#anti italian sentiment

[nachoaveragejoe234]

They went for Latinos. They went for indigenous people. They went for black people. They went for Arabs. They went for Russians in the Cold War. They went for Jews. They went for Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian people (and demonized the anti war people and hippies against the atrocities done to those people).

Also the Japanese, German, and Italian internment was in the 40s during the war not the 50s. But stil.

Wake up Tronald Dump, your country has a long history of stripping cultures of their rights and even LIVES a lot of the time.

President FDR used the Alien Enemies Act to INTERN AMERICAN CITIZENS in camps into the 1950's. They went for Italians, they went for germansm, but most of all, they went to the AAPI. There are people alived today that remember being in those camps. There are people alive today who have parents and grandparents that were in those camps. We must remember: if we do not learn history, We are doomed to repeat it. We are watching it begin to repeat itself. Do not think for one moment you are safe. Anyone who is of color, anyone who is queer, anyone who has a disability, anyone who is an American Citizen that doesn't agree with MAGA will be throw into camps. That's a promise and its all written down right in front of us.

[goatsandgangsters]

if I had a nickel for every time I had a blorbo who was a turn-of-the-century working-class Italian immigrant who anglicized his first name, is the youngest of the sons but has two younger sisters, responds very flirtatiously to a gun in his face, and sometimes uses the last name Ross

I would, somehow, have two nickels

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

never not emo about Marcus naming the savory cannoli "the michael"

[pastamic]

Was watching videos on this mob wife trend on tik Tok and I have a feeling we may encounter the phrase "Italian-fishing" in the near future

[mint-mumbles]

Don't get me started on the NINA (No Irish Need Apply) signs from the UK and USA, the "gingers have no souls" stereotype that's still prevalent in the UK to the point people get unironically made fun of for their hair (some people believe that Ireland is where red hair originates from), and it would be amiss not to bring up BLOODY SUNDAY (the Bogside Massacre)

People who stole potatoes and pigs to keep their families from starving during the Great Famine were sent from Ireland to Australia back in the 1840s (Australia was used as a prison for the British during this time) for 7 years while the Britains in power took their food

All because King Henry II demonized the people he was trying to conquer in order to take control of their church

[sybbi]

I think the people twisting themselves in conspiratorial knots trying to insist he isn't the guy because cops untrustworthy are coping hard atp, but I will say, "The shooter used a silencer and an Italian would never be quiet in public" is hilariously compelling.

[t4tadrienette]

I did know the Geolier thing would have brought some comments, but I never thought it would have become so draining, it was a very draining week and people are still going on

[imaginealpha]

Please think about why you don’t consider BAME British people or immigrants to be ‘really’ British, and why I might have included those food cultures on purpose.

Hey, I didn't mean to imply that they're not British. I am Indian myself, and I always believed that that the food had Indian roots, not European roots. The whole "thin ice" comment was mainly a joke based on my surprise, but I'm sorry if it offended anyone.

[zwoelffarben]

This anti-italian beef sentiment will not stand, Derin.

Time 4 my lunch 😋😋

[doberbutts]

I was to talk briefly about Chronic Bad Take Havers and this sort of logic. Deliberately anonymous screenshots, found in the trans guy tags, posted by known jerks.

Not only am I very tired of the logic that gender is somehow synonymous with race (and frequently said by white people ofc) but also like.

"White history month" doesn't exist because the ethnicities regarded as white have their own individual history months already that are specific and unique to them. "Anti-white racism" doesn't exist because the ethnicities regarded as white that do experience specific and unique oppression have words to describe their own experiences. Trans mascs don't currently have an agreed-upon term for discussing their issues that is specific and unique to them.

"White history month" isn't a thing. That is correct. But Irish heritage month is March, as is Greek. Italian heritage month is October, as is Polish. There *are* months specifically dedicated to those specific experiences.

"Anti-white racism" isn't a thing. However anti-Irish and anti-Italian (also called italophobia) are. Anti-Greek sentiments are so strong that just over a hundred years ago we were still having race riots targeting Greeks IN CANADA. Slavophobia is also a known and discussed term for the continued hatred of slavs to this day.

