INDEX

A)   A proper history retold:  STUDYING 

In the so-called “Bel Paese” (Italy) we still didn’t deal with the horrors of our past and we still continue to promote forms of oppression toward the non-communitarian subjects and their descendants, also through those forms that appear falsely as innocent and ”positive”.  My interest on this thematic rise from the disgust that I feel daily feel by listening to and seeing the Italian State, and the EU supranational apparatus subjugating people, perpetuating inferiorization, racialization and oppression mechanism in contemporary society.  There is the urge to remind with no fear, here and now, of what history we are made, while fighting the ignorance that brings us to live in this ill society, in this white supremacist, capitalistic, racist, patriarchal society, as b. hooks would say.

Since I study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, in the post conceptual art practices lead by Professor Marina Gržinić, I had the chance to develop deeper into issues that were already in my field of interest, from the artistic and, philosophical/ and political point of view.  The international context wherein which I found myself, with many worldwide colleagues, has given a fundamental value to this experience.  The fact of studying in Vienna, an “imperial” towncity in the middle of Europe, in an elitist institution with exclusive and controlled access, has clashed with the reality of precarious youth many of whichwhom coming from non-EU countries and subjected to the strict Austrian bureaucracy. From the waiting for the visa, that often has postponed their presence in the Academy for at least one semester, to the search for money to show enough economic sustainability, to the never ending procedures in order to live in Austria, etc. During these years we tried in different ways to intervene in the racist structures of the academyAcademy and we used art as a tool to gain these changes, to take back spaces, physical and of thought.

All these forms of institutional racism as well as all other forms of discrimination in Austria are just an example of the dynamics that characterize the Western Europe in its entirety and they are now impregnated within the social, political and economic body of the EU (named the fortress Europe).

 

B)   The political, social and economic situation in Italy 

I was born in Acqui Terme, a northern Italian town located in the Piedmont region, into a family of internal immigrants. My parents originate from many generations from Altamura, a town from a Southern region, Puglia.

The process of industrialization, which started with the Italian Unification, had a strong drive, and started after the Second World War, with the introduction of capital to Italy that came in the form of aid for reconstruction. Between 1950 and 1970 there were strong waves of emigration, both external and internal. Many people emigrated to Argentina and Australia, but internal migration to the cities of the industrial North has no precedent in European history because of its vast dimensions[1].

The south, which was committed to agriculture and farming, was considered “under-developed”, “troglodyte”, with a “low cultural coefficient” and a high unemployment rate.

It is clear that the oppression in the colonies was and is perpetuated internally. This situation was excellently described in Frantz Fanon’s work.

With the establishment of the industry a large amount of low cost labour was necessary, so the masses – particularly the men, an exploitable labour force from the South – moved toward the “modern” north. Southern people were ridiculed, exposed, discriminated and segregated, considered dirty and uncivilized. Statements such as “No entry for dogs and southerners”, “Do not rent to the southerners” could be read on the walls of the cities.

At the time, the building sector also had a great success and it is in this working field where my father situated himself. So, at twenty-something, the quasi-strange couple, my parents, moved to Acqui Terme. It is in this city where they decided to stay and give birth to their three children.

I grew up in a city ruled by the Northern League (Lega Nord), a political right-wing party well rooted in the local territories of the northern regions as well as in public institutions (local, national and international). From its formation it has proudly promoted xenophobic and racist sentiments.

I still remember when, years ago the mayor passed a motion that included a downright bounty on Albanians ‘sans-papiers’, which was “awarding” one million liras (Italian currency before the Euro) to those citizens that would report to the authorities an  “illegal” migrant.

We are speaking of course precisely about that country, Albania, which was temporarily occupied by Italians in the final stages of World War I (1920) and then conquered militarily by Mussolini in 1939. The Italians, more than 30 thousand, between settlers and workers, who disembarked and occupied Albania, quickly turned the Kingdom of Albania into Italian protectorate.

What was the impact of colonialism in the aftermath of the political situation of the colonized countries?

