What happened, Italy?
Last months in my foreign home country

Remember that guy in High School you met since the first day? You were like best buddies, doing everything together and having fun against all odds. Cool times, uh?
Then sh*t happens, you had to move out to another city far away and you start a whole new life on your own, meet new friends, new people, everything changes and you forget your old times.
But one day you decide to get back to your city for a while, and there you meet him! Your old, lost friend! Amazing! But when talking to him, you notice something that turn you off. He looks so different now, after so many years. Time passed so quickly that you completely forgot of him and now he looks like a totally different person.
Okay, so that was me and Italy.
We were best buddies and I thought she could never betray me. We fought often, but more often we made peace and I’m sure, together we had the greatest time of all.
But when I came back to visit her after some time abroad I couldn’t recognize her anymore.
What happened? I asked.
She looked so desperate, almost depressed, and very very angry. I got scared, she wasn’t the friend I remember anymore.
What actually happened
The sudden change happened the 4th of March in the National Elections. Much was at stake and a new political season was about to begin. After a suffered tango of many political changes since the 2011 economic breakdown, people were finally asked to vote their choices for the first time in many years.(the last time dating back only to 2013)
At that moment, Italy was almost recovering from its crisis and a seemed to have regained a new sense of hope.
These elections, though, were stained by an horrific murder in Macerata, involving a Nigerian drug-dealer and a young Italian girl. The fact shocked deeply the entire country and not much time have passed when another brutal massacre involved that same city. Luca Traini, a nazifascist, decided to take revenge on his own and went out on the streets to kill every black man he could find in a crazy racist spree.
That was a pivotal moment for Italy.
For the first time emerged, in the most bloody way, all the issues and contradictions of a trembling society too much exposed to the phenomenon of immigration and the scars of a profound recession.
Economy failure and immigration, these two facts seem unconnected, but a mounting resentment against all these new “invaders” that are bringing drugs, crimes and are stealing our richness while average Italians are struggling to cope to day-to-day life, was brewing underground. And politicians did know that.
For that reason, the parties that came out victorious after election were all the ones that promised to finally cut off on immigration and magically raise a basic income for everyone and lower taxes.
(how is even possible to promise money and lower taxes at the same I don’t know, banning unicorns from ruminating could have been much more credible at that point)

Triello alla messicana
We Italians have a passion for drama, so that was our election.
We had everything for a big story: the (apparently) good Luigi Di Maio, the bad former Democratic Party and the ugly Matteo Salvini, all up for an epical standoff at the end of an inconclusive election that summed up in an hanged Parliament for weeks.
In the following days everything changed fast between talks, alliances, proposals, marriages and sudden divorces by the winner parties in a desperate attempt to form a government.
The unexpected plot-twist came with a coalition of evil forces between 5Stars Movement and far-right Lega and the sudden appearance of a new character, Giuseppe Conte, an unknown lawyer with a disputed cv, appeared out of nowhere to be the new appointed Prime Minister.
But new characters made their dent into the story, the dark Sith Paolo Savona, a discussed economist who theorized the exit of Italy from Euro, at some point have been even proposed as a Minister of a coalition, but was fought back by the Jedi Master, President Sergio Mattarella, who stepped in to avoid an international crisis within the EU.
When a new hero seemed to have come to bring back order in the Galaxy, Carlo Cottarelli, with the mandate to form a technocratic government, the table changed again and 5Stars Movement/Lega showed their axe, Giovanni Tria, to finally win their hand of poker.
After almost two months of trial and error, a new government was formed.
Episode IV — A New Hope?
The face of the new weird love-affair between the populist 5 Star Movement and the xenophobic far-right Lega didn’t wait much to show out.
Remember Acquarius?
That was the first diplomatic incident on international scale, just after a few days in. And it was only the beginning, much more was about to come.
After all, what else can you expect from a Movement born out of anger against the former establishment, seen as malign tumor of scandals, corruption, and mafia affiliation that eroded the whole society?
A Movement that got his success through events called “Fuck-off days” sponsorized by an abrasive comedian, Beppe Grillo, critical against all society.
Their promises was to turn over the Parliament like a “tuna can”, destroy all the remainder of the past and establish a new era.
This social anger met the xenophobic stances of Lega, the other coalition Party, a far-right party that made its success from the hatred against the new african immigrants, into a very inflamable mix.
The anti-immigrant rhetoric seemed to have paid in terms of electoral votes, but it has brought many divisions and new issues in the society. Inspired by the new leaders, the face of Italy changed very fast.
What was once a peaceful and welcoming country became a detonator for violence and racism.
The Trump motto MAGA became “Italian First” and a new sense of nationalistic fervor seemed to have enveloped the country, while anything different from the National Identity suddenly turned into an enemy, in a tragic resemblance of a new Wermacht Germany.
So the most torrid summer in Italy had begun.
Since the new government took office, in less than two months there have been at least 33 violent attacks targeting African immigrants.
When Deputy Prime Minister and leader of Lega Matteo Salvini once urged the need to make a census of all Roma people living in Italy, in a reminiscence of the “Racial Laws” that targeted Jews during fascism, a little Roma child, the age of just one year, has been shot by an Italian guy from his balcony with a gun.
Just the most atrocious of the various cases of racial attacks that have swept the country.

Despite the gravity of the phenomenon, not a single case has been condemned by the government in charge, and any alert of a rising racism in Italy has been strongly denied.
In the meantime, the immigrants had become the perfect scapegoat of all the unsolvable problems the country is facing, and there is no intention of stepping back. We are slowly entering into a downward spiral of violence, nationalism and racism that echoes the shameful past of a fascist regime that is still alive in our memory.
Italy, what happened to you? I can’t recognize you anymore.
