this is set at a outside table of a bar in Rome, in a empty square under the sun somewhere near trastevere at the end of spring probably. we are finishing our wine or coffee. this could be a comment on things like this happening to my country. but not necessarily.

-- So Cipriana, are you really a fascist?
-- You bet I am! always had, always will. I have nothing against the non-fascists but this is what I am. Hail the Duce and all the rest.
-- Nothing against the non-fascists! Listen to her. Are we supposed to believe this crap?
-- And you, Elda, are you fascist too?
-- Sure I am... well, no I am not. Sorry Cip but you know. I was fascist but I am not anymore. They told me I have to go with the left because they are running everything and pulling all the threads, you know. They say that in my field it is important. So I reformed. I am with the left now. God save D'Alema and all the rest.
-- Yeah but you do are a fascist Elda, you know that. Until yesterday you had Fini's picture in your room.
-- I saw it, it was next Capossela's.
-- No Cip, I'm telling you, I don't give a shit anymore.

(Cip finishes her cigarette with a hard drag. Puts it out in the glassy ashtray. We admire the gesture in silence, the smoke dissolving in the sun light)

-- So what about you, Corpodibacco, are you a communist or what?
-- No girls I am not. Not a communist.
-- He's an anarchist.
-- No I am not.
-- He's pretending to be superior.
-- I am no nothing, I don't want to define myself like that anymore.
-- uh-uh.
-- So what are you for, Corpo, the comedians?

Babsi today wrote about a typical milanese episode (I've lived similar episodes also in Rome, but to me this sort will always be associated with Milan, like a certain damp cold weather and the smell of monoxide).

It's the one where the ticket controllers get on a bus in a small commando team and start checking on the tickets of the passengers, behaving like bullies and blatantly treating certain categories of passengers differently from the others.
They yell, they drag around, they use the force and a whole range of intimidations, or they limit themselves to sermons about the importance of always carrying a "good ticket". When they cannot bully you and yell at you (because you're a citizen) they can always make you fell ashamed of yourself in front of everyone.
The trick always worked and will always work, because many middle-class citizens mistake their own radical fear of being put to shame in front of the others for instinctive respect of the law, although the truth probably is that they would sooner break the law if only they could resist or be indifferent to shame (cf. Kafka's Process). Or, as it is with tax cheating in this country (and a lot of other stuff), if only the crime itself wasn't considered a shame.

Pathetically incapable of professionally doing their job by politely asking for documents and writing down the tickets and normally fine the passenger, using a normal tone of voice and human decency, the milanese controllers are very often ego maniacs who just adore the tough part of their job more than anything else, and have orgasms listening to the barking sound of their voices in the silent bus.
When I was a teenager those in my category where the favorite victims of ticket controllers. Youngsters by the shabby appearance where easily the ones to be mistreated if found without a ticket. Now, only a handful of years later, it is all different. Shabby youngsters carry iPods and cell phones, and the most undesirable of all passengers, the most vulnerable is obviously the immigrant, or B-citizen, whatever you want to call it.

Babsi tells her story with her usual efficiency, and I felt I had to tell about my own by commenting to her post. I am translating here excerpts from both the sources.

Babsi:

At the bottom of the trolleybus, a boy. The boy who's turning a blind eye to them and who has a wool jacket with patches on the elbows. Ticket, they say to him. Without the "please" that was reserved to me. The boy acts dumb. Hey, the ticket, kids one. Where are you from? Egypt? And where do you get the tickets? In Egypt? The boy utters a long guttural sentence: I am sure that he is understanding and he is insulting them. Or that he is cursing. Always the same one, almost pensionable; He is looming up in front of him, standing astride at this point, and insisting: or you just thought to come to Italy to fool the Italians, eh, dark boy? "Morocco", says the boy. "Morocco, not Egypt". Resurgence of national pride. Oh, Morocco. It's the same. Here it's paying for the ticket. The second interferes: so, do you or do you not have it? He doesn't have it. I don't know why he doesn't. Because he doesn't have a buck, probably, but I lived in London washing dishes and I asked for money at the Earl's Court subway station to pay for my tickets (...)
They're back to grill the boy with the patches on the elbows. I.D., says the old one. E-D? tries to parrot the boy. Oh, when there was Mussolini the things went all right, snaps the man in uniform... I clear my throat. Excuse me? When there was - who? I surprised him. He's looking at me resentfully. Don't you get in the way, miss. I don't get in the way. I'm interested in civility and good sense. I breath in despite the fever. "Apology of fascism, you know."
Now everyone is looking at me: the moroccan boy, the woman in pink, the six controllers, the one who's yelling in the cell phone no se puede. "When there was Mussolini, gentlemen, should be taught at school - I swallow - how much this country was violent and illiberal". Silence. "Not - I swallow - on the buses." My man in uniform is outraged: on the buses, miss, one should pay the ticket! That's all! (...)
Three controllers out of six make the boy get off the bus: the rough way.

