14/12/2013
Having done my fair share of warning about the spread of civil unrest and impending revolution, one watches with interest recent reports of the
pitchfork protests in Italy, especially as there were some accounts of riot police having joined recent demonstrations.
Summing up the motivation of the protesters, the
Guardian cites a poster from the "December 9 Committee", an umbrella organisation urging Italians to rise up against the euro, Brussels, globalisation and, primarily, Enrico Letta's government. "They [politicians] have brought us to hunger; have destroyed the identity of a country; have annihilated the future of entire generations", it says. "To rebel is a duty".
The current wave of protests seem to have a great deal in common with the recent unrest in
Brittany, which seem rather to have dissipated, despite promise of greater things. But then, if the Italian protests are to be treated as a sign of things to come, so too was the sudden rise of Grillo and his Five Star Movement, at about this time
last year.
By February, the
Independent was reporting that the political establishment in both Italy and the EU was "quaking" after claims that Grillo's party would finish with the second largest share of the vote in the Italian elections.
As it was, the party did quite well, but then
fell apart, leaving Grillo little option but to call for his former supporters
to join in with the pitchfork protests.
This time round, the Italian media is claiming that what is now styled as the "Forconi movement" is backed by political groups including the "hard-right" Forza Nuova party.
On the other hand, Danilo Calvani, one of the organisers, denies any political links. "This is a movement of Italian people and that's it. We dissociate ourselves completely from these extremist parties like Forza Nuova, which actually favour the system with the things they say", he tells the daily
Corriere della Sera.
Prime Minister Enrico Letta is exploiting the unrest, using it to rally his supporters by uttering blood-curdling warnings that opposition to the government and the EU is growing strongly, fuelled by sacrifices needed to keep public finances in order. This could result in a massive anti-EU vote in next year's European parliamentary elections, he claims.
For his own reasons, that is exactly what
Geert Wilders is doing in the Netherlands, as is Farage in the UK, all to focus attention on the coming euro-elections, with a view to maximising the vote. That, after all, is what politicians do.
It is all very easy then to draw together disparate events, such as the
Spanish protests, where there is support for third-party political movements like
Procés Constituent, presenting them as the elements of a Europe-wide movement. But any such linkage would be false. While there is plenty of evidence of antipathy towards the political classes, there is no evidence of a co-ordinated pan-European protest movement.
Even the much-hailed
tryst between Wilders and Le Pen is barely visible, a month down the road, when this was supposed to be the start of a new alliance that was going to set Europe on fire. Wilders doesn't even mention it in his latest BBC interview.
This is the mistake that
Ambrose makes, collecting together all the dissidents, giving them an erudite label and suggesting a far greater cohesion than is warranted. "The dam is bursting", he says, but it isn't. A few waves are slopping over the top, and there is a tired old man at the base, mopping up the spillage.
The problem, I think, is that there isn't a unifying "ism". In the 20s and especially the 30s, the street rioters would have been either Fascists or Communists, giving even an East End mob the sense that they were part of something bigger then themselves. But now, protests come and protests go. One minute, it's "five star", next it's "pitchfork" â same people, different label. Next year, after the euro-elections, it will be something else.
Perhaps then the most secure employment in Europe is riot policing, unless you take on board being a "eurosceptic" politician, working for the fall of the EU. In that case, by past performance, you have a job for life - alongside the Commission officials whom they so despise.