There *are* words to describe the specific and unique oppression faced by these peoples even if they may have some privilege in other ways.

Trans mascs also experience oppression in specific and unique ways. The comparison falls apart when you know that these groups do indeed have words to describe their experiences.

So why is it that us having ours is so uniquely terrible? Why can we not have space to talk about ourselves?

[mariacallous]

It is often assumed that far-right parties do well in areas with many new immigrants. This is supposedly because housing prices rise, traffic jams get worse, crime and employment can become an issue, and the arrival of newcomers with different habits and religions creates friction with local residents—who then proceed to vote for anti-immigrant parties. The implication of this presumed link between immigration and the rise of the far right is that far-right parties listen better to the frustrations and complaints of “ordinary people” and that other parties have somehow “lost touch with reality.”

But what if this link does not really exist? What if far-right parties aren’t so much listening to the wishes and demands of ordinary citizens in immigrant areas, and then translating them into policy proposals, as they are scaring them and pitting them against newcomers in their neighborhood so they end up voting in their favor?

That is exactly the conclusion of a recent study conducted by four researchers from Bocconi University in Milan and the ETH in Zurich: The Free Movement of People and the Success of Far-Right Parties: Evidence from Switzerland’s Border Liberalization, just published in American Political Science Review. In light of the current hysterical anti-immigration discourse in Europe, it is a compelling read. It provides a convincing explanation for at least part of the political turbulence in France, Romania, the Netherlands, and other countries.

The success of anti-immigration parties, the authors argue, cannot be explained by cultural, economic, or political problems that citizens experience with immigration. Instead, they found it is rather the other way around: It is “political elites” in far-right parties who are responsible for such votes. They decide to focus their election campaigns in areas with immigrants. These campaigns are often hard-hitting and confrontational, using slogans like “full is full” or “stop migration” and cartoons depicting immigrants as black sheep or thieves who do harm and need to be expelled. Instead of citizens complaining of immigrants of their own accord, they are often incited by far-right political entrepreneurs—whereafter they start complaining about immigration and voting for the far right.

The Swiss and Italian researchers studied the correlation between immigration and the success of the far right in an unusual place: the mostly well-off border towns and villages of Ticino, Switzerland’s Italian-language canton. They focused on the period after 2000, when Switzerland and its EU neighbors first opened their borders to enable citizens to live and work freely in each other’s countries. In the period studied, immigration in Ticino rose by 14 percent, and support for the far right increased by 32 percent.

While the link looks strong at first glance, the researchers could not prove it. “We find limited evidence that the standard economic, cultural and security explanations are driving this rising anti-immigrant sentiment,” they write. What their report does show is this: From the moment the borders with France, Germany, Austria, and Italy were opened, Swiss political elites on the far right began campaigning aggressively in those areas, advancing narratives of overcrowding, crime, and “density stress,” meaning increasing pressure on public transportation, housing, parking, health care, and other collective facilities.

The researchers consistently use the term “political elite” in their article to emphasize that the success of the far right is orchestrated from above (top-down), rather than coming from citizens themselves (bottom-up). Far-right politicians often claim they speak on behalf of “the people,” who are fed up with “the elite.” But these politicians, the researchers argue, are themselves part of the elite.

The cultural disruptions caused by immigration in Tricine are minimal. Nearly all immigrants in Tricine come from Italy, oftentimes from just across the border. Most are white, Catholic, and educated. They speak Italian and eat pasta. Culturally and socially, they do not cause much friction.

Economically, too, problems are rare. On the contrary: According to the study, Ticino’s economy has grown since the borders opened for immigrant workers. Employment picked up and salaries rose slightly. Traffic jams did get worse, the researchers observed. But that also happened in parts of Ticino a little further from the border—areas that were used as the control areas in the study—where immigration increased but the support for the far right did not.

