Wednesday, March 10, 2010


Because of the election for regional government at the end of the month, there are posters up everywhere for different political parties. In Italy, it's more about the party you vote for, rather than the individual. The two strongest parties in Parliament right now are the Partito della Libertà (aka Berlusconi) and the Partito Democratico. Apparently, there has been some sort of scandal in the past few days because ballots (or something) were miscounted. Mirella and her husband, Carlo, were trying to explain it all to me, but between Carlo's intense accento milanese and the two of the speaking at once, I couldn't get the whole story. What I did catch, however, was that apparently Lega Nord, a political party of the far, far right, is associated with the Partito della Libertà, a fact I had not known before.

I know I should research the whole story before I blog about it, but honestly, even if I did, I still wouldn't understand it. Italian politics are incredibly confusing. Plus I'm tired. However, I would like to share a bit of what I've been seeing around the city. The above image is an infamous poster promoting Lega Nord, whose main platform is contro l'immigrazione. It translates to: "They allowed immigration and now they live on reserves!" Besides being radically inaccurate, it's also obviously really offensive and politically incorrect. I can't get started on a whole immgration thing right now (so... tired...), but needless to say, it's a hot topic of political debate in this country. I try to talk to my students as much as I can about this, because I find the Italian perspective of this issue really interesting, especially that of the young generation. Once I collect enough commentary, I'll dedicate a whole post to it.

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