Empty Nationalism, Enlightened Soccer Fans

Italy is a country that has surrendered most of its national sovereignty.  At least traditionally, when one thinks of an independent country, one thinks of the ability to write your own laws, manage your own economic policies, and have an independent foreign policy. Italy does none of these.

The country's laws are subject to European Union regulations, and are routinely changed to conform. In foreign policy, Italy follows the EU lead even, as in the attack on Libya, when it is against Italian strategic and economic interests. Italy does not set it's own monetary policy, has no real central bank, and it's government budget must be approved (or not) by Brussels.

Yet, despite having given away many of the tools of the modern nation state, the Italian political elite can still work up a heady froth of nationalist rhetoric, especially over issues that might impinge on a politician's ability to place a cousin in a good job.

Two recent cases have set off this empty nationalist tick. Italy's national airline, Alitalia, is going bankrupt. It has an aging fleet, high labor costs, and lots of debt. It also has been regularly feathered by politicians with people who need to be placed, routes that lose money, and facilities it does not need. Needles to say, it cannot compete with low cost airlines. It certainly cannot compete with the modern Middle Eastern airlines without a ton of new soldi (money).

The Italian state is one of the most indebted in the world, and yet, to save the airline, it is tapping into the money of the postal system to keep Alitalia flying for a little longer. Even then, the very ideal of selling the airline to a foreign rival -in this case, Air France- fills Italy's political leadership with dread. What if they highjack weathy Chinese tourists on their way to Rome and force them to see Paris? The fiends! 

The idea that a country that already receives more tourism than any other in the world needs a national airline, is highly suspect. When the country itself is almost bankrupt, then throwing the pension fund money from the postal system into a money-burning biz like an airline is a crime.   

The second nationalist tiff is over the Italia Telecom -- the phone company. Like all landline, legacy telecoms, this is buried in debt, is losing customers to wireless, and needs megabucks to lay down a broadband network, something the country genuinely needs. In this sad state, a bid came in from Spain's Telefonica. Suddenly Italian politicians were spouting nonsense about the need to guarantee the security of Italian phone and online connections by keeping the company Italian. Absurd to anyone who understands modern technology.  Even more absurd if you see how much investment is required to wire Italy (a land where ay hole in the ground stands a reasonable chance of striking an archeological find).

But, I guess, if you can't control it, better not to do it.  

Except when it really matters, when there is something truly important at stake. Take soccer. One of Italy's grand old soccer clubs, Internazionale of Milano, was just sold to an Indonesian billionaire. This provoked a very positive reaction from a football crowd not normally associated with enlightened, cosmopolitan reactions. But the fans know that for Inter to compete with their hated rivals, AC Milan, owned by Berlusconi, and Juventus, owned by the family that founded Fiat, the team needs more money. So, play ball!

As for Alitalia and Telecom, both Air France and Telefonica have since backed-off their offers. 

Is Europe's Media Making Racism Worse?

Europe is living through a particularly ugly spasm of racism. This time the targets are the gypsies, and the catalyst for the outburst comes from Greece, where police took a blonde 4 year-old from her (dark) gypsy parents on suspicion of child theft.

Unemployed and homeless in Rome.

The picture of the “stolen” blonde girl in dirt-caked tresses was printed and broadcast across Europe, stirring up an old specter: gypsies steal children to exploit and sell. Greek headlines were explicit: “Roma Steal Children” and “Amber Alert: Roma Circuit Snatch Babies.” In the media frenzy following the Greek case, in Ireland, authorities in different parts of the country took a fair-haired 7 year-old girl and a blond 2 year-old boy from traveler parents, the cases are unrelated, except in racism, only to return them both after dna tests showed –unlike in the Greek case-that they were indeed their gypsy parents’ biological offspring.

Living on the water's edge in Rome.

Europe’s fear and loathing of gypsies –known variously across Europe as Rom or Roma or Sinti, or Travelers– is very old and very bitter. It is part of a broader resentment and mistrust of immigrants and outsiders, a rejection that has begun to boil over with the economic crisis and that has been stoked by xenophobic politicians. Immigrant groups across Europe, are profiled by police, discriminated against in housing, and denied social services and benefits. But none, perhaps, are targeted as consistently and shamefacedly as the gypsies. Swedish police keep a file on all gypsies that enter the country. Hungary and the Czech Republic have been found guilty, in the European court of Justice, of denying low-income housing to gypsies and segregating their children in school.  Greek police routinely conduct sweeps of gypsy camps to find what they can find. It was in one of these that the blonde girl was discovered.

But this particular outbreak of racist hysteria has undoubtedly been fed and exacerbated by incompetent reporting and the bad habits of Europe’s media.

Living under a bridge in Rome.

First, there is very little, if any, fact checking of stories. Articles are self-checked with very little editorial assistance or support. Second, there is a pernicious reliance on single sources for stories, with little effort to include a second view or version of events. This is particularly evident when dealing with government authorities. In the Greek girl’s case, the police put out a press bulletin, which was repeated by the press, with speculative elaboration, but without questioning the police interpretation or incorporating other voices. Third, there is a preference in European journalism, including crime reporting, for full narratives, where the blanks of what we don’t know are backfilled by “informed” speculation to provide a more complete and compelling story. Combined with an almost total lack of attribution or sourcing for information, this “fly-on-the-wall” reporting makes for a good read but abysmal journalism. Again, in the Greek girl case, none of the deeply flawed assumptions (that gypsies could not have fair children, that therefore the child was stolen, and that this formed part of a shadowy criminal conspiracy) were questioned by the media. Instead, they were reiterated, and elaborated, and magnified.

In the end, the international attention did serve to identify the biological mother of the Greek girl. She was a gypsy living in Bulgaria. She voluntarily gave the child to the couple arrested in Greece, she said, because she could not provide for her 10 children.