From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Gattopardi and cheap labor   
   Reflections from Italy on the wicked problem of unregulated and unregulatable    
   immigration into Western Europe.   
   by Gaia Baracetti, July 4, The Overpopulation Project   
      
   I could never understand what animal exactly the gattopardo was supposed to   
   be.    
   A leopard? A cheetah? A mythical beast? For sure, none of those roams my   
   country.    
   But I, like most Italians, always understood the meaning of the adjective    
   gattopardesco. It refers to someone who is pretending to change but deep down    
   remains the same as before, and does so out of opportunism in order to   
   maintain    
   a position of power and privilege in a world that is entering a new phase.   
      
   For those wondering whatever big cat can be associated to this kind of very    
   specific behaviour, the answer is: none. The term actually comes from Il   
   Gattopardo,    
   the famous novel by Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (note that a    
   lowercase di in an Italian surname usually indicates nobility, while the   
   uppercase    
   Di does not), later adapted into a star-studded movie by another aristocrat,    
   Luchino Visconti. The titular character, prince Fabrizio Salina, is a member   
   of    
   the Sicilian landed aristocracy; like the author’s, his family’s coat of   
   arms    
   features a crowned gattopardo, which also works in the story as a metaphor for    
   power and fierceness.   
      
   Sicily has produced some of the best Italian literature, but also the most    
   pessimistic, with its recurring themes of the futility of idealism and   
   rebellion,    
   societal pressure on the individual and resignation to injustice. In Il   
   Gattopardo,    
   the young aristocrat Tancredi fights as one of Garibaldi’s volunteers during   
   the    
   tumultous times of the Risorgimento, the 19th century Italian wars of national    
   liberation and unification; to his worried uncle don Fabrizio he explains:    
   “If we want everything to stay the same, everything must change.”   
      
   If I am to give an update about the current Italian government and its   
   immigration    
   policy, I want to begin with this quote. Whether it’s actually true or not,   
   it    
   symbolises a recurring theme in our history and self-image. It might be   
   misleading:    
   many things have changed in Italy over the last couple centuries. But if we   
   consider    
   the quote’s context, it becomes fitting to this particular situation. For as   
   Tancredi    
   understood, some historical changes are unstoppable no matter how much one   
   might wish    
   otherwise; adaptation, not resistance, is the only way to ride the wave and   
   come out    
   on top.   
      
   Upper classes survive when they understand and do this; when they know how to   
   pander    
   to popular worries and aspirations while they look for ways in which their   
   privileges    
   can be preserved in a changing world. And this is why a right-wing government   
   was    
   always going to pretend to do something to stop mass migration, which   
   disproportionally    
   affects the lower classes, while implicitly reassuring their most monied   
   supporters    
   they will keep profiting from it – that things will stay the same.   
      
   When Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia “won” the Italian   
   elections, I wrote    
   for TOP an explanation of what I believed was one of the major factors   
   affecting the    
   results: the exasperation of many Italians with out of control mass migration.   
   One    
   regret I have is not making it clearer that I thought that, in spite of her   
   bombastic    
   statements of intent, she wasn’t actually going to do much about it. I   
   don’t like to    
   engage in what in Italian we call processo alle intenzioni, that is judging   
   people on    
   what we think they are going to do, rather than what they actually do.   
      
   Meloni still insists she will do something, but I think it’s pretty clear at   
   this point    
   that she will not. Even if she was honest about her intentions, and I think   
   she mostly    
   was, her hands are tied – by the other parties she shares the government   
   with, by    
   international norms, the European Union, the business lobbies, the Vatican and    
   finally public opinion.   
      
   Giorgia Meloni’s most famous policy proposal in this respect was a “naval   
   blockade”    
   of Italian coasts – that was never going to happen. The most she’s done is   
   some    
   confusing action with boats carrying migrants that has made it slightly harder   
   for    
   them to offload their human cargo rapidly. This has gotten us into a   
   diplomatic row    
   with the French government, which is constantly trying to offload unwanted   
   migrants    
   onto its neighbours, but displays outrage when Italy does the same (France,   
   with a    
   migration and segregation problem of its own making, is also a bit of a   
   cautionary    
   tale for us).   
      
   Without going into the many specific solutions suggested or tentatively   
   implemented    
   by European countries, ranging from deporting migrants to Rwanda to paying   
   them to    
   go back home to building barbed wire fences with police on the “in” side,   
   the problem    
   is that if any Western government was actually serious about stopping mass   
   migration    
   it would have to engage in policies so harsh, so unflinching, so deadly,   
   actually,    
   that public opinion, the courts, the media, religious and thought leaders   
   would    
   simply not allow them – in Western Europe especially. Not only that: a   
   significant    
   portion of public opinion is in favour of letting people come in as much as   
   they want to.   
      
   The debate flared up in February 2023 after the shipwreck in Cutro, in the   
   Southern    
   region of Calabria – over seventy people lost their lives, including many   
   children.    
   The usual charade of finger-pointing followed. Was it the fault of the   
   government?    
   Of the ruthless human traffickers who cram people onto boats and abandon them   
   at sea?    
   Of the lack of legal paths to immigration? Of the Wagner group? (A minister   
   has even    
   said this, and why not? It’s not like Russia and Belarus haven’t used   
   migration as a    
   weapon already…).   
      
   I must admit that, hearing about the shipwreck, I felt anger even more than   
   sadness.    
   This keeps happening – not just to Italy, or Greece. The Mediterranean is a   
   shared sea,    
   small, crowded, diverse, a sea that has always been a bridge more than a wall.   
   And now    
   our beautiful Mediterranean has become a watery graveyard. This has to stop.   
   But how?   
      
   Letting everyone in is out of the question. Pakistan alone has almost four   
   times the    
   population of Italy, Bangladesh almost three times (these countries and   
   Afghanistan    
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)