War unites Americans, divides Italians
If the war has helped Americans put aside their very bitter political differences of the last decade, not so with the Italians. The most blatant evidence of the great divide plaguing Italian politics and society was the occupation of two squares in the center of Rome last Saturday.
In Piazza dell’Esquillino, no globals and members of the leftist opposition assembled to protest against the war in Afghanistan. In Piazza del Popolo, members of the Italian government and ordinary working Italians gathered to express their unremitting solidarity towards the United States.
Both the visual scenography and the audio orchestration were highly representative of the contrast of ideologies pervading the rival rallies. In one square the dominant color was red; the symbols: the hammer and sickle; and the slogans: “Bush, Bin Laden, Berlusconi: Bastards,” “War: not in my name,” and “Peace: For a world free of free markets.”
On the other side of the city, the colors were predominantly red, white, and blue, and red, white, and green; the symbols: the stars and stripes, our flag, their flag, the fifteen-star flag of the European Union, and the star of David; the slogans: “So we don’t forget,” “Without the United States we wouldn’t be free,” “May we never have to say: Once upon a time there was America.”
The deeds of the dueling demonstrations were also tell-tale of their dissimilar doctrines. At the anti-global demonstration, the American, European, and Israeli flags were burned, paint was sprayed on the video-surveillance cameras of several banks, and angry faces chanted angry words in the name of peace, accompanied by the full volume blare of techno.
At the pro-USA demonstration, flags were waved, smiling faces shed tears of emotion to the sound of the national anthems of the United States, Italy, and Europe. For the first time ever I heard Italians sing their national anthem. They’ve been watching us and taking lessons on this oddly American sentiment called patriotism. Having enjoyed for over a half a century the freedom they believe we helped them to achieve, they too feel the need to openly celebrate its symbols.
The pro-USA Day was an initiative proposed by newspaper editor Giuliano Ferrara, in answer to the many so-called “peace” demonstrations that have been taking place all over Italy over the last two months and which most often ended on an anti-American note.
His idea provoked three long weeks of political debate and endless discussions on the editorial pages of the major newspapers. Because Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi welcomed the idea immediately, it was highly politicized by those who sought to strip it of the nobility of the gesture.
Some members of the opposition insisted that it was silly and ineffectual to perform such a public display two months after the fact. This is where they were dead wrong. It’s easy to expressive empathy and solidarity in the immediate aftermath of such an outrageous act. It’s when the images fade, and push comes to shove, and solidarity means putting your money where your mouth is, that it’s important to demonstrate that you’re still there.
Those who were present in the Piazza del Popolo represent Italy’s silent majority. They were there, notwithstanding the high risk of terrorist attacks, to show the world that those that get all of the press coverage do not represent them. They deplore the visibility of the noisy minority who force them to feel ashamed of being Italian.
Those of us who were there, both Italians and Americans, felt that they had to be there. The Italians, to express the endurance of their grief for a wounded America, their gratitude for the role that America has played in saving Italy and Europe from the clutches of two totalitarianisms, their commitment to stand by America in its hour of need, and their profound understanding that if America goes, all of the free world goes with her. The Americans, to thank the Italians for their solidarity, and in some fashion to express our own solidarity, almost out of a sense of guilt for being so far away from our country that is suffering under the siege of terrorism.
I had to go to Rome to stand in that square, to be close to those Italians who share our ideals and values and take none of them for granted, to watch our flags entwine in a wind so strong that it unwittingly performed the perfect role of choreographer. For much of the time our view of the stage and maxi screen was blocked by the sea of our flags and theirs: Embracing and waving in the wind, precisely what we were there for.
The author is an American journalist, professor of Law and Economics at the Liceo Europeo Umberto I in Turin, Italy, and author of The Twentieth Century's Quest for Closure.
November 2001
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