The explanation for this, they found, is simple: In these control areas, far-right politicians did not run anti-immigrant campaigns as they did in the areas closer to the border. “Our analysis suggests that political elites target their hostile rhetoric at border regions, and that it resonates more strongly with persuadable voters exposed to immigration.” The voters were “persuadable” because they were in a new situation that they had to adapt to; the far right recognized the potential to give that situation a negative spin by portraying immigrants as troublemakers, freeloaders, or criminals. In the control areas, where voters found themselves in a similar situation, there was no such spin. There, the vote for the far right did not increase.

Politicians in Ticino’s parliament coming from border areas were also found to be more likely to propose anti-immigrant legislation than their colleagues from control areas a little further from the border. Those politicians tabling anti-immigrant legislation mostly came from the far right, and in a few instances also from center-right parties trying to curry favour with voters who were supposedly fed up with immigrants.

This study is important. It confirms findings from internationally renowned political scientists such as Larry Bartels, whose book Democracy Erodes From the Top makes the same point, and Nancy Bermeo, whose study Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times analyzes breakdowns of European and Latin American democracies in the 20th century. Both argue that it is not voters who determine the political direction of a country and, ultimately, the fate of democracy, but the political elites who make calculated decisions to offer voters only certain options.

It would be good if centrist politicians, who all too often ape what their far-right colleagues (or rather rivals) do, finally understood this crucial point. The future of our democracies depends on it.

[italian-lit-tournament]

Italian literature tournament - Second round.

Propaganda in support of the authors is accepted, you can write it both in the tag if reblog the poll (explaining maybe that is propaganda and you want to see posted) or in the comments. Every few days it will be recollected and posted here under the cut.

Propaganda in favour of Primo Levi by @itsmalombra

What to say about Primo Levi? Jew, a leftist until his death, Holocaust survivor (thanks to beng a chemist, he was considered useful by the SS and wasn't killed as soon he arrived to Auschwitz), he condemned with decades of advance the first cases of violence from the just started Israel occupation aganst the Palestinians, having still care for the difficulties that many jews like him were experiencing in Europe. He is one of the author you have to read if you want to understand the contrast and the difference between anti-semitism and anti-sionism. The horrors he endured were the cause of hid death in 1987, possibly by suicide.

About his relationship with other italian jews who moved in Occupied Palestine/Israel but at the same time his distrust to Menachem Begin policies and latent antisionism: Levi was clearly inspired by them, but not enough to follow their example and join his fate in the postwar period to the Zionist project in Israel. He had a complicated relationship to the country. […] Like other Jews, Levi kept up with news from the region, especially during times of crisis. His responses to two of these crises reveal a strong attachment to Israel on a personal level but also some sharp differences with the country’s policies. His criticisms were political and generally lined up with the views of the Italian Left. They came to a head in 1982, during Israel’s incursion into Lebanon in Operation ‘Peace for Galilee’. […] Much of public opinion in Western countries, including Italy, turned against Israel, especially following the Christian Phalange militia’s massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila in September, 1982. Levi joined his voice to the protests, signing letters urging Israel’s withdrawal and calling for Begin’s retirement from office. In turn, he himself came under criticism from prominent leaders of the Italian Jewish community, who called for communal solidarity at such a time. Fearing an intensification of hostility against Jews in Italy as a result of vehement anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations breaking out across Europe, they also thought it unwise for Jews to join their voices in protest against Israel, as Levi and others were doing. Levi’s Italian Jewish friends living in Israel, some of whom lost family members in the country’s War of Independence and subsequent fighting, also spoke out against him. ‘I retain a close sentimental tie with Israel,’ he confessed at the time, ‘but not with this Israel’. [source]

Another article about this important part of him is here, unfortunately is in italian.

I don’t think there is another author as representative of the Holocaust horror (and war horror in general) in Italy like Primo Levi, considering also is eminence in contemporary literature, his interviews with Philip Roth or Judith Butler, him being the namesake of various international associations against discriminations and violence like the Primo Levi Center, the raw and vivid power of his writing and poetry:

You who live safe In your warm house; You who find, come evening, Hot food and the faces of friends: Consider if this is a man Who struggles in the mud Who knows no peace Who fights for crumbs Who dies because of a No or Yes Consider if this is a woman, Nameless and hairless Without strength to remember Vacant eyes and a womb Cold like a frog in the winter: Consider the fact that this has happened: These words I suggest: Etch them on your heart When staying home and going out, Closing your eyes and rising back; Repeat them to your children: Or may your house crumble, Illness bind you And they turn their faces away from you.