Me:

(...) I was fined plenty of times during my junior and high school years. Once I was chased down half Viale Padova by a controller, up to the inside premises of school, many times I was grabbed by the jacket, yelled on my face, carried down the 56 or the 92 or the 33, underwent the sermons I hate, I lied and gave false identities and shrugged and laughed in the face and trembled of fear and shame.
Still today that I always pay the ticket in every city of the world, when I see uniforms instinctively I shiver and look for escape routes.
Always hated controllers because of their intimidating air. Never solved the ambiguity, whether the State was always right, even when it came with the shitty face and the bullying policeman-like behavior and all the rest, or whether it was never right, because of the great lie that was held together all around.
Finally, I don't care for the apology... I find the law-enforced anti-fascism very cretin (it certainly doesn't keep people from being or becoming fascist in new and old ways), but the way I see it bullying and barking voices are more than sufficient reasons to put oneself in the way, since they represent all the possible worse, all the possible fascism to expose and impede. If only to get in the way was anything useful-- or even if it wasn't useful at all. Provided to have clear in an instant which side one is on... and instead one loses precious seconds to understand it.

At the flea market I always end up poking among old photos and postcards. Not that I usually buy anything. I just pass by and occasionally stop and look at the old portraits, and wonder: is that the same humanity I am part of?
All the faces and bodies in the pictures seem so different. What was phony back then, and what was sincere, and what was a caricature. Everything seem to be made of another material. Some of the ladies look like my grandma looked like, a little. But she was real. They seem to be invented by someone else. Some of the men seem to have bodies out of proportion, probably due to the unusual fashion.

Few days ago I was at the flea market of Bollate (Milano), located just next certain horrific "modern" projects that plague that lousy part of the town. There, just like in any other italian flea market actually, the pictures of the times of fascism were the majority. And not only pictures: statues, posters, memorabilia.
Mussolini and his acolytes were everywhere, in pictures and on any little thing from those times. Buttons, pins, boxes, the usual. And there were also other pictures, where no "fascist authority" was present but, in small details like a black handkerchief in a pocket, or a military hat, or a certain advertising in the background, or a certain way of the men to pose in front of the camera, everything still spoke about the times of fascism in Italy.

The times of fascism. That was when my miserable falling country manifested the will to make of its typical cowardice and its worse defects an implacable force. It happened that once and we are still thinking about it.
What was that force? it was a gigantic, inevitable, shameless, black Mafia that pervaded the country and screamed itself from the balconies and the bullhorns instead of hiding in the villas or at the outskirts of town. It sung songs, and wrote poems on itself, and celebrated its new order as if people had expected it for long, when in fact nobody had expected it. Like any other mafia, it brought injustice disguised by justice, and ferocious illegality by peace and order, lies by adamant truths. It got rid of all the other mafias because there ought to be only One-National-Mafia.
Then it faded away, leaving behind    the bare bones of a raided country,    starving, deadly wounded and corrupted forever and covered with shame.

And evidently it also left behind a stubborn army of nostalgic individuals that went on sharing the shreds of that propaganda for decades, passing on the mania to sons and nephews, until today.
Such were the memorabilia at the flea market: in the end, a nauseating collection of phony poses, of silly objects, of unintelligible dialogs of mysterious faces ornamented with propaganda chasing you away from the stalls, able to extend their rule over the past memories for absence of concurrence.

-- in picture, above: one of the few glorious almost-non-fascist pictures found at the flea market. Unless the little boy's hat is in fact the very fascist military d'annunziano alpine hat of his father.

I wish my typical paranoia was working in this situation, but it doesn't. She just goes and comes whenever she wants.

