Garibaldi´s mistake

"Italiens moderna historia" (The modern history of Italy) is a book by Eskil Fagerström, a reporter who wrote several books in Swedish about Italy. He often spend his summer holidays in Marsciano, a small town in Umbria about which I know next to nothing. The rest of the book, however, rings quite a few bells...

The book is wonderfully objective, and takes us on a grand tour of Italian history, from the Napoleonic Wars and the Risorgimento all the way to the COVID pandemic of early 2020. Everything seems to be included: both the good, the bad, and the ugly. And let´s face it, the modern history of Italy has a lot of the latter, even the word "modern" frequently being something of an euphemism. I never felt so elitist as when reading "Italiens moderna historia", this God-forsaken pseudo-nation being the populist paradise of Catholic Taliban, authoritarian mass movements, and local government kickbacks. Or was it fringe benefits? If any European country proves that il popolo isn´t to be trusted, it must be Italia!

Not that *their* elites are any better, of course: the disastrous Italian record in the two world wars, the Andreotti era, the mafia, Craxi, P2, and (of course) Berlusconi, who treated the entire nation as his (and perhaps Gaddafi´s) personal fief, yet got almost half of the popular vote anyway, since small business owners didn´t have to pay any taxes. (I think the author missed Alessandra Mussolini and Cicciolina, though.) For those skeptical of "grandi", there is plenty of ammunition here, too.

On the positive side: Italy actually have modernized (well, half of it, at any rate), they are a great nation in sports (the author is a great admirer of Gino Bartali), and many Italian brands are rightly world famous (Fiat being the most obvious one). Fagerström also talks at some length about famous Italian movie-makers (I´m less enthusiastic myself). One lacuna in the book is that it says almost nothing about Italian-Americans (although good ol´ Rudy Giuliani is mentioned in passing). As a typical Swedish liberal, Fagerström has a blind spot when it comes to the problems of mass immigration, seriously proposing this as the solution to Italy´s current demographic problems. Yeah, as if importing millions of Africans (at the EU´s expense?) will make Italy (and Marsciano) *better*... 

"Italiens moderna historia" ends on a somewhat pessimistic note, as economic growth has stalled, the population is getting older, and the COVID pandemic ravages even relatively advanced northern Italy. The Italians have been promised enormous sums from EU funds to cope with the disaster, but as of this writing (2022), the Russian "military-technical operation" in Ukraine has upset most globo-economic applecarts. 

One thing is clear. A sequel to this book written around 2100 will probably be just as colorful!   

Should have stayed in Uruguay!