Intrepid is the usual label for a distinguished character, a person of influence. It would be fair to judge Italy's own Pier Paolo Pasolini as such and more. Film-maker, playwright, poet, novelist, etc., indelibly surrounded by controversy.
Perhaps less well known was Paolo's column as a political thinker who challenged the traditionalist conventions of Italian culture. He wrote of the exploited, the underclass, the dispossessed and the abused. Indeed, many of his films explored the fringes of Italy's urban disaffected , because ultimately – fascism never seemed to quite disappear nor its Pavlovian partner of the Higher Order.
Now 33 years after his murder, what would Paolo make of Italy's recent arrest and expulsion of immigrants in the slums surrounding its magnificent metropoles? Perhaps he would say something along the lines of middle-east correspondent Robert Fisk (and I paraphrase) : the only thing that history has taught us is that we never learn from history.
We are in a sense condemned to repeat; like Mr. Pavlov's intrepid dog, conditioned through circumstance and baseless rhetoric. "Never again, illegal immigrants under your house!" reads the Italian People of Liberty Party platform who secured last month's national election win. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is at the helm of an anti-immigrant campaign that blithely condemns these people of South America, North Africa, and Eastern Europe.
Last week, a mob of several hundred Italians rampaged a Roma camp just outside Naples. Some threw firebombs. An Italian paper reported the mob as yelling "Out, out, you're dirty and smelly and rob babies." Romanians, mind you, have every right as EU citizens (since January ’07) to travel and live freely wherever they please.
But Berolusconi has promised to sweep clean the slums, the outskirts, and to rid the nation of the latest blight. There are talks Italy may even renege on the Schengen agreement which allows travelers to freely cross national borders throughout the European Union.
I leave you with a refrain of a much longer poem entitled Victory by Pasolini:
“That the revolution becomes a desert
if it is always without victory. . . that it may not be
too late for those who want to win, but not with the violence
of the old, desperate weapons. . . .”
