Nicola Lagioia: "Italy has not done accounts with fascism"

Nicola Lagioia (Bari, 49 years old) crosses the bar, in the Esquilino neighborhood of Rome, with her arms raised and runs towards the interviewer to melt into a hug.

He smiles and tries to convey vitality, but he's exhausted.

He has been traveling for weeks and working on different projects at the same time.

His last book,

(Random House, 2022), has been a bombshell in Italy.

But also in countries like Spain -it will be in Madrid and Segovia on September 16 and 17-, where its readers have given themselves over to the chronicle of a terrifying event that occurred in Rome in 2016. A masterly narration, but also a portrait of a city In free fall.

Rome then had two popes and no mayor.

A strange crack where a political system emerged from the sewer.

A crossroads that set fire to the future of the following years.

Lagioia is also the director of the Turin Book Fair and a keen observer of the Italian reality.

A very useful quality to decipher the complex panorama that will come after the elections on September 25, when everything points to the country being the first in Europe to have a far-right government.

Ask.

How do you see the scenario that will open with these elections?

Response.

It seems that there will be a net victory for the right.

And it fits in with the electoral strategy that the center-left has used: vote for us or they will come.

They put the danger of others before their own proposals.

They ask for the useful vote.

So it is clear that they are in trouble.

And if the Brothers of Italy win, we would have the first woman as president of the Council of Ministers [Giorgia Meloni].

And she comes from the extreme right!

Something that the left has never achieved.

They should ask themselves about that too.

Q.

Do you think Italy will change a lot?

R.

Economically there is little they can do.

The agenda for the coming years will consist of managing the Recovery Plan and the money that will come from Europe [about 200,000 million euros].

But what is worrying for someone who comes from the left like me is the issue of rights and international politics.

In that plane the right is very divided.

Meloni is an Atlanticist and Salvini is a Russian.

But the idea that both have about rights is typical of the 50s.

For voters, rhetoric is more important than personal example.

The Italians, from this point of view, are very Catholic: private vices and public virtue”

Q.

It looks like a postcard from the traditional Christian family that does not correspond to that of any candidate.

Salvini divorced and with a girlfriend, Meloni mother without being married and let's not talk about Berlusconi...

A.

It's amazing.

It means that for voters rhetoric is more important than personal example.

The Italians, from this point of view, are very Catholic: private vices and public virtue.

We are not Lutherans or Protestants.

The Catholic can do what he wants in his house and keep an appearance outside.

And that makes voters not care.

P.

The great promoter of that idea was Berlusconi.

A.

Yes. And I'm interested in that literary and human aspect of him.

Today he can't finish a speech.

He eats the words.

I don't know if it's age or a slowdown of some kind.

He is a tragic figure, but one that still stands for that electorate.

Q.

And Meloni?

R.

His story is much more literary than that of Enrico Letta [general secretary of the Democratic Party], who is the classic good boy and wonderful student.

Meloni's father left home when she was little, she grew up in that harsh environment.

A woman in a fundamentally fascist party.

If I had to choose which story to tell, I would opt for Berlusconi's or his.

Although I would never vote for them.

Those biographies attract people.

They want to be Berlusconi to be rich.

And they like Meloni because she is a person that they could find in her neighborhood.

Q.

What kind of character would Meloni be in a novel?

R.

A combatant in the name of wrong principles.

And it's very interesting, of course.

She has good rhetoric, but how she will manage to rule is an enigma.

She has absurd values ​​for the 21st century in which a modern country can hardly recognize itself.

But we don't know how she can manage the public thing.

With the League, on the other hand, we have already seen how they did it disastrously during the pandemic in Lombardy.

Or Berlusconi, whose management shot up the risk premium to 550 points.

The left lacks a vision, but the ability of the right to govern is quite poor.

In a novel, Meloni would be a fighter in the name of wrong principles."

P.

Does it make sense to continue talking about the fascist matrix of Meloni's party, about the nostalgic...?

R.

I do not think there is a danger of the return of fascism.

In addition, we Italians get tired of everything very quickly and bring down a government every so often.