If This Is a Man, Primo Levi, 1947.

To describe his importance not only in the italian, but also european and world-wide canon, it takes months and pages of space, a thing that sadly now I don't have, but if you, readed, have never heard of him, you have in front of you so much of books, essays, poetry and writing by Levi that will let you amazed by his depth of though and sensivity, but most importantly, vote now for him👆.

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Propaganda in favor of Guido Cavalcanti by @eresia-catara

May I add further propaganda for Guido: He's a noble, he disdains aristocrats, he was Florence's number one Server of Cunt, he was the city's faggot, he was heretical, he went on a random pilgrimage but interrupted it and managed to be buried in a church anyway, he had an archenemy who sent some men to murder him on said pilgrimage, he came back and tried to murder him back in plain daylight, he gave zero fucks about politics, he got exiled because he was considered a menace for the city. He SAW DANTE's poetical talent, encouraged it, shaped it, and through him the whole of italian literature. Think about it. Also they became besties until they evolved to a tormented psychosexual haunting dynamic (see break-up poem) where Dante himself actually exiled him. In the 13th century his poetry anticipates so many of the literary themes of the XXth century, going from fragmentation of the self (his is basically vivisection and dispersion of his parts), to dissociation from one's own mind and body, lack of identity, irony, desecration, his poetry is full of schizophrenic-like hallucinations, reading them is truly a trip, and yet his language is profoundly meoldic and sweet. And there's also gender-fuckery. and theater, of course, because his poems develop like a scene from a theater (adding layers to the dissociation). So really he has it all guys.

Guido Cavalcanti propaganda by @girldante

GUIDO CAVALCANTI PROPAGANDA ABBIAMO:

LA DISSOCIAZIONE SCHIZOFRENICA:

IL COMICO, IL SIMPATICO BURLONE, IL MEMATORE ANTE LITTERAM:

IL MACABRO, IL GORE, I SINTOMI™

IL BREAKUP TOSSICO PASSIVO AGGRESSIVO CON DANTE

in conclusione

[soup-mother]

*italian christian socialist voice* mama mia i eat-a the communism wafer instead of the communion wafer wahoo

*christian socialist voice* "everyone should be Christian, you can't be a socialist if you're not Christian and also we still do proselytising, trust me we're very different from missionaries because we feed homeless people and want them to convert (this is different from missionaries because we're even more annoying about the politics of jesus)"

[teaboot]

I don't intend to make light of any firm of discrimination however I must express that, after growing up in small-town west-coast Canada, it was absolutely bonkers to learn that there is apparently a real and sincere anti-italian sentiment that exists and is real and not a weird 1800s thing

Like

Someone asked me if I was discriminating against them because they "looked italian" a while back and it genuinely threw me for a loop

Like I did not have an answer except "dude what the fuck" but like. That's a thing

[moonshynecybin]

marc and lorenzo not even getting along is arguably the most hilarious aspect of sepang 2015

look they needed an angle to make the biscotti thing make any modicum of sense and anti italian sentiment seeeeeemed to be the lever they wanted to pull. for comedy i guess

[butchmime]

i do understand the sentiment that people should be recognizing dogwhistles and not agreeing with dogwhistles without thinking about it. i understand it. but i do also think that it’s unreasonable to expect that people already know every dogwhistle and be able to recognize them. the entire point of a dogwhistle is it’s unrecognizable to people unless they know about it. of course there’s certain phrases that are going to be odd and questionable even in context, and should arouse suspicion (a la someone calling people vermin or degenerates), but i really don’t think it’s fair to expect even a reasonably well-informed person who is anti-fascist to automatically know that someone talking about trains running on time is making a reference to an italian fascist dictator in the 1940s. like if you know about that it’s obvious. but everyone who knows that had to learn that. i’m sure there are dogwhistles you yourself do not know about, as you cannot know everything at all times