaset shows (shown by Telelatino and Rogers in Ontario) have been granted entry by the Canadian CRTC to further influence the Italian Diaspora vote (even though Harper threatens to remove Italian dual citizens the right to vote). While RAI International channel for the Diaspora, has censored and eliminated most of RAI 3’s programs.

But the Italian electorate, which he honed throughout the years, have turned to satellite, indie LA 7 which beats RAI 1’s nightly news and his arch-nemesis SKY, whose entry on Italian landscape he failed to impede at the EU. Many filmmakers critical of Berlusconi have Mediaset’s subsidy, Medusa, as producer, such as Gabriele Salvatores and Giuseppe Tornatore. Medusa bought restoring rights to great Italian film masters and commies, like Pasolini, Antonioni and Bertolucci, just as Berlusconi secured the rights to Gramsci’s books so they cannot be published anymore.

Besides the boobtube, his production houses create TV series and movies where the nasty judges get it wrong and create injustice such as Donna Detective (RAI 2007) where the detective’s innocent husband goes to jail and a Medusa movie, La vita é una meravigliosa cosa (2010), where the police wiretap and spy on common folk to create a perception of “intrusion of privacy.” News reports aren’t the only culprits of creating false realities. The media can dupe the unsophisticated viewer into sympathizing with his judicial persecution complex, and conveniently, Berlusconi can pass laws limiting the use of wiretappings that are used against him and the mafia at trials.

The concerted effort between RAI and Mediaset, print and airwaves cements this twilight zone of mass distraction. The alternate and altered reality, surreptitiously made of smoke and mirrors, has worked well for his party: Always accuse the other side of what you are accused of.

When Prodi was in power, Berlusconi’s papers would be overflowing with reports of immigrants raping and invading our shores. When Berlusconi is in power such fear mongering reports disappear until recently.

The journalist Indro Montanelli once stated, “Berlusconi is only a symptom.” Indeed, he capitalizes on Italian vices: tax evasion, self-aggrandizement, self-interested relativism.

Thirty years of Berlusconi TV, his own and imitators, in tandem with his 17 years of political activity, has massaged a generation of impressionable youngsters, with his lip service to promoting youth, at a time when the kids born after the Cold War era proved that that ideology is dead, démodé and LOST (name calling the opponents losers).

Yet, at the same time, they must be pathologically fearful that communists are amid us everywhere (RAI, the courts, universities, soccer referees, even Famiglia Cristiana magazine run by progressive priests). There is an initiative to pass laws about the Internet and Italian anti-Berlusconi Facebook groups have been censored whereby the persons who started these groups have had their accounts closed.

More than a subtle manufacturing of consent, the blatant truth seems not to detract his old and young supporters who fall for his populism. And like every regime, future turncoats will deny ever voting for him.

After years of denouncing Mother Country’s contempt for its emigrants stuck in the 1950s, I am airing the dirty laundry. What makes the immigrants stuck? I do not see peasantry as pejorative, just for some pernicious superstitions passed down through their descendents, who should know better. These examples aren’t representative of all immigrant experience.

We are becoming the men we wanted to marry. 

Gloria Steinem (Ms. magazine 1982)

The worker is a slave of capitalist society; the female worker is the slave of that slave.

James Connolly (1915)

A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind.

Mary Wollstonecraft (Vindication of the Rights of a Woman, 1792)

Remember, it’s as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.

William Thackeray

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

Edward Burke

With much dismay, regressive forms of feminism re-emerge today. You don’t need a Gender Studies degree to keep a pulse on these matters. It is easy to see what created these fembots. Yesterday’s celebrity role models created a generation of starlets famous for contributing nothing. The sexual revolution brought to us by the media, shows women exposing their bodies for gains however the power structures remain. Southern Europe’s traditional countries of emigration hold contempt for Diasporas as islands of backwardness. Not that these countries are anymore progressive in regards to gender rights. In Italy, snagging that showgirl role opens the door to cinema and naturally, politics. Though these ex-showgirls, or pageant-contestants-cum-politicians, who transitioned from Berlusconi’s Mediaset network into his governments, may dress the part and repeat the lines, but they never get the important ministries. For an inkling of it, see Lorella Zanardo’s documentary, Women’s Bodies.  http://www.ilcorpodelledonne.net/?page_id=91

Another trend closer to home: Daughters of immigrants in Canada have this self-imposed pressure (and pressures from above) to get married. This single girl’s dilemma seems cross-national as the plethora of chick lit, chick films and TV shows like Sex In the City that condition us, it must end in marriage for everyone. The Bachelor also showcases the full-blown desperation of women suffering from considerable delusions.

