‘il mio nemico è il padrone, non chi lavora con me’
Let’s return to Italy and see how the soi-disant “centre left” of Walter Veltroni’s Partito Democratico (PD) is rising to meet the menace of Berlusconi. Has it been street protests, clashes in parliament, protest rallies against the most explicitly racist government in Europe? No such luck. They have been trying to snuggle up to the bent billionaire buffoon and make Berlusconi look like a man with some gravitas.
Example one: The man nominated for the post of Senate speaker, Renato Schifani, used to be in business with people have since been convicted of involvement with the Mafia. When a TV journalist mentioned this on a programme with PD’s Senate leader Anna Finocchiaro she said that the remark was “unacceptable”. From this one can conclude that dealing with the Mafia is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. That has certainly been the longstanding view of a large umber of Italian politicians in practice.
Example two: The Vatican has been making more noise about the Berlusconi regime’s attacks on immigrants than PD.
Even before the election Veltroni had been saying that in the interests of making Italy easier to govern he was willing to work with Berlusconi on electoral and political reform. This suits Berlusconi who is keen to clear the Italian parliament of the smaller parties.
As Sinistra Critica’s Flavia d’Angeli points out, the electoral annihilation of the Italian left was the result of the previous twenty years of worsening relationships of forces and the inability of the radical left to put down real social roots. The course that Veltroni is following is going to force his party to fall behind every radical proto-fascist stunt that Berlusconi dreams up and far from undermining him will strengthen his government. It’s clear that only a radical anti-capitalist movement will shift the balance of forces. There is no point getting too excited about what one small left organisation is doing but on June 27th Sinistra Critica are launching two petitions – one is to collect signatures for a law to protect salaries and the other is in defence of migrants under the slogan above “my enemy is the boss, not the people I work with”.
Liam redux 
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