All Roads Leave From Rome
In 1950 my father, as Overseas Picture Editor for Italy and the Middle East, arrived at the Rome Bureau of the New York Times located at 54 Via Della Mercede to begin reporting on the celebration of Holy Year proclaimed by Pope Pius XII. The Eternal City was experiencing something of a renaissance at the time; shops were open, restaurants and cafes were serving a generally happy populace and the Italian film industry was becoming well respected, showing American audiences in newsreels that Rome had largely been spared by the war and was open for business. Americans responded and began traveling to Italy and indeed to all of Europe. They spent dollars freely and the Italians were grateful and friendly; it seemed everyone had a relative in the States, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia - some in Boston too. My father had many difficult work assignments but many wonderful moments also. Think of the film “Roman Holiday” but with a much more generous expense account.
However, south of the capital, in Naples, in Salerno, in Bari, he detected resentment of Americans, not in personal terms but rather toward perceived American government interference in Italian political affairs. Many seemed to believe that the referendum that had replaced the monarchy with a republic four years earlier had been rigged by the CIA in order to bolster the Christian Democrats and to bar the Italian Communist Party from participation in the post-war government. The Americans felt that the Communists were using the twenty-one year collaboration of the monarchy with Mussolini’s fascist regime to discredit center-right parties and individuals who now identified themselves with a variety of non-Communist groups. Therefore, in order to defeat that initiative the monarchy had to go. The referendum was the perfect vehicle. The south of Italy was, and is, more conservative than the north and the royal family, though certainly not perfect was, in their opinion, preferable to politicians they knew nothing about. They resented both the intrusion and the result. Were their suspicions justified? Quite probably, and it led to decades of corrupt and incompetent centrist and center-left governments that appeared and disappeared with stunning rapidity.
The recent of election of Giorgia Meloni of the Brothers of Italy Party is, in some respects, a reversal of the 1946 referendum. Her political platform consists of limiting immigration, a more family-oriented government philosophy, and the transfer of fiscal and regulatory powers from the European Union to Italy. In today’s Europe these policies are called “far-right”. The Left called her a fascist, the EU said she was a friend of Vladimir Putin which it also said about Marine Le Pen the “far right” candidate for the French Presidency earlier this year.
Putin must have been amazed by all these heretofore unknown friends.
So, a pattern seemed to be emerging: criticize European Union policies and you were a fascist or racist, or both. Both is better. Then the EU made a bad mistake. In December 2021, in an internal memorandum to its officials and employees, it stated that the words “Christmas” and “Christian” should be avoided in EU communications with the peoples of the Continent. My father once complained that he had been bombarded by the New York office to move mountains for his assignment. “But they did not know that the only mountain in Rome was the Vatican” he said. Pope Francis, a rather mild manned sort, was about to teach EU Headquarters in Brussels an object lesson in public relations.
His Holiness said “The European Union document on Christmas…is an anachronism. In history many, many dictatorships have tried to do so. Think of Napoleon…think of the Nazi dictatorship, the Communist one…it is a fashion of a watered-down secularism…but this is something that throughout hasn’t worked. The European Union must respect each country as it is structured within, the variety of countries, and not want to make them uniform. And be careful not to be vehicles of ideological colonization.” The European Union is notoriously arrogant, but when the Vicar of Christ makes statements such as these, quick action is needed. Naturally, the memorandum was rescinded. In Italy, this gave Meloni’s platform more legitimacy, for she and her allies had been speaking about these issues for more than a decade.
No subject is more important in Italy than immigration. The country has a negative birth rate. More people die than are being born into Italian families. This is caused by economic factors, continuing emigration and the “mammoni” syndrome among young males. They’re the guys who live at home or take their laundry to their parents’ homes so that their mothers can clean their shirts and then they stay for a copious meal till the clothes are dry. Young women are repelled by this. In the U.S. we call these men “basement dwellers”. Combined with open borders and immigration from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, “population replacement” is a fact, perhaps not an official government program but a daily, observable fact.
Italians are a warm and welcoming people but the sight of Gambian prostitutes plying their trade on the Appian Way gave them pause. Along with Albanian street gangs, Bosnian sex traffickers, Afghani drug dealers and a host of other “new citizens” the most heard word recently is “Basta”! - Enough!
However, the tide seems to be turning, slowly, but turning nonetheless. Sweden has elected a center-right party to form a government with immigration and crime the two deciding factors for many Swedes.
Thus, it seems the Italian example is not an exception in Europe.
It is no secret that Western culture and civilization have been under attack in the past few years but the memory of them is not altogether forgotten, despite the best efforts of university professors, so-called celebrities, the media, and yes, The New York Times.
And perhaps one day, we will again be able publicly proclaim our appreciation for - paraphrasing Edgar Allen Poe - the glory that is Greece and the grandeur that is Rome.