Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. [W.B.Yeats – The Second Coming ]
Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, quoted the above from W.B.Yeats in the aftermath of the 1999 South African Election, suggesting that the “centre had held and that South Africa was safe from anarchy and things falling apart”.
Then again, The Second Coming gets quoted often, whether it be in the London Times reporting of September 11th or commentary on the Middle East peace process. It’s a poem that, while written in 1921 amidst the background of Ireland’s bloody War of Independence and subsequent civil war, seems to resonate for those who subscribe to the ‘clash of civilisations’ worldview.
While Yeats may have been ambivalent about the shift towards the extreme, in this poem at least, much of Italy’s post-war history has been dominated by the idea that the centre ground must be preserved. Indeed Italian post-war Governments have, for the main part, been dominated by centrist parties.
Defining the centre was relatively easy during the cold war. The centre lay half way between American led capitalism and Soviet style communism [In Italy, one could also argue that the extremes lay in communism on the one hand, and fascism on the other]. With the demise of the Soviet empire, the definition of the ‘centre’ has become less clear. It’s a subject of intense debate in Italy, with an election due early next year.
Recent debates on contentious issues like the Italian troop presence in Iraq, and the referendum on artificial procreation have highlighted divisions between the nominally centre-left coalition partners, and indeed the ruling centre-right government parties. The centre-left and the centre-right in places are so close that it’s hard to see the border.
As we run up to next year’s election, there’s increasing speculation that new allegiances will form to represent a ‘new centre’. Most speculation has been as to who might form this, with various parties that have fluid left-right allegiances (government party UDC being a case in point). Few, so far, have spoken about the actual identity any centrist party will have. Until recently, when Senate leader Marcello Pera adressed a conference of the religious lobby group Comunione e Liberazione.
Pera, a member of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, and co-author with the erstwhile Cardinal Ratzinger of a volume entitled Without Roots, was one of the political leaders who called strongly for an abstention in the recent controversial referendum on assisted procreation. With the referendum’s defeat, Pera’s party leader Berlusconi proudly proclaimed, “We, the moderates, are the majority”.
So it’s of more than a little interest to find out Sen. Pera’s view about what the identity of any centrist party should be.
With his own brand of passionate intensity (for anyone in doubt, we jest), Pera outlined a ‘moderate’ vision where “the West is undergoing a crisis. Today the prevalent culture in the West is a danger to the West itself. […] In Europe, the relativistic idea is taught that all cultures have the same ethical dignity; multiculturalism is practiced as a right by all the community regardless that it creates apartheid, resentments and second generation terrorism”.
And then, as if the above weren’t ‘moderate’ enough, a line that was apparently (according to media reports) applauded by the conference: “In Europe the population is dwindling, the door is opened to uncontrolled immigration and we become ‘mestizos’ [meticci]”.
The solution? A coalition between proponents of secularism and the religious, “to reaffirm and save our western identity, liberal and democratic, because a ‘holy war’ has been declared against us”. In practical terms, it would seem that for all non-Italians, “there’s no other route. Either we undertake to integrate these making them become citizens of our civilization – with our education, our language, knowledge of our history, the sharing of our principles and values – or else the game of integration is lost”. Where by ‘our’ one presumes he means ‘catholic’.
To be fair, there have been eloquent and angry responses to his speech throughout Italy, including articles published in the press by athlete Fiona May, an Italian citizen through marriage and black, and Gad Lerner, one of Romano Prodi’s advisors, who is Jewish. They both pointed out that by Pera’s definition, their respective children would be considered mestizos, and therefore somehow ‘less’ Italian.
The fact though that there have been no significant calls for Pera’s resignation say something. It says that his opinions are acceptable amongst many here. That they are popular. Let’s not confuse things though. Because his opinions may be popular does not make them moderate.