The desperation is so heavy in such immigrant families, that they constantly remind their daughters of their failure to get married and procreating instead of praising their educational achievements. The onus on education is purportedly very important in immigrant families, yet, traditional forces obfuscate. Such fathers would say at the wedding reception, “We thought she’d never get married.” While immigrants are embittered they can never go home again, since it too has changed, their children can never leave home again, thus recreate a parallel “home.” The tyranny of keeping up appearances inherited!

The vulgarity of New Money, always known for being ostentatious for others, the bigger and tackier, makes for a new generation of self-entitled hyphenated ethno-Canadian Princesses. Creating the ripe conditions for Bridezilla behaviours, where a stunted adolescent craving for independence becomes a dream misplaced onto the fabled wedding day.

These girls, who in the past may have not had a chance for higher education because their parents invested in their sons, have had the benefit of some education; something their parents may have scarcely had back home. Children of peasant societies were brought up in the New World that taught them, more or less; they have choices for their future and are allowed to have it all (ambition and family). Through education, these women who came of age in the1960s already trudged the stereotypical route pre-destined for the female as secretaries, bank tellers, nurses and teachers and cleared the way for later generation of professionals, chartered accountants, lawyers and pharmacists. The economic leap from two generations is big: one from Old World pre-industrial to industrial working class (immigrant parents who saved to become comfortably middle class), to the recent super career women who have climbed up the rank.

Yet, there is an appearance of emancipation. In societies, which value traditions and appearances, these new professionals have to broach the past burdens with a new reality and newfound wealth. Their parents repeatedly may have said NO; now money changes everything. They can make things happen in their new position as women of means and say yes to themselves and would be partners as long as it affords them normalcy. Normalcy as long it conforms in the eyes of their brethren and monoculture friends who maintain and reinforce such beliefs.

In peasant societies, women obtained a modicum of power when she left her father’s house for her husband’s. She was supposed to get married very young, bear children and her obligations and duties in her newfound status as matron included keeping the register of money, the children’s welfare and their moral education. She went from working the fields of her father to those of her husband. Procreation meant making more hands to till the soil. If she was the daughter of a somewhat wealthier peasant family who owned their own land, her dowry made her attractive.

In Italy, daughters of Americani, whose fathers who emigrated to the Americas and returned were particularly attractive, and thanks to him, his son-in-laws could emigrate ensuring a win-win situation for the newlyweds; where the man could get a job while the girl got out of the village and their passage to the New World was their honeymoon. Fathers made sure the suitor had some dough of his own. The merchant class married the merchant class and nobility married nobility. This was feudal society in a nutshell. Depending on the family, one had freewill to marry whom they wanted within the class strata. Except for the rare case of the landed aristocracy when fortunes went terribly wrong, where the Nouveau Riches traded huge dowries for respectability as in Tomasi di Lampedusa’s book and Visconti’s film, The Leopard (1963). Post-industrialized society brought freedom from the lands and some traditions went by the wayside.

These structures were dragged to the New World to women who were taught one way, formally by society at large and another at home. The dreaded cliché of culture clash only exists if the children really want to rebel. Fear held peasants submissive, superstition a by-product, that’s why they rarely revolted save for some incidents in history. Children of peasants rarely revolted for the same reason, save for some of course.

When a bride shouts at her wedding party, “Girls, I finally can go out now!” because her parents kept her on a short leash; marriage means illusory independence. While most of us were at university, one girl was getting married at 20 “because there’s nothing to do.” A long mane girl in her early twenties can’t cut her hair, “What if I get married this year?” Oh, it’s derisible all right if it weren’t so terribly sad.

Greek superstitions like not telling anyone about a pregnancy until after 5 months, or the baby’s sex, or not buying a gift for the baby because it might jinx the pregnancy. Likewise, after the birth, mother and the newborn are not allowed to leave the household or welcome any well-wishers for 40 days (a common recurrence in Christianity, even repeated for funeral memorials in the Greek Orthodox faith). Forty days indoors without accepting visitors because they bring in “viruses” (modern speak for the evil eye because well-wishers may be jealous and cast negative thoughts onto the innocent newborn). These beliefs are sadder still when it comes from women born in Canada and university-educated in scientific fields. Changing of the rules oblige in the New World, exceptions like hospital visits (apparently, hospital rooms are virus-free sanctuaries) and the mother can leave the house for pediatrician visits for weigh-ins. Even for neo-subscribers of superstition, there is a logic that deems it necessary to adapt and accept the necessary medical visits.

