it clear secession would not take place immediately. It empowered a “provisional government” that had already been formed by Bossi to open talks with the central government on an agreed separation, but set a deadline of September 1997. After that, failing agreement, the Northern League’s unilateral declaration of independence would take “full effect.”
Wars have broken out over less.
But not in Italy. A former president of the Constitutional Court called in vain for Bossi to be arrested. Police clashed briefly with far-left-wing and far-right-wing demonstrators protesting at his initiative. But the overwhelming majority of Italians understood his descent of the Po for what it was: an elaborate symbolic gesture. They were right to do so. September 1997 came and went, and Padania—if it can be said to exist—stayed firmly within Italy. In fact, no one much noticed that the deadline had expired. But everyone had been made aware that the Northern League’s orientation had changed—at least, until the next tactical switch.
Part of the fascination exerted by Italy’s mafiosi is the way that they too communicate by means of signs. Less than a year after Bossi’s melodramatic descent of the Po, I was at the other end of Italy, in Catania, at the foot of Mount Etna, being driven through crime-infested backstreets in a police car code-named “The Shark.” At the time, Catania was Italy’s most violent city—a battleground on which Cosa Nostra was fighting for territorial ascendancy with a variety of more or less organized criminal gangs. The underworld murder rate—in a city the size of Cincinnati or Hull—was running at two a week.
On the night I arrived, the latest victim was found. He had been shot in the face and throat. Either before or after, his skull had been battered in with a rock. The way he met his death was violent, but no more so than if he had been killed by rival hoodlums in Moscow or Macao. What made it stand out was that the circumstances of his death had apparently been arranged in such a way as to send a message. An Uzi submachine pistol of the sort favored by Cosa Nostra had been laid across the corpse at a point just above the knees.
The police officers with whom I spent the morning were certain this would have a precise significance—that it would be immediately comprehensible to at least one other mobster, and that if they could only decode the message, it would help advance the investigation into the gang war raging in their city. For much of the patrol they debated why the gun had been put at that specific point on the body, whether it really belonged to a member of Cosa Nostra, whether any significance could be attached to the position of the safety catch and whether there was a meaning to be read into the way the victim’s limbs were arranged.
The officers were behaving in a way Italians do instinctively when faced with something new or dramatic or out of the ordinary. Nothing—but nothing—is ascribed to chance. This is maybe the single biggest difference between the worldviews of Northern Europeans on the one hand and Southern Europeans, and especially Italians, on the other. The former tend to view the latter, condescendingly, as besotted with conspiracy theories. But the fact is that Southern Europeans, and particularly Italians, are conspiratorial. What is more, they often talk in metaphors and communicate with symbols. And since so much is therefore deceptive or illusory, given a choice between a simple explanation and a tortuous one, you are just as likely to be right if you plump for the second.
This is also the rationale behind what is known as dietrologia (literally, “behind-ism”)—the peculiarly Italian art of divining the true motive for, or cause of, an event. If a minister successfully campaigns for, say, greater resources for the physically handicapped, the dietrologo will not believe for one second that it is because he had their best interests at heart. He
Wars have broken out over less.
But not in Italy. A former president of the Constitutional Court called in vain for Bossi to be arrested. Police clashed briefly with far-left-wing and far-right-wing demonstrators protesting at his initiative. But the overwhelming majority of Italians understood his descent of the Po for what it was: an elaborate symbolic gesture. They were right to do so. September 1997 came and went, and Padania—if it can be said to exist—stayed firmly within Italy. In fact, no one much noticed that the deadline had expired. But everyone had been made aware that the Northern League’s orientation had changed—at least, until the next tactical switch.
Part of the fascination exerted by Italy’s mafiosi is the way that they too communicate by means of signs. Less than a year after Bossi’s melodramatic descent of the Po, I was at the other end of Italy, in Catania, at the foot of Mount Etna, being driven through crime-infested backstreets in a police car code-named “The Shark.” At the time, Catania was Italy’s most violent city—a battleground on which Cosa Nostra was fighting for territorial ascendancy with a variety of more or less organized criminal gangs. The underworld murder rate—in a city the size of Cincinnati or Hull—was running at two a week.
On the night I arrived, the latest victim was found. He had been shot in the face and throat. Either before or after, his skull had been battered in with a rock. The way he met his death was violent, but no more so than if he had been killed by rival hoodlums in Moscow or Macao. What made it stand out was that the circumstances of his death had apparently been arranged in such a way as to send a message. An Uzi submachine pistol of the sort favored by Cosa Nostra had been laid across the corpse at a point just above the knees.
The police officers with whom I spent the morning were certain this would have a precise significance—that it would be immediately comprehensible to at least one other mobster, and that if they could only decode the message, it would help advance the investigation into the gang war raging in their city. For much of the patrol they debated why the gun had been put at that specific point on the body, whether it really belonged to a member of Cosa Nostra, whether any significance could be attached to the position of the safety catch and whether there was a meaning to be read into the way the victim’s limbs were arranged.
The officers were behaving in a way Italians do instinctively when faced with something new or dramatic or out of the ordinary. Nothing—but nothing—is ascribed to chance. This is maybe the single biggest difference between the worldviews of Northern Europeans on the one hand and Southern Europeans, and especially Italians, on the other. The former tend to view the latter, condescendingly, as besotted with conspiracy theories. But the fact is that Southern Europeans, and particularly Italians, are conspiratorial. