BBC News, February 4, 2009
Italy has been transformed in recent decades from a nation of emigrants to a target country for mass immigration. The change has brought severe political and social tensions. In the first of a series of pieces from Italy, Aidan Lewis looks at how the Roma (Gypsy) community has been caught up in an anti-immigrant backlash.
Across the road from the Italian capital’s oldest ethnic Roma settlement, a group of middle-aged men stand sheltering from the rain under the awnings of a local bar, smoking.
They make no effort to hide their hostility towards the residents of Casilino 900, a sprawling collection of wooden shacks and caravans on the eastern outskirts of Rome.
“I’d get rid of them all,” says Antonio. “The Italians don’t want them here. We’re fed up.”
His companions signal their agreement. “They turn you into a racist,” offers Giorgio. “You’re lucky if they don’t attack you.”
Others in the neighbourhood are more moderate, or guarded.
But the palpable anxiety reflects tensions surrounding Italy’s more marginalised immigrant groups that have repeatedly spiralled out of control in recent months.
A series of what appear to be racially motivated attacks and reprisals have contributed to concerns that a creeping xenophobia is infecting the country’s social fabric, aided by a political discourse that often links Italy’s social and economic woes to immigration.
“Italy is living through a very difficult moment,” says Franco Pittau, a senior researcher at the Catholic charity, Caritas.
“When the overall atmosphere deteriorates, people who are already poorly disposed take advantage of it to do bad things.”
Roma exclusion
Despite their longstanding presence in Italy, the Roma have been caught at the centre of a backlash that has spread to envelop other communities, and that began in earnest after the October 2007 murder of an Italian woman, Giovanna Reggiani, in Rome. A young Romanian of Roma ethnicity later convicted for the killing was quickly identified as the culprit.
Over the following months several attacks on Roma camps were reported, including one in which Roma settlements in Naples were set on fire.
The Reggiani murder also prompted the first of a series of emergency decrees from the then centre-left government and its centre-right successor that focus on crime and illegal immigration.
A plan for taking fingerprints as part of a census of the Roma last summer was criticised as discriminatory, though ministers said the measure could help protect the community.
Since the elections last April, much of the drive to strengthen immigration policy has come from the Northern League, a populist party in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling coalition.
Challenged over their approach, the party’s politicians say they are simply responding to Italians worried about protecting themselves, their jobs and their identity.
They also point to statistics showing foreigners committing more crime and having a higher presence in Italian jails—though analysts say these are partly explained by the high number of crimes linked to breaches of immigration laws, and the fact that immigrants are less likely to be granted house arrest.
Critics argue that the authorities have treated the Roma primarily as a security challenge in recent months, and have failed to tackle the root causes pushing some Roma into criminal activity.
“That is something that we don’t see anywhere else in Europe, it is quite unprecedented,” says Rob Kushen, managing director of the Budapest-based Roma Rights Centre.
“There’s been a long-standing refusal of Italy to deal with the socio-economic underpinnings of Roma exclusion, and of Roma really becoming a permanent underclass in Italian society.”
Reprisals
In the province around the capital, tension flared again last week when four Romanians were arrested for allegedly gang-raping a young Italian woman in the town of Guidonia.
The day after the rape, separate groups of Albanians and Romanians were beaten up on the margins of a march by a small far-right party.
Later, as the suspects were being driven away from the police station an angry crowd shouting insults and kicking at the police cars had to be restrained by a cordon of officers.
A warning from Rome’s Mayor Gianni Alemanno against holding “entire communities” responsible was not enough to prevent continuing reports of reprisals, including a letter bomb that blew out the windows of a Romanian-owned shop.
One person in Guidonia—apparently referring to plans for moving some Roma camps—told local radio: “If they move Casilino 900 here, we’ll start a war”.
Political comment has once again lumped together Romanians—now Italy’s largest immigrant group at more than 600,000 strong—with the Roma, many of whom are long-term residents in Italy and have origins in other Eastern European states.
Less fear?
Yet the League, which wants more autonomy for Italy’s prosperous north, does not operate in a vacuum.
Some of their more radical proposals are shot down by their own allies, while powerful forces in Italian society including the church, the president, trade unions and the voluntary sector have all spoken out in defence of immigrants’ rights.
There is evidence of the government joining in efforts to combat racial prejudice, such as a toll-free hotline for victims of racism advertised on Rome’s underground trains.
On a popular level there have been anti-racism marches, with thousands of people turning out in Milan in late September to protest against the murder of a young man from Burkina Faso beaten to death by a bar owner and his son who suspected him of theft.
There is also evidence that attitudes may be shifting.
The number of people who say they are scared of immigrants has dropped gradually from a peak of more than 70% in 1993-94—a period that saw massive arrivals of Albanian immigrants on Italy’s south-eastern coast—to a level close to the European average of about 35%, says Giovanni Giulio Valtolina, a psychology professor and immigration expert in Milan.
“The immigrant that people are afraid of is the illegal immigrant,” he says. “It’s not a generalised, undifferentiated fear like it was before.”
Risk of ‘turbulence’
In dozens of interviews in Rome and beyond, few people expressed open prejudice against immigrants.
Asked whether they see immigration in a positive or negative light, many said it was fine as long as immigrants worked and obeyed the law, a comment sometimes—but not always—followed by the observation that often this was not the case.
As Italy’s first black member of parliament, Jean-Leonard Touadi achieved a symbolic breakthrough in a country where it is still rare to see immigrants in white-collar jobs.
Representing Italy’s main centre-left opposition party, he sees his own success as a sign that Italy is slowly becoming “more open, pluralistic” in line with other European countries.
Yet when asked about the current situation he is gloomy, in line with a number of recent opinion polls suggesting Italians have increasingly negative views about immigration.
“My impression is that this culture of rejection, exclusion, is beginning to embed itself in Italian society,” he says.
With the Italian economy in crisis the Northern League has succeeded in presenting itself as a “defender of ‘Italianness’”, he says and the country has discovered for the first time “that it is a xenophobic, intolerant country”.
“Every immigrant is either a criminal or is potentially a criminal—which is unacceptable because as a country we have at least three or four regions in the south controlled by organised criminal groups.
“It’s impossible to make people believe that immigrants are the security priority rather than organised crime.”
If the issue of immigration is not confronted “frankly and pragmatically,” he says, Italy could find itself facing the kind of problems that led to widespread rioting in Paris and other French cities in 2005.
“With the second generation Italy risks entering a period of social turbulence because we can’t afford to put four million people who live among us on the pavement, in social exclusion.”
Sidebar
Top Immigrant Communities
Romania: 625,278
Albania: 401,949
Morocco: 365,908
China: 156,519
Ukraine: 132,718
Philippines: 105,675
Tunisia: 93,601
Source: Caritas/Migrantes, Istat
Original article
(Posted on February 4, 2009)
Comments
If Italy is so racist and xenophobic… the simple answer is for the damned immigrants to return to where they came from. Right? Immigrants generally contribute nothing… as in ZILCH, GAR NICHTS, ZERO, NADA… to the host country, while getting endless handouts from the government. While complaining endlessly because they do not have the ability and wherewithall to live like the natives they see. While forgetting the good people in the White European host countries WORKED ALL THEIR LIVES to get what the immigrants think they’re automatically entitled to get handed to them!
Maybe this will pave the way for movements outside of Italy. All we need is for one White Country to take up the issue, and others will follow. Austria and Italy are at the forefront of the White Nationalist Movement in Europe. Success there would spill over into places like Britain and Germany, and eventually it could take root in every European Nation, eventually merging with American Movements. I am very optimistic about the future of White Nationalism.
Not necessarily relating to Italy, but there was something in the article that’s applicable to us. The part where the mayor of Rome said that you can’t hold an entire ethnic group responsible for the actions of individuals.
I hear that canard all the time, but the same people who say that seem to have no problem with “ethnic” (read: racial) groups from which spring an uncomfortable percentage of violent criminals thinking of themselves as a group, engaging in jury nullification as a group, not “snitching” to LEOs because they “don’t want another brother in da man’s prisons,” and all around expect to be pandered to and mollycoddled as a group. You can’t have it both ways, to want the benefits as a group but to be punished for crimes as individuals.
“They turn you into a racist”
Curious how experience, not ignorance, leads to racial awareness.
If Africans didn’t like their nations colonized by whites and threw them out, why would Africans flooding white nations expect different reactions?
And Jean-Leonard Touadi? Keep lashing out at the people who elected you and whose land you now occupy. There’s always a chance they’ll realize the mistake they made. The sooner the better.
““Every immigrant is either a criminal or is potentially a criminal—which is unacceptable because as a country we have at least three or four regions in the south controlled by organised criminal groups.”
The same situation in the entire Western world, especially the US, which is a bastian of third world crimes, with black and Hispanic gangs numbering about 1 million, with about another 25% of the black population and 19% of the Hispanic population criminals who are not affiliated with a gang. Add those numbers to the neighborhood gangs and the criminals within the non-white population; the drug cartel gangs and the total of third world miscreants is a number larger than any military force this country has ever faced.
And the illegal activity continues on a daily basis at a viciously intense pace. But out and out crime is not only all these groups bring with them. Each has its own racial groups like the NAACP, La Raza, Meecha, and dozens of others whose chief endeavors are bellyaching, carping, complaining and revealing an intense hatred for all people white, including their traditions, their culture and their history. They despise America and refuse to assimilate because they despise the country, mostly because they can’t compete on an equal basis, because of their lower intelligence and lack of skills, and they wail that they do not have shiny new things because of racism and oppression.
A mish mash of cultures is a never ending problem of turmoil and chaos, and each one will only get worse, because the multiculturalism that has been forced on white nations was a criminal endeavor to reduce white power throughout the world, with a faction of white dissidents also behind it all that believes forcing everyone together will make them love each other and a multicultural utopia will be born and flourish until the end of time.
It is these people who have too much influence, because they’re mentally ill and have no business deciding anything at all about what societies or people should do. The other faction has far too much influence because they control the organs of communication and the entertainment and news industries.
This situation just might be what Italy sees, and they are repulsed at the chaotic mess this country has degenerated to, and they don’t want the same thing for themselves and their posterity.
Only Italy and Spain have stood their ground against the influx of third world hordes, yet even they are still having them forced down their throats by elitist geeks who are too dimwitted to run their own lives, let alone the lives of millions of others.
The headline of the UK Telegraph a couple of days ago screamed: “The Riots Have Started,” which obviously means there are some in Europe who have been expecting them all along, just as some over here have as well.
It will be interesting to see if this economic juggernaught making its way throughout the world will cause the ouster of the third world hordes in Italy and Spain. I name just those two nations, because we all know that the other white countries, including the US, have too many spineless types to ever raise up and say “enough is enough,” and demand a return of their own countries.
At least Italy and Spain have shown the fortitude to fight the riotous third worlders on a number of occassions, letting them know they won’t go down as timid mice as the UK, the US, France, and the northern countries have. Even Australia had their moment of payback after several of their women were raped and insulted and had foreign gangs taking over their beach areas.
Can anybody guess what it will take to cause whites to rise up against the oppression imposed on them? Or will nothing cause them to gain courage, because they have been beaten down and defeated by a Cultural Marxist machine that has them afraid to criticize anything their masters have imposed on them, even if a gang of blacks beats them bloody and senseless and screams racial slurs at them?
If our founders were alive today, the first thing they would remark about is the shame they felt watching their kinsmen herded around like demoralized cattle, waiting for slaughter.
And if I had a chance to meet them in person, I would refuse to do so, because I would overwhelmed with shame myself.
The fact that the main reason immigrants immigrate is that their home countries are failures should make any rational person skeptical about the benefits of the influx. If they couldn’t make their own societies work, what benefit are they likely to be to the host country?
Let the do-gooders join the Peace Corps, or give money intended to improve conditions in third world countries.
Sovereign states have the right to control immigration so that it either benefits them or is prohibited. Otherwise they die. I think death is what the elites have in mind for us.
I’d love to move to Italy. And, I’d look at these numbers a bit differently:
Romania: 625,278
Albania: 401,949
Morocco: 365,908
China: 156,519
Ukraine: 132,718
Philippines: 105,675
Tunisia: 93,601
“Italy Torn by Racial Strains”
Translating newspeak it means = People in Italy still have common sense.
Italy for Italians?
“A series of what appear to be racially motivated attacks and reprisals have contributed to concerns that a creeping xenophobia is infecting the country’s social fabric, aided by a political discourse that often links Italy’s social and economic woes to immigration.”
This is an example of how the media lies about racial matters. The racial attacks are committed by gypsies against Italians. By referring to “xenophobia” the story implies that the racial attackers are Italians attacking gypsies rather than the truth, gypsies attacking Italians, especially women and the elderly who cannot defend themselves.
“Critics argue that the authorities have treated the Roma primarily as a security challenge in recent months, and have failed to tackle the root causes pushing some Roma into criminal activity.”
The root cause of gypsy crime is called DNA.
A Hungarian immigrant to the US recently told me about gypsy behavior in Hungary. He said the gypsies have established their own territories in rural areas. Any Hungarian who ventures into these areas is killed.
These areas are totally poverty stricken. The gypsies all get welfare from the Hungarian government. But on welfare check day gypsy extortionists take the money from the weaker gypsies. So the weaker gypsies are literally starving because other gypsies steal their welfare checks.
“Each has its own racial groups like the NAACP, La Raza, Meecha, and dozens of others whose chief endeavors are bellyaching, carping, complaining and revealing an intense hatred for all people white, including their traditions, their culture and their history. “
Don’t forget that these groups were created and are funded by white elites. Both LARAZA and MECHA were invented and are still funded by the Ford Foundation. NAACP was a majority white organization until the late 1960’s. It nearly went bankrupt during the 1990’s but was bailed out by you guessed it, the Ford Foundation.
Many of the other hispanic grievance groups are created and funded by the employers of illegal alien labor, such as the well organized and funded illegal alien advocate groups that spring up in small midwestern and western towns a few months after the local meat packing plant or other industry has switched to an all illegal alien hispanic workforce.
Jean-Leonard? That’s a French name. The least he could do is change it to Giovanni Leonardo.
If Africans didn’t like their nations colonized by whites and threw them out, why would Africans flooding white nations expect different reactions?
What business do blacks have being in Italy?
Italy is a fine country and this American of northern European extraction would be happy to move there and absorb the culture (and be absorbed by it). Italy is the personification of Western Civilization and must be defended! Throw out the undesirables and the parasites…keep the solid citizens who want to make a contribution. Viva Italia!
Has “Gypsy” now become a banished word? Another one on the politically incorrect list of forbidden terms?
Many, if not most of the “Romanian” immigrants in Italy are gypsies. Obviously, 100% of the “Romanian” immigrants living in shantytowns and begging on the street are gypsies. Albanians are primitive, non-Western people and are not welcome in any European country.
“All we need is for one White country to take up the issue, and the others will follow.” Winston Smith.
Political comment has once again lumped together Romanians—now Italy’s largest immigrant group at more than 600,000 strong—with the Roma, many of whom are long-term residents in Italy and have origins in other Eastern European states.
The “Romanian”immigrants in Italy ARE mostly Roma. This particular tribefrom Romania is the most backward. I remember a colleague showing me the photos taken in Romania in 80’s - just like historical paintings - women in colorful but dirty ragged clothes and with much jewellery, naked children around and their nomadic carts with ponies and donkeys. Of course, they were illiterate. In a modern society they are predestined to be a permanent underclass.
It is very likely that Great Britain is set fair for a non-White majority population sometime past mid-century.
Italy is one of the bright spots in Europe these days. It is fitting that the home of the Renaissance should be the first country to reverse the noxious strains of multiculturalism and political correctness. I’m convinced all the great art in Italy has prevented the grave diggers of our civilization from getting the upper hand. Viva Italia!
I know the area where the premeditated gang rape mentioned in the article happened. Most Italians I talk to at work and when I go out are pretty much in agreement that there are too many of the wrong kind of foreigners in Italy.
Italy has one big advantage over countries like France, Germany, and England: it was never a major colonial power, nor did it play a big role in the Holocaust, and so has no “racial legacy”. Any claims that Italy somehow got rich on the backs of poorer nations would get nowhere.