Maybe in a year and a half we won't love Meloni anymore.

But the danger is that a whole series of acquired rights may be threatened.

Look at what has happened in the US with abortion.

In some regions of Italy, such as the Marches, where they govern, it is already difficult to have an abortion.

P.

Is dissidence possible in a climate of this type?

R.

The danger is also in the rhetoric.

That idea that whoever does not think like them is a deviant, a term that Meloni used recently referring to certain behaviors.

It is not a politician who must decide when a young person is deviant or virtuous.

Public health must be preserved, but those ideas transformed into authoritarian laws, or into a vision of society that takes us back 30 years, are a real danger.

I don't think there is a danger of a return to fascism.

We Italians get tired of everything very quickly.

The danger is that a whole series of acquired rights may be threatened”

P.

You speak in your book of the influence of the Vatican in Rome.

Is there something like that in Italy so that society is so permeable to these policies?

R.

The Vatican has decided to completely disinterest in Italian politics.

Something that should be good, because he has always been involved in interference.

Now it seemed that he was on Draghi's side a little bit, maybe because he comes from the Jesuits.

But it is not that they have supported him much.

The Church today looks at a world board.

The Catholic culture no longer has as much influence as in the time of the Christian Democracy.

The Italian writer Nicola Lagioia, during the interview with EL PAÍS.Antonello Nusca

Q.

So what happens?

R.

Italy has not accounted for fascism as did, for example, Germany with Nazism.

In addition, the economic crisis has weighed.

Many of those who suffered it now feel protected by the right.

It first happened to them with the 5-Star Movement and Citizen Income, but governing weakened them.

It always happens in Italy.

It has happened with Draghi too, a foolish move.

Q.

Did you understand something?

R.

Well, Conte saw that they were weakening and he made him fall to fail personally.

P.

Conte is another great novel character.

A.

Sure!

No one knew who he was when he was appointed president of the Council of Ministers.

And on top of that, he achieved it with two opposing coalitions: from the left and from the extreme right.

Vittorio Sgarbi defined him wonderfully: “Conte is a vice of his vices”.

[Serie].

He was the president of the Council, but he took orders from him.

And that person found himself managing one of the biggest messes of recent decades like the pandemic.

And, look, he managed to keep the country together.

Q.

Italy has made a system of government out of chaos.

R.

Yes, but that is because the proportional system was designed because it is a country with an authoritarian and dictatorial past.

And that made it impossible to win alone.

And it is supposed to be a guarantee for democracy.

Q.

Why haven't culture and intellectuals raised their voices in these periods of recent authoritarianism, as people like Nanni Moretti did in other times?

R.

At first with the League there was a bit of a response.

But now it is more complicated.

At the time of Moretti, or even Pasolini, you had the Communist Party.

You could argue, but at the same time it was a reference with which you could be anti-Christian, anti-fascist… The last time there was a response like that was with Berlusconi, and it coincides with the end of the Communist Party.

The problem is that the Italian leftist intellectual has found himself without political representation.

And that makes him less strong or supportive.

The problem is that the Italian leftist intellectual has found himself without political representation.

And that makes him less strong or supportive”

P.

In the party programs there is no trace of culture.

Not from the books.

You are the director of the Turin Book Fair.

What does such an absence mean in a cultural empire like Italy?

A.

Culture and books are not considered an electoral argument.

But it has a strategic centrality, also economically.

The publishing industry in Italy is the largest in the cultural sector: it moves 3,000 million euros annually.

It is twice that of cinema and four times that of music.

But there is no law that harmonizes and supports the entire sector.

It is an important part of the GDP, but politicians do not believe that it will serve to win elections.

Not even the left.

P.

speaks of a Rome that comes out of a legislature in the City Hall of a post-fascist mayor. Is there any lesson to understand what awaits Italy?

A.

Hopefully not.

Because Gianni Alemanno's Board was disastrous.

The incubation of a huge corruption that surfaced later in the case of Roma Capitale.

If Italy ruled by post-fascists looks like Germany's Rome, it will be a disaster.

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