Editorial 

Italian right moves against immigrants

May 24, 2008 

Umberto Bossi’s Northern League, an Italian anti-immigration party, finished a strong third in a recent election and has been given choice seats in the new cabinet. Important to their success was support from working class Italians who had formerly voted for leftist parties but who presumably have begun to see that the left and its pro-immigration attitudes really do not serve their interests.  

The new coalition is quickly using its new power to bring an end to illegal immigration and to advocate reducing overall immigration to around 5–10% of current levels.  

Predictably, the Los Angeles Times article, by Tracy Williamson, goes out of its way to paint Umberto Bossi and the League xenophobic demagogues:  

The league and its right-wing partners, including [Prime Minister Silvio] Berlusconi's People of Freedom party, were able to capitalize on Italian fears about and prejudices toward the foreign-born, sentiments that are intensifying as the number of new arrivals grows and the economy plunges into recession. Their electoral victory also reflected a deep-seated admiration among many Italians for the kind of populist demagoguery that Berlusconi and Bossi represent. 

Williamson quotes Bossi as saying "People want this country to remain theirs" — seemingly a normal enough statement (except for a white person). But then she can’t resist describing him in the same sentence as someone “who once advocated shooting at boats bringing immigrants to Italy's shores.”  

Apparently Bossi is completely out of line for advocating that Italy be able to control its borders.  

The other major party in the conservative coalition is the National Alliance, formed as a successor to Mussolini's Fascists. Party members are described as giving the “stiff-armed Fascist salutes” to Roman mayor Gianni Alemanno.  

Williamson paints a horrific portrait of xenophobic demagogues and former fascists whipping up fears and prejudices. Looking at the same scene, we see Europeans standing up for their people and their culture in the face of powerful forces arrayed against them. Indeed, because of its actions, Italy could face sanctions from the European Union. 

The main targets of the new anti-immigrant actions have been Gypsies and Muslims.  

The most shocking incidents occurred last week in Naples, where residents, reacting to reports that a Gypsy woman had attempted to kidnap an Italian child, torched several camps, forcing hundreds of men, women and children to flee. Many were later loaded in the back of trucks and taken to safety, in scenes that United Nations officials compared to "ethnic cleansing" in the Balkans in the 1990s — the very events that drove some of these Rom to Italy in the first place. 

Well, as the article notes, “many of the Rom, by their own account, make a living through petty theft.” It then claims that while many Rom are not thieves. But why would any country not react to a group in which a significant percentage views theft from as a normal, if not honored, profession?  

It’s interesting that Mayor Alemanno “insists that he is not a racist or xenophobe.” But how does one show that one is not a racist or xenophobe while pursuing policies to deal with the problems created by the Rom and the Muslims? By genuflecting to the people whose interests and concerns are always lurking in the background of any discussion of opposition to immigration in any Western country. To wit, Alemanno “insists that he is not a racist or xenophobe and pointedly paid a visit to Rome's main synagogue. Then he sent police into the capital's largest Rom camp, a squalid collection of tin shacks, dirty children and rubbish.”  

Take home lesson for immigration control activists: If you want to try to stop the invasion of your country and the dispossession of your people, be sure you show respect to the one group that really matters.