Of course, they’ve picked up foreign traditions like North American eating habits, showers and bachelorette parties while not adopting others like moving out before one marries. Preserving some old school traditions like exploit-a-grandmother free daycare when the couple can afford it, or is it New World opportunistic, individualistic thriftiness while forgoing Old World generosity they’ve come to expect from their parents?

Not all archaic Greek superstitions like the trick marriage have been replicated in Canada, thankfully; posing next to a desired woman dancing unbeknownst to her and using the photograph against her will or the taking of a woman to a Greek island and the boatman strands her overnight to compromise her honour. These schemes resulted in marriages, albeit unhappy ones. And this was Europe in the 1970s at the same time Switzerland finally let women vote.

These exceptions in the New World reminds us of when mythology morphed into organized religions in the Byzantine and Roman World or where Post-Colonial Contact and slavery paralleled those of organized religions creating syncretic religions. Within one family’s immigration trajectory, tradition and mores morphed and adapted to the country of adoption. The newer generation pick and choose what will remain as tradition and what isn’t convenient anymore. They no longer have a talent for the kitchen, which was once praised as an ideal trait for a woman to have, but continue on the road of feminine self-sacrifice. Another inane belief is that the second daughter cannot marry if the eldest daughter is not married. In the past, first generation adult children of immigrants gave away their paychecks to parents. In such contexts, children felt the burden of maintaining a household, duplicating the structure back home where the son emigrated elsewhere and had to support the family; the novelty was the guilt-ridden resentment from not living your life. It was payback time after years of parents paying for their education. The majority of ethnic parents usually coddle their adult children.

Many in the West cast their disapproval or out rightly disparage cultures where arranged marriages (now gone hi-tech with internet matchmakers) and honour killings occur. Case in point: When Montreal Afghani parents, with the help of their son, orchestrated the Kingston drowning deaths of their daughters and wife number one who was barren and relegated to nanny/aunt status. All because they feared their 19-year-old daughter wanted to marry a poor Pakistani! The murders only created the opposite: the remaining living daughters who were taken by children’s services will grow up in Quebecois foster families.

And you hear about setting aflame saris, disobeying the family decreed marrying aged Uncle they chose for her. The Punjabi girl from B.C., married whom she wanted to, in spite of all the machinations, was murdered by family members with a phone call to India. The fear of the daughter becoming too Western, the West, where they chose to immigrate for its standard of living, yet traditional parents can’t control the floodgates of assimilation.

We forget Western Culture also fraught with the same contradictions and experiences. For honour killings, one needs to look at the films of Pietro Germi, who as a Northern Genoan seems to have a fetish for Sicilian nobility and mores, which weren’t even practiced by peasants in continental Italy. 

In Divorce Italian Style (1961), he skewers Italy which only introduced divorce in 1974, where nobleman Fernando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroainni), nicknamed Fefe by his overbearing mustachioed wife, takes a liking to his young cousin Angela. Since divorce was non-existent, he was inspired by a news event where a cuckold wife used the honour-killing clause in ancient Sicilian canons as a defence for her husband’s murder. To get a light sentence, he had to set up the conditions to entrap his faithful wife even if it renders him cuckold in front of glares and gawks of a machoistic village. More witnesses, the better where time-honoured la bella figura  (keeping up appearances) is paramount to laws and even supersedes them. Respectable women of all classes weren’t allowed to enter bars or dance so we witness men dancing with men at the Communist Hall. When a Northern Communist leader comes to give a travailed speech about the emancipation of women and mentions that recent case of honour killing at the comizio, the men in the front row shout in Sicilian, “Buttana!”(Puttana / Slut)

Germi’s other Sicilian comedy is more tragicomic. In Seduced and Abandoned (1964), a very acerbic script by commedia all’italiana ace AGE, Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli) is raped by her sister’s fiancé Peppino. She is further victimized: her name alludes to Agnes Dei, a sacrificial lamb. After doing some rudimentary penitence (sleeping with rocks in her bed) and hiding the rape from her sister Matilde, she writes it down, tears it up only for her mother finding the bit she “succumbed to lust.” She undergoes the “virginity test” which the father prescribes to the rest of his daughters for good measure, and banishes her in a room where the only way to communicate is via furnace pipes.