One can still be frank about race in Italy, at least for now, and most of the people that I meet voice similar disapproval with decisions on immigration taken without consulting the elctorate.
The Rome newspaper Il Messaggero allows commenting on most articles and while the articles themselves take the usual neutral or pro-immigration stance, the comments, mostly uncensored, largely take a very different position. There is still hope for Italy. The US, I fear, is a different story.
“on welfare check day gypsy extortionists take the money from the weaker gypsies. So the weaker gypsies are literally starving because other gypsies steal their welfare checks.”
And I haven’t a doubt that those starving gypsies then go and rob somebody else. Preferably somebody not a Gypsy.
Italy has one big advantage over countries like France, Germany, and England: it was never a major colonial power, nor did it play a big role in the Holocaust, and so has no “racial legacy”.
Ah, but there was Tunisia, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia.
>>>They turn you into a racist”
If Africans didn’t like their nations colonized by whites and threw them out, why would Africans flooding white nations expect different reactions?
A world of TRUTH in both of these comments! Given that nearly all European countries had colonies in “Darkest” Africa. Of course we’ve been “dazzled” by the stupendous progress under Black rule, made by these former colonies.
As to “being turned into a racist”… all you have to do is live near or among immigrants. Doesn’t matter if they’re Black African immigrants, Caribbean Islander Blacks, or our Mexican invaders. To paraphrase: “TO KNOW THEM IS TO DESPISE THEM.” Blame it on insurmountable cultural and mental differnces.
If the issue of immigration is not confronted “frankly and pragmatically,” he says, Italy could find itself facing the kind of problems that led to widespread rioting in Paris and other French cities in 2005.
Agreed, absolutely. So deal with it pragmatically: round up the invaders, boot them out of the country, and keep the rest from ever entering.
See? No riots. Problem solved.
As an Italian, I find this article very misleading. A reader would assume that the Roma (which is actually a word for gipsy) are being unfairly targeted. There are very few mentions of gipsy attacks and when these are mentioned it’s only in connection to Italian “violent” reprisals.
Roma people in Italy steal, murder and rape as a lifestyle. I know people who live near Roma; they live in terror and are costantly worried about how can they defend themselves from Gipsy violence.
Also, let’s say it clearly: there are many non-Roma, Romanians in Italy as well as Roma. Romanians are White Europeans, Roma are gipsies, and of course whether you call them White or European depends on your own definitons, but I wouldn’t say they are either.
Unfortunately the Italians themselves often fail to understand the difference, because our own media tend to use the word Romanians for Roma, presumably in an attempt not to seem racist.
Oh, marone. This makes me happy. Viva Italia ed i miei fratelli italiani! What a beautiful place. That is the one country in Europe that I feel is worth a damn these days. Beautiful weather, nationalistic people, and pride in culture! Besides, I gotta tell you, the Italian economy stinks, so maybe that’s what’s keeping the immigrant numbers lower and competition high, and hence animosity. Pray that a sinking economy here in the US will, on the bright side, send our visitors packing to maybe China.
Knowing the immigration problems of Ireland and the muslim 3rd worlders, I watched a program on TV about protests and job losses in that country recently. NOT ONE PICTURE OR WORD about 3rd worlders or muslims, only white Irish were interviewed and no blame was layed on or mentioned, regarding the 3rd world problems in Ireland!!
Good point! And in some cases, not only have many Africans driven whites out, but murdered them.
We can read all about what is going on in South Africa on www.zasucks.com accompanied with pictures.
If they were ‘racist and xenophobic’ they would have sent these people back home. The fact that they have large Romanian, Albanian, Moroccan, Chinese, Ukrainian, Filipino, Arab and African communities says quite the opposite.
Compared to the places that the immigrants have come from they’re living in paradise. Perhaps if they don’t like Italy they can go back to where they came from?
I for one loved Italy, I fell in love with a beautiful Italian girl in Milan. The people were very friendly and accepting and I loved their traditional way of life and their beautiful country. I can understand why Roman soldiers of antiquity were prepared to fight for the Roman Empire just for a bit of land in the countryside. I have thought about moving there more than a couple of times to be honest.
