October 8, 2007
The Crossroads Communist
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on March 26, 2006)
Since our goal here is to understand today’s politics, why have we spent several columns raking through the ashes of the past? Consider the following as the apologia with which we started.
October 8, 2007
Red: Different Shades
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on March 19, 2006)
Palmiro Togliatti’s dramatic switch in Salerno (our focus in several recent columns)—transforming an embattled mostly-clandestine movement into a mass party that accepted alliance with other parties at all levels and would support the Italian constitution (and help draft it)—produced some...
October 8, 2007
The Conflict over the Magistrates: Stand Back from the Blaze
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on February 12, 2006)
The gutter salvos of the principals in the election campaign, with accompanying modeling of silly T-shirts, can be safely ignored by those trying to understand the fundamentals of the Italian political culture. We were set to continue our following of the Communist trek-to-today.
October 8, 2007
How to Flip a Switch
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on March 5 2006)
Last week, we reviewed the possible reasons for the 1944 Salerno Switch (in which Palmiro Togliatti, having made his way, after an adventurous two-month trek from Moscow, imposed on assembled Italian Communist leaders their transformation into a mass party, available for...
October 8, 2007
The Moscow Factor
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on February 26, 2006)
We have been focusing on what we have dubbed the Salerno Switch, Palmiro Togliatti’s peremptory arrival from Moscow and, with an iron hand, his charting of a new course for Italian Communism, a course of loyalty to the...
October 8, 2007
The Guns in the Hills
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on February 19, 2006)
Last week we watched Palmiro Togliatti’s peremptory shanghaiing of the 1944 gathering of the Communist clan in Salerno, forcing through the transformation of the movement into a mass party, seeking broad popular allegiance, alliance with other parties, and offering full support to the constitution that would be written in the days ahead.
October 8, 2007
The Salerno Switch
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on February 12, 2006)
On the afternoon of March 27, 1944, the recognized leader of Italian Communism, Palmiro Togliatti, probably stepped off a boat on the Naples waterfront. At a Turin lecture 16 years later, Togliatti described the day: “When I reached Naples it was a terrible day. The sky was full of smoke and ashes. Vesuvius was erupting.”
October 8, 2007
Italy’s Own Berlin Wall
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on February, 5 2006)
Finally pulling ourselves away from George Bush’s Awful Autumn and Silvio Berlusconi’s Wobbly Winter, we return to a more orderly building of a structure of understanding of today’s Italian politics, the successor to the frozen politics of the post-war republic’s first 40 years.
October 8, 2007
Phony Equalities
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on January 29, 2006)
A column devoted to understanding the politics of many another Western country would not have to treat justice and the courts. Ideally, politics doesn’t enter the courtroom. But in Italy, the corps of magistrates that provides the country’s investigators, prosecutors and...
October 8, 2007
Too Much Motherhood
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on January 22, 2006)
Throughout Western history, tyrants have used judges and courts to enforce their tyrannies. Even many of the abuses of the Spanish Inquisition started with the State’s interests rather than the Church’s. So an independent judiciary was seen as a...
October 8, 2007
The Elixir for Everything
(This article first appeared in US Italia Weekly on January 15 2006)
Last month in these pages Stefano Vaccara interviewed the economist Francesco Giavazzi, who previously in an article had named the five reforms he would most like to see the next (or renewed) Italian government undertake.
October 8, 2007
The Thaw Begins
(This article first appeared in US Italia weekly on December 24, 2005)
Further along our trail of broken promises, interruptions in the orderly construction of an understanding of the Italian political culture, we are led to a digression by an interview with Giuliano Ferrara just published in the German weekly Der Spiegel.
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