Yesterday, April 25th, was the anniversary of an important day for Italy, the liberation of Milan from the Nazi occupation (y. 1945), which is virtually considered the liberation of Italy from fascism. Every year in Milan there's a march in memory of that important day, and very often the march is an occasion of sparkles among factions.

Usually, since the end of April is a period of elections for Italy (soon we'll vote for the new Mayor here in Milan), a special act takes place on the scene of the march: some eminent member of the right-center coalition walks for a little while in the middle of the left-wing crowd, until people start insulting him, pushing him away, calling him fascist, sometimes coming to blows.
I have recorded episodes like these since when I remember. Since 1994 (the advent of mr. B.): members of Berlusconi's party, members of the Northern League, members of former-fascists parties, conservative journalists, Berlusconi's TVs' reporters... etc.

This happens every time, clockwork, at least when a right-wing representative shows up, if it is useful enough for him or her to run a little risk to gain a lot of respect.
This happens, because the left-wing marches are plagued by handfuls of imbeciles who feel very safe and strong in the crowd, and the examples are countless.

This time the right-wing candidate, the former Minister for Education who is running for Mayor, had to walk only few meters in the crowd before the insults started pouring down. She felt intimidated and left. From what I read, and pretty obviously, news headlines are making a party with it all over the place.
It obviously all turned out to be this huge, gigantic present of the mentioned imbeciles to the right-wing candidate, soon to be new mayor hands down. To humble her opponents even more, in fact, when she received the insults she was actually pushing in the crowd her father on a wheelchair, who is a survivor from a nazist concentration camp.

O-K.

Alas, this is not all. Later during the demonstration, some other imbecile decided to burn an Israeli flag in the middle of the march. Not very wisely, since the two imbecile acts got immediately linked in the news and in public imagination, and will forever be, whether they actually were linked or not. How burning an Israeli flag had anything to do with a march in memory of the liberation against the Nazism, anyway, it's everybody's guess. I think the only reason is what I said before, namely the perverse way by which one can feel safe and strong and cowardly protected in the crowd (reason why I avoid marches whenever I can).

(Mind you, I have many reserves against the Israeli government. I think they committed and are committing many crimes. And on the other hand I wouldn't find that insulting if someone, for example in Lybia, would burn an Italian flag during a march because of what we did there during Fascism. But, when the country you are protesting against is no larger than Tuscany and has thousands of enemies around the world already, and finds itself at the end point of a long line of persecution along the entire history of civilization already, it doesn't take a lot of courage or pride to add your own burned flag to the pire. It is almost convenient, in certain circles, more than it is political meaningful, which obviously isn't).

Anyway, the neat result of the whole thing is that, now, it is out of the question for the left-wing coalition to possibly ever take back Milan from the hands of the dull, greedy, insensitive, tree-cutting and shit-eating Berlusconian coalition. The easiest trick with milanese voters has always been to make one part look not 100% regular and reliable and middle-class. And the trick succeeded.

Not surprisingly, the most known and used tricks are the ones that work better.

Now, as I was saying, I wish my typical paranoia was working in this situation: I wish it was true that somehow these imbeciles were actually placed there in the march by some infiltrated group secretly working for the right-wing coalition. But it is not so. These imbeciles are a genuine product of the communist anti-fascist left-wing Italian galaxy.

Sure, all the left-wing leaders are censuring what happened after it happened: but with this, they just make everyone touch how much they are detached from the crowds.
Sad or not, it is a fact.

What I make of it? Well, I don't like what the left is in Italy right now: but probably I won't like what it will be tomorrow, reduced from the rule of the oligarchs, to the rule of the imbeciles. As Flaubert said talking about the radical left of his times, it's probably for the best, because the kingdom of idiots is always shorter.

-- in picture, above: detail from an engraving by Bruegel

Saturday I was at home, sleeping. I slept all morning through part the afternoon. I tried to make it as peacefully as I could.
Just as I was working on it, dreaming I guess, grinding my teeth probably as I often do, on the other side of the city, near where I lived with Leni few years ago, actions of guerrilla were going on.
Remarkably for me, It's not the first time I am sleeping while somewhere outside in the city a battle goes on. I might say it happens every time: Me snoring, them fighting. Maybe I dream those battles, who knows.