What is legal and what is illegal? Is it legal for a government or an economic system to continuously and even silently still kill people?

The Northern League is the party responsible that evicted ​and destroyed many Roma settlements, to have retrieved the usefulness of the crematorium toward Moroccans, to have created games on the internet such as Bounce off the clandestine where the winner is the one who manages to repel the largest number of immigrants, to have compared migrants and black people to animals (it happened recently with the Minister for Integration Cécile Kyenge, the first black woman in the government in Italian history, who since the first day she started work has been subjected to horrible racialised insults, even from colleagues).

Among the bloodiest statements of the Northern League exponents against the minister I can report the following abhorrent insults:

– Dolores Vanlandro on Facebook writes, “Nobody wants to rape her, then she could understand what the victim of such a bloody murder (rape) can feel?[2]“;

-Roberto Calderoni, “When I see pictures of Kyenge I cannot throw the appearance of an orangutan out of my mind[3]“;

-Alessandro Brianza and Edgardo Arosio stated, in reference to what happened at the convention of the Democratic Party (Pd) (where the Minister has been the target of an attack with  bananas by Davide Fabbri, a former participant of the reality show Island of the Famous): “If they had thrown coconuts they would have hurt her. So launching the bananas … she must be happy.”

-Moreover Vittorio Milani, a former member of the autonomist movement “Veneto State” wrote on his Facebook profile: “Kyenge says that if we want to remove the burqa, then the nuns have to remove their outfit called a habit, too. This is absurd; someone should kill this bitch, she’s stupid and useless.”[4]

Another threat on Facebook, this time from a man (61 years old) from Verona who in anticipation of the inauguration of the project African Summer School in Verona, attended by the Minister, wrote:  “Let’s welcome the nigger minister in Verona with weapons[5]”

The extreme right party Forza Nuova is brutally attacking her. Recently, during another convention that she attended, mannequins spotted with red paint were located next to the stage. Alongside the flyers: “No to the ius soli,[6], immigration kills”. And still a poster appeared on the walls of different cities, from the south to the north, which says: “Immigrants go back to your country! In Italy we’ve lost our jobs, our home, our future”. The statement is even translated in five different languages.

The list of insults and racist acts toward constructed categories of “inferior” people, especially black, Islamic and Roma is endless.

It is annoying to listen to all these disgusting things nevertheless I think that we should remember daily, the hidden background of this system of  dismissals, a historical way thinking and of fascist brutalities that still live and reproduce themselves today.

Therefore, it is on such a basis that the politicians and media instigate racial hate by thinking that they have total control on our minds and hearts. Therefore, yes, maybe, to hate but only our fake white racist misogyny.

In the last decade many right wing movements and political parties expanded and increased consensus. Aside the already mentioned Northern League and Forza Nuova, we can list Casa Pound, Fiamma Tricolore, Patria Nostra, Azione sociale (by Alessadra Mussolini), Resistenza Nazionale. Internet as having amplified the effect of spreading their racist ideology through web pages, social networks, forums, etc. Nevertheless they also take over (we can also use the word “curate”) cultural and artistic movements, initiatives, events and various activities. With these they have constructed a very “successful” system in delivering their messages and spreading their ideas. The use of pop-culture in their politics is a sly way to “normalise” cultural, social and aesthetic views of fascism in the public discourses.

