Silvio Berlusconi’s return to the helm as Italy’s prime minister has seen an unprecendented level of government overbearing. The most startling piece of legislation, since the collapse of Romano Prodi’s center-left government,  is a law requiring the fingerprinting of the countries entire Roma population, including 80,000 children. The Roma are what we might call gypsys, and were a targeted minority during the holocaust, losing 250,000 of their kind.

The Roma population is blamed for a disproportionate amount of crime in Italy, this usually consisting of pick-pocketing and other minor misdemeanors.

Berlusconi is also having talk with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi about the countries use as launching point for illegal immigration into Italy. These are the classic right wing xenophobic policies carried out to scare a populace. Putting blame on the ‘other’ is the oldest and most sinister political trick in the world. I remember a time when Gaddafi used to be the boogyman of Africa, the old Osama Bin Laden. Now, Sarcozy is sharing military information with him, and Berlusconi is scratching his back in return for some political capital.

Segregative techniques like these are fascistic, there is no other way to put it. Mussolini himself said that fascism was the coming together of the government and corporatism, well Berlusconi is the largest corporate magnate in Italy and the prime minister, what does that tell you? Incidentally, let us not forget that Berlusconi shares these views with Allesandra Mussolini, grand daughter of Benito, who once said that “all Romanians are criminals”.

Fascism doesn’t have to come goose-stepping down the street in a wehrmacht uniform, it is far more clever than that.

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Edit: any misspellings can be attributed to my faulty laptop keyboard!