A sinister side to Italy's smile

THE DARK HEART OF ITALY: Travels Through Time and Space Across Italy by Tobias Jones (Faber, pounds 16.99)

IT appears that Italy's long, drawn-out fascist trauma is far from over; the current government under Silvio Berlusconi includes both neo-Blackshirts and members of the blatantly xenophobic Northern League. President Berlusconi dominates Italy far more effectively than Mussolini ever did.

He controls three of the nation's television channels, and through these he spreads propaganda for his Forza Italia party. This is a new- style "videocracy" such as the world has never seen.

In his superb appraisal of Berlusconi's Italy, Tobias Jones investigates the country's kickback and bribery culture, known as la bustarella ("the little envelope"), as well as its football, film and food fads.

Like many English, he is intoxicated by the jolly carnival of Italy and swoons that " everything is simply beautiful".

Such enthusiasm is a bit cringe-making.

However, since 1999, Jones has lived in Parma, the gastroerotic heart of Italy. Nowhere is the pasta so rich and creamy, or the meat such a bright, sanguinous red.

Beneath the city's roseate contentment, though, Jones detects a deepening social unease. Contemporary Italy is prey to sinister hidden forces and hoodlum financiers, he reckons.

The malaise is traced back to a single appalling event. On 12 December 1969, a bomb exploded in Milan's Piazza Fontana, killing 16 bystanders.

So began Italy's "strategy of tension", when crypto-fascists allegedly connived with cabinet-ministers and secret-service-chiefs to implicate the Left in acts of terrorism. Further bomb attacks were perpetrated over the next two decades, supposedly by a ragbag of ex- paras and Cosa Nostra commando groups. The intention was to create such fear and instability that Italians would clamour again for an authoritarian leader. Has Italy found its Big Brother in Berlusconi and his myriad acolytes, the so-called "Berlusclones"?

Jones is a dogged investigator; in late 1999 he attended the trial of three neo-fascists accused of the Piazza Fontana outrage. Thirty years after the bombing, however, the proceedings are a farce, as the lawyers uselessly dispute matters of protocol.

Typically, the arraigned are acquitted through mancanza di prove, "lack of evidence". Italy has a surfeit of unsolved crimes, and Jones attributes them to the far-Right puppeteer of Italian politics, Licio Gelli (now in retirement).

During the Spanish Civil War, Gelli fought for Franco in a Blackshirt division.

Afterwards he became Grand Master of Italy's now outlawed P2 (Propaganda Two) masonic lodge, which was involved in acts of political espionage and terrorism.

Not surprisingly, given his mafioso-fascist connections, Berlusconi himself was a P2 affiliate and was probably initiatedby Gelli. In Rome's ritzy Hotel Excelsior, Gelli would have bid Berlusconi roll up his trouser legs as he tapped him on the shoulder with the flat of a ceremonial sword. Even Dennis Wheatley could not have imagined the scene.

Just how dangerous is Italy's TV president? In this land of hydra- headed conspiracy theories, the most paranoid suspicion is often the right one.

Italy's dietrologisti, literally the "behindologists", insist that cliques and shadowy cabals behind Berlusconi manipulate power as surely as did the Venerable Wolf (alias Licio Gelli).

But the truth is, Berlusconi is probably no less venal than any other Italian leader. Like Mussolini, he provides vulgar entertainment for the masses (his media empire celebrates bosoms, football and money), while plundering the state coffers for family and friends.

Most Italians turn a blind eye to these malpractices; but one day, Berlusconi will fall into disfavour, as Italians do not like being dictated to for very long.

CORRUPTION is in any case so widespread in Italy that it would be difficult to imagine a Sicilian property developer applying for planning permission, or a businessman not bribing a telephone engineer for the speedy installation of a line.

For all that, Jones says he would rather live in Berlusconi's Italy than anywhere else in Europe. Italians remain a vital and wonderful people, whatever their leader, and The Dark Heart of Italy is an enduring tribute to them. At the same time, Tobias Jones has written a trenchant account of a foxy politician and his subterfuges.

Ian Thomson's biography of Primo Levi is published by Hutchinson.

Copyright 2003
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