One of the movements that struck my attention and the attention of  many who are aware of this, what I can term, “FASCISM RELOADED”, is the fast growing “grass-roots” right radical neo-fascist Casa Pound. In the public opinion it became known in 2003 with the squat of a state owned building in the near of the train station Termini with the motivation of helping families who have emergency housing. With this kind of action they contested what they term “reactionary stereotype that the occupation of empty buildings is an exclusive practice of the left.” To understand the big impact that this it has on the social level I want to mention some of the initiatives they developed in these years among which the “Social loan”, a law proposal dedicated to create a regional apparatus with which housing blocks would be built with public money and then sold at the price of the cost of production to “Italian families” (not yet owning any real housing estate). And the project “Time to be mothers” that calls for a reduction of the working hours, from 8 to 6 hours a day, for one of the parents of a child between the ages of 0 to 6, whilst the salary would hold steady.  At the moment they also manage a network of bars, libraries, pubs. They even have a theatre company (Teatro Non Conforme FT Marinetti/Nonstandard theatre FT Marinetti), two sport schools and teams, two magazines L’Occidentale/The Western and Fare Quadrato/Close ranks, a web TV channel (TortugaWeb)  and a web radio (Radio Bandiera Nera), rehearsal studios,  an artistic movement called Turbodinamismo and an association of artists called “Artisti per Casa Pound”. For them in this latter project (I quote and translate from their web site) the “art is mainly ‘political’ in the sense that it has always the feet firmly knock in the life of the polis, from which it draws its nourishment and which gives it the fundamental orientation.”

This calls to rethink political art and the vocabulary we use and the differences we established.

I believe that this list of information can make us more aware of the worrisome status of how fascist ideology is penetrating the life of many without a historical memory. Fascism is there but without history of  earlier historical Fascism and it is presenting itself as a populist movement to make the life of Italians ( and we can state in blood and soul with a clear racist  ground) “just” better.

In their program they have been appropriating concepts, vocabulary and causes that are part of the once clear leftist struggles. But the right of housing, the fight against the financial dictates and privatization is done by reinforcing nationalism and racism, preached through radical contrast to immigration mechanisms.

Antar Marincola says: “The right wing still exists and it will always exist. You can always create the burden of the migrant, just as the Italians are linked to the mafia and spaghetti: the stereotype. That will always exist. The Moroccan drug dealer, the Somali criminal, and so on.  This thing enters in the emigration and immigration logic. The right wing is omnipresent; they will always be by your side. This is a certainty in western countries.

But what do the leftists do in this regard? What kind of other politics? What kind of integration do they do? In which kind of processes are they involved? Which kinds of inclusion mechanisms do they develop? What kind of prospects do they have according to the world that they are controlling and managing? What is the European left-wing doing for real integration? The right wing has always done its job and it will do it better and better, especially in times of crisis like this, it will do it doubly better, but where is the left? Where has it been? Who created the detention centres for migrants, the Bossi-Fini or the Turco-Napolitano law?”

Igiaba Scego says: “I was very impressed by the Dominican American writer, Junot Díaz, who said that we must decolonise love. This is a strong statement because we have very unbalanced relationships between employer and employee, or between members of the same family or even for a couple. I think that to decolonise love, affections and the labour relationships is absolutely important. We must begin to tell the truth, to scatter these alleged inferiorities and superiorities.

We have to, and I’ve thought about this for quite some time, to decolonize Italian politics because it is full of stereotypes. It ranges from the hatred of the Northern League – “We don’t want these King Kong people, they should return to their countries!”, a rhetoric we have lived with for twenty years and more – to paternalism.

I believe that the Italian leftists or Italian progressivists have to decolonise their relationship with the migrants and migrants’ children because personally I’m tired of always being considered the victim, -I’m not a victim at all – or who claims to speak in my voice – I have my voice and I can speak for myself – and then above all the debate on “ious solis” makes me want to vomit because for many years they just speak about making a law, which is rather simple.

We are beyond paternalism. This means to not understand that your country is anthropologically changed because there has been a very strong change.

Then we always talk about children when the problem also affects people of my age – next year I will be 40 – I was not born yesterday, I’m the daughter of immigrants, I’m Italian and Somali, so let’s stop talking only about children, we are both children and adults, soon we will be the elderly, we would need to talk about our pensions. Politics stewed me greatly and then also the rhetoric of embracing black children to show that we are so progressive etc. No, there is no need for exterior superficialities, we need stability and facts.”

[4] Original quote: “La Kyenge dice che se vogliamo eliminare il burqa anche le suore si devono tagliare il velo. Siamo all’assurdo, qualcuno uccida questa p… idiota e inutile”.