The Violence Of Racist Politics
The rise of right-wing populists in Italy did not surprise people in my hometown, Macerata, who saw violent evidence of anti-immigrant sentiments before the historic election in March.
Just a month before the vote, a 28-year- old militant member of the League, the nationalist party, shot at a group of black people in the streets of Macerata, wounding six. The man, Luca Traini, said the attack was retaliation for the horrific killing of a young Italian woman, allegedly by a Nigerian drug dealer, the week before.
I was shocked that this happened in the orderly city of about 43,000 where I spent most of my youth, the child of an Eritrean father and an Italian woman.
When I was 5, my mother decided we should move there from Rome. She saw it as the ideal place to raise a child, in a progressive Catholic environment. I felt safe in Macerata as a mixed-race child; my African roots were a source of pride and made me feel unique.
A schoolmate once used a racial slur with me, and said I should go back to Africa. I was neither offended nor frightened; my teacher defended me, as did the other children.
But when I went back for a visit in May, just three months after Mr. Traini’s rampage, something had changed. Walking the narrow streets, I did not exchange the usual friendly greetings with locals, and I could feel the tension when I asked about the attacks. Even worse, many supported Mr. Traini.
“It seems the shooting legitimized a racist culture that had been underground for a long time, hidden in mostly invisible ultra-right wing groups,” said Annalisa Ubertoni, an activist at Refugees Welcome. “Now the Nigerian community and other black people are living in fear.”
Macerata’s mayor, Romano Carancini, blames the failures of Italy’s refugee resettlement system for the tension. And politicians have seized on this social divide. “Our town has been the stage of a xenophobic electoral campaign” Mr. Carancini said.
Racist propaganda has proved an effective political strategy. The share of Macerata’s voters backing the League has increased from 0.6 percent in 2013 to 21 percent in March’s general election.
There is more than a hint of Italy’s fascist past in its recent populist turn. The leaders of the League have evoked imagery reminiscent of the darkest days of Mussolini. The current governor of the Lombardy region said in a radio interview that he had to “defend white race,” a reference to 1938 racial laws against Jews and mixed-race people, the “meticci.”
“National institutions and the public opinion should have stopped this kind of propaganda earlier,” said Cécile Kyenge, an Italian doctor born in Congo who occupies a seat in the European parliament and who has been the target of racist insults. “I am wondering if we still have time.”
After the shooting in Macerata, two other racially motivated killings took place in Italy: a Senegalese street trader was shot in Florence, and so was a Malian representing migrant farm workers in Calabria.
The head of the League, Matteo Salvini, now minister of the interior, has ordered migrant rescue ships turned away from Italian ports and said he wants to remove all undocumented immigrants. He has openly talked of expelling the country’s Roma, who have no legal status.
The other party in the ruling coalition, the Five Star Movement, is not any better. Months ago, it started a crusade against groups that rescue refugees at sea.
Mussie Zerai, an Eritrean priest who was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015 for defending the refugees, is under investigation for aiding illegal migration.
“They know they need to demean us in the eye of the public, and they want to turn the rights of the weaker into weak rights,” Father Mussie told me.
There are also concerns about the relationship Italy’s illiberal forces have with white supremacists in Europe and across the Atlantic. The American nationalist Stephen Bannon bragged about how much he contributed to the Italian election turnout.
Italy’s populists are likely to back Eastern European governments’ opposition to any constructive relationship between Europe and Africa, which is the only way to address the causes of migration. Populist leaders portray Africa through the lens of illegal migration, stopping discussion about the potential for Europe-Africa work on development, investments, jobs and security.
The number of migrant arrivals from Africa has decreased significantly in the last few years, yet the recent European Union deal on migration shows growing indifference to asylum seekers. And the few who can escape Libya’s prisons often drown in the Mediterranean sea.
The next European elections are less than a year away, and they will set the agenda. They will tell us what kind of society we want live in: one that fears and excludes the other or one that welcomes diversity in a richer and more prosperous Europe.
If the populists prevail, the few bridges built so far between the two continents will be pulled down, and the peaceful life in multiracial communities like Macerata will remain just a vague memory.