Right wing hammered in Italy's elections

Submitted by Matthew on 16 May, 2012 - 7:45

The former government parties of Silvio Berlusconi and Umberto Bossi were emphatically defeated in Italy’s administrative elections of 6-7 May.

The success of Genovese comic Beppe Grillo’s “Five State Movement” was another notable feature. Grillo is the radical-populist scourge and bête-noire of the whole bourgeois political order in Italy.

Berlusconi’s party lost 61% of its support compared with the same elections two years ago, even it its major strongholds, while La Lega of Bossi fared even worse. In its heartlands it lost 67%, and 30% in localities of populations under 15,000.

Already having lost Milan a year ago in the first signs of mounting disaffection, the former coalition has now lost in nearly every major city in the north (gaining only Genova, a vile redoubt of reaction even before Bossi and co. arrived there 10 years ago). The crisis of the centre-right is profound. Berlusconi sustains (just!) the Monti government, while La Lega calls for his head, frantically posing as a principled opponent to policies whose substance and spirit it embraced in years of power-sharing with Berlusconi.

The (social-democratic) Democratic Party lost 91,000 votes — 60,000 in the North.

Significantly, it lost 20,000 in the traditional bastions of “red Italy” — Toscana, Emilia and Marche. Here, in a reflection of the overall picture, abstention was high. Nationally it averaged more than 10%. There was a decline of 16% for the more “radical” elements of the centre-left coalition (including Rifondazione Comunista), underlining the critical weakness of forces which are increasingly impotent before capitalism in crisis. How could it be otherwise, when self-professed “communists” and “socialists” have once again hitched themselves to the parliamentary wagon of the Democrats? This is a force that has been, and will remain, the principal instrument of support for the present government and its rampant assault on the very masses these “radicals” claim to champion.

It is a spectacle that is as farcical as it is shameful and humiliating, revealing once more that these forces have learnt nothing from the debacle of their opportunist role in the collapse of the last Prodi-led centre-left government.

The recent announcement by the left leaders of the foundation of a movement of “social opposition to the Monti government” — appealing to all the forces of the left to join, and appealing for the union leaders to call a general strike (i.e. a one-day affair) is a cynical attempt to create another left bloc.

The only real victor in the election was the “Five Star Movement” of Beppe Grillo, sometime comedian and now the bête-noire of Italy’s establishment and bourgeois media. It stood in 101 councils out of 941 and won 240,000 votes — nearly 9% nationally. But in the north, it doubled, trebled, and quadrupled its vote, especially in the cities, where next week some of its candidates will figure in head-to-head run-offs with the Democrats for the mayoral seats.

Grillo and his supporters abjure any notion of a “party”, a term poisoned by its association with the “ideologies” of “left” and “right”, “capitalism” or “socialism” — all of them, in the view of Grillo and his supporters, instruments and expressions of a wholly corrupt order. The movement constitutes itself through online organising. Its generally radical, plebeian-democratic openness explains its rising appeal. Compared to the fervency with which Grillo and other “Five Star Movement” leaders challenge the corruption at the heart of Italy’s political system and push for openness and accountability, the revolutionary left look like Boy Scouts.

Grillo’s populism offers no way out of the present situation enveloping the masses, and his successes will increasingly sharpen the contradictions of a force whose members generally have at one time or another identified with or been sympathetic to the left.

Grillo himself is an loose cannon. In February 2012 he responded to Monti’s declaration that citizenship rights would be given to the children of immigrants by issuing a racist denunciation, provoking conflict and resignations within his movement. More recently, he announced support for Italy’s withdrawal from the Euro, garbling half-baked economic speculations. He is acutely aware that there are forces of the right listening appreciatively to him, and recognises that the eclipse of the right, with the increasing fragmentation of the parties and electorate, offers him a growing opportunity to fill the vacuum.

His thirst for power becomes more discernible the more he tastes it.

Comments

Submitted by AWL on Fri, 25/05/2012 - 12:20

Some claims in this article need to be corrected.

The centre right did not win in Genova ( Genoa) in May 2012 and that the city in question is not "a vile redoubt of reaction" now and was not one ten years ago either.

The second round run off of the mayoral contest in Genoa gave Marco Doria, the centre left candidate, close to Sinistra Ecologia e Liberta ( Vendola’s party) no less than 59.7% against 40.3% for Enrico Musso, a centrist candidate, who although once a member of Berlusconi’s PdL had stood against the more right wing PdL candidate in the first round.

Admittedly, there was a 61% abstention rate in the second round but not all the abstainers were necessarily on the right. Moreover, the city’s past gives it at least as great claim to be a redoubt of revolution, rather than reaction, as Turin. Genoa played a glorious role in the Italian Resistance, was the most insurrectionary city in July 1948, was the scene of massive violent anti-fascist demonstrations in July 1960 and, as more of your readers are likely to remember, the vast majority of its population sided with the anti globalisation protesters against the repressive apparatus of Berlusconi and Fini’ s state in events of July 2001.

I suspect that somewhere along the way, a confusion arose, for reasons I can not comprehend as the cities’ names and geographical locations are so different, with Verona, a city where an appalling former fascist Leghista mayor, Tosi, was triumphantly re-elected in the first round.

Nonetheless, I felt I should come to Genoa’s defence, given that the city has the misfortune to be the birth place of Beppe Grillo, an increasingly dangerous demagogue and charlatan who has not only expressed racist sentiments about emigrants and made Europhobic statements about returning to the lira as Hugh has pointed but also trivialised the Mafia on a recent visit to Palermo, saying it only asked for a little bit of protection money ( pizzo) whilst the politicians strangled people, a tasteless joke at best, given that the Mafia ‘s methods of killing people have shown great variety over the years and are not confined to guns and bombs.

Toby Abse 24.5.12

Submitted by AWL on Mon, 28/05/2012 - 13:02

Yes. A gremlin invaded our machines when putting together the issue of Solidarity in which this article appeared. I am told, Verona, was indeed Hugh's intended target.
Apologies for the confusion.

Cathy Nugent

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