The father’s motivation isn’t the welfare of his daughter. Marriage can cancel Peppino’s crime with a matrimonio riparatore (shotgun marriage) only codified in Sicilian legal canon but that would explicitly mean the girl has been dishonoured. And he cannot resort to honour killing defence since time has lapsed from when he just heard about it. His nightmares are grotesque renderings of “WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK” if the daughter’s rape and crime, if denounced, are exposed. Given a beating and ultimatum, Peppino refuses to give up his law studies and is convinced by his mother that he cannot marry a dishonoured woman even if he was the one who raped her.
Agnese tries to prevent the honour killing plot by escaping to the police but remains evasive when the police chief asks whether there’s a plan or not, to finally say no. The police chief tells the dimwitted carabiniere from the North who believes her at face value: “In Sicily, yes is no and no is yes. We’re not in Treviso anymore.”

When Agnese is forced into marriage to cancel Peppino’s crime with a matrimonio riparatore, the sensible official asks if she freely wants to marry him. She screams hysterically “YES! YES!” and bursts into tears. In the great montage where Peppino reveals his doctored version, she takes on male behaviours, smokes and seduces, he remains a hapless victim aggressively attacked by a promiscuous woman.

The father, who puts the Padre in Patriarchy, transforms and manipulates his all-consuming fear into devising mise en scenes, so Peppino can be accepted socially since people would talk if it were revealed to be a matrimonio riparatore. But that causes another hypothetical dilemma: will villagers ask, “Wasn’t Matilde engaged to Peppino?” He has to find another suitor for Matilde, a destitute and suicidal Baron, and buys him false dental implants. He orchestrates a serenade from Peppino for Agnese, fakes a refusal complete with gunshots into the sky so everyone can hear. The father’s bravado after some villagers enquire about the reconfigured Matilde – Peppino – Agnese love triangle: “We’re not in the Middle Ages anymore!” This, after a well-thought out recreation of the rape via a public kidnapping to hide Agnese’s pregnancy during the Saint Liboria procession in the town’s square in which everyone could witness.

The police chief has a nose what to expect since he drives out of town that day in order to not witness the faux kidnapping spectacle, exclaiming “What a town!” as he covers his hand over the island on the map of Italy, “much better” wishing an atomic bomb would hit his island.

The attempt to trial Peppino ultimately unveils the truth creating the ire of townspersons towards the family. Even the Baron, throws away the dental implants saying he cannot be bought into marrying Matilde who comes from a dishonourable family. Matilde becomes a nun and Peppino and Agnese are promised to one another at the father’s deathbed, a wish that must be carried fully.

Not that these beliefs still exist today in Sicily. Some practices that have died in the mythical Village of provenance, some benign and silly ones like the serenades were transposed by emigrants.

Sicily is the land of creative writers, who’ve mediated on its complicated moral codes and contradictions. Like Vitaliano Brancati’s novel (and a Mauro Bolognini film; script by Pasolini) Bell’Antonio (1960) is about a sought-after handsome nobleman, Antonio who comes from a family of ladies men and turns out to be impotent in a macho society where aristocrats have lost currency and now need to marry New Moneyed women. In Bell’Antonio, it is an arranged marriage out of class preservation that evolves into love. This time, the family honour is dependent on the male and since Antonio cannot consummate his marriage to saintly beautiful Barbara (Claudia Cardinale), it is annulled. Antonio (Mastroainni) gets it on with prostitutes and honour is finally restored when his servant becomes pregnant to the delight of his mother who doesn’t care whether or not the child is his or not. Even if he has to marry beneath him, class is no longer important.

Male gold diggers preying on rich women are nothing new even in the pubescent world of comics: unemployed Archie chooses Veronica over Betty at first. Consumerism made everything possible, buying happiness or love is a new subterfuge for a mercantile exchange for marriage where the individuals are willing or unwittingly impervious participants. The latter usually love-blind with a disregard for verbal abuse because she exudes neediness. Peasant dowries (or the bride’s side paying for the entire wedding in its modern face, common in Anglo weddings) were replaced with professional women buying their own wedding rings, homes and nice toys their non-professional husbands ask for: cars, the latest electronic device. The problem arises when the unequal entities are confronted with the crux of all inequalities: WHO DECIDES? Merely making more money than the man not only ensures bread-making status, it can emasculate the traditional husband who is left in the peculiar old-new position of making the decisions with his wifey’s money as the Kept Man.