Italy, like Holland, is one of the most densely populated places on earth. They don’t need immigrants in Italy any more than Brazil needs to import coffee beans.
Reply to Anonymous at 11:39 AM on Feb 5:
Not having a colonial legacy hasn’t helped Canada, Scandinavia, etc. Probably Italy’s best advantage is that Italian is spoken by very few non-Whites unlike say English.
One point I would like to add here. A great many of those 600,000 odd “Romanians” are actually the GYPSY ROMA. They are originally from the Indian sub-continent and bear no relation at all to real ROMANIANS.
Italy? Xenophobic and intolerant? Whew, what a relief! For a second there I thought the land of my ancestors had gone soft.
Reply to Anonymous at 11:39 AM on Feb 5:
You have a valid point there.
Also, Romanians speak a very similar language, giving them an advantage too. Albanians as well (some of them) do know Italian due to their intertwined history.
However, Ethiopians/Eritreans/Somalis often do know Italian, and thus can fit into Italy much more easily
YES! I can see how easily hostile, black, stone age muslim Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans could fit right into Italian civilized life and go un-noticed!
When our forefathers spoke of race they were referring to whites, they owned slaves, does anyone think they thought of blacks and browns as equals and would have tolerated the lie our government has imposed on the white race today.
“When our forefathers spoke of race they were referring to whites”
This is why those Founding Fathers are scheduled for de-mythologizing and ultimate removal. White Christian males. No good. They have to go.
It’s a very touchy, delicate subject, being approached with great care, as some national idols like Washington and Jefferson are condsidered above reproach. There is a certain limit beyond which you don’t go. But little by little, they are being worked up to. Their time is coming. Eventually, Paul Revere will be replaced by Crispus Attucks, and Benjamin Franklin by Martin Luther King. It’s coming. The revised, politically correct, “New” America.
“Eventually, Paul Revere will be replaced by Crispus Attucks, and Benjamin Franklin by Martin Luther King.”
‘It’s coming’? Where have you been the last 30 years?
Wait… There is that commerical on TV right now featuring Ben Franklin…
Never mind.
Where have you been the last 30 years?
Never mind.
Sorry, don’t know what you mean. I don’t watch TV.
“…There is that commercial on TV right now featuring Ben Franklin…” Anonymous at 12:47 AM on Feb 8.
The article, as is usual for the MSM, is biased against White Europeans. The Nationalist coalition government have been successful in protecting Italian culture and identity but this is seldom reported here in the UK and elsewhere in the EU. We are experiencing the usual brainwashing from the media lackeys intended to demoralise white communities. In the last few months Muslims in Italy have been provocative in holding open-air prayer meetings outside prominent Christian cathedrals in major Italian cities and have been warned that troublemakers face immediate expulsion from the country. They will back down or they will be expelled, because firmness by the Nationalist coalition government works. Pandering to Islam does not. Great things are starting to happen in Italy it’s just that the EUSSR and their media lackeys don’t want to report it as it encourages nationalists everywhere. Can’t seem to find the article on ‘Muslim prayers’ on the site ‘religion of peace’ but perhaps you can.
The MSM have also put their biased slant on the recent widescale ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ walkouts from power stations, refineries etc., in the UK. These strikes were initiated through the Internet by the workers themselves bypassing the neo-Marxist trade union bosses who are wedded to the neo-Marxist New Labour government who are in turn adherents of the neo-Marxist EUSSR. Supported by the BNP and the independent trade union Solidarity, the workers’ efforts were hijacked by the union bosses who reached a compromise deal with the company that designates a certain amount of the jobs to be given to British workers so not all workers in the Lindsey oil refinery, where the walkouts originated, will be from other EU countries (Italy & Portugal). But the walkouts will happen again as the dispute is the direct result of the EU employment laws passed by the politicians whereby companies can bring in workers from anywhere in the EU to fill jobs. In the present economic downturn this EU law has the potential to destroy the politician’s dream of a European Federal superstate. The MSM played down these events in order to keep the truth from the public and prevent more strikes and disputes which could spread EU-wide and lead to the abolition of the EU’s Free Movement of Labour laws and the ultimate collapse of the EUSSR.