When finally I woke up, I learned the news, thought of my brother. This also always happens when there's a battle. Because he would have been out there battling, wearing an helmet and throwing stones and looking for fascists or policemen to beat, it's impossible for me not to picture him, earning his grades this way. He would have been there, but he doesn't live in Italy anymore, which is better for me so that my thoughts toward this kind of fighting in the streets can be more detached. Otherwise there would be sheer intolerance without any further rational thought. I don't get along with my brother very much.

What happened is that there was an electoral masquerade going on, the neo-fascist nearly-governative party "Fiamma tricolore" (Three-colored flame) marching the streets with the usual show of celtic crosses, roman salutes, skinheads, moronic chants.
Not having better things to do, organizations of the extreme left, social centers, neo-communists and anarchists organized a march against them. (In the pictures below, from Repubblica.it and corriere.it: the mentioned fascists, with hair uncertainties and roman salutes, all coming from families of immigrants or half-immigrants, marching behind a banner saying: "no more immigrants")

Not with the same intensity (everything is less intense in Milan), things went as in Genova during the G8 few years ago. Groups of demonstrators from the left-wing march, forced by the police to continuous stops, started their acts of "political" vandalism.
At the end of the morning (me always sleeping), Corriere.it recounted: Four car burned down, more damaged, a local shop used for electoral propaganda by AN (right-wing government party originated by the same party as "Three-colored Flame") burned down, a paper-bomb detonated near a Mac Do already rampaged by some of the protesters, scaring away customers with kids and all, a motorbike, garbage cans, a news stand, all burned down, windows and flower pots destroyed in the numbers, etc. (In the following pictures, from Corriere.it and Repubblica.it, scenes from the battle)

You must understand that, although not clearly visible by this selection of pictures, the battle went on between some groups of demonstrators and the police. Fascist marchers and communist marchers never actually met.
Too bad. Maybe that way we would have gotten rid of both, once and for all. Eliminating each other.

Instead, every now and then we are forced to watch this shameful idiocy going on. On one side, unharmed fascists with their roman salutes and racist chants going around the streets like it is a normal day; on the other, the childish nonsensical vandalism of this so-called rebels who give their best hand to right-wing governments, proving once again that the alternative to the moderate right-wing non-idea is disorder, anarchy, and disrespect of the peaceful indifference of middle-class lifestyle.
Well, the middle-class is the third character in this story not coming out very well. According to many news sources, the police had to save some of the protesters from the hands of passersby who wanted to lynch them. Or, more cowardly, who wanted the police to lynch them before their eyes. "Destroy them!" the enraged mob of peaceful citizens allegedly screamed. Of course only when the battle was finished.
The peaceful middle-class fathers wanting to lynch their sons, both parts high on confusion and hatred and boredom, and ignorance. What a nice, beautiful picture. Who wanted to take it, just a month before the elections, I wonder.

There's the stupid Book Fair this morning, and I have to be loading boxes at seven thirty. But I'd so get back to sleep just to give this dream another plot, if possible.

...her name is Daniela Santanché, she represents the right-wing party "Alleanza Nazionale" (National Alliance). She has written together with Mrs. Letizia Moratti the newly approved reform of the educational system, which seems to enhance the precariousness and flexibility of the educational careers, although I know almost nothing about it.
Reached on the phone by a journalist, Daniela Santanché right away denied to have given the finger to the protesters. Simple as that, like a kid caught at school.

The brilliant parliamentarian Santanché, in homage to Democracy gave in fact her gracious finger to the students that, in thousands, were protesting the new reform in front of the parliament. As Dagospia reports, the best slogan sung by the students was the one going like this: "Daniela e Letizia, zoccole a prima vista" (Daniela and Letizia, hookers at first sight), so she was uite in her right to give the finger.

Quite less fun is the part of the story where the fingered students are beaten up by the police, and end up to the hospital along with some journalists. As we said, inside the parliament the reform was being approved. The left-wing opposition, in sorry minority, once again didn't even voted.
Who said 'fascism' there? I didn't.

On the Cat's Blog, two things: first a fine summary of what Columbus Day is (coming October 11th) and what it means (memory of a bloodshed, basically). Second, a link to Direland on the columbus day parade, featuring: italian former (neo) fascist homphobe Mirko Tremaglia.
Ah, the italians in the world. Guys to be proud of.
I could save just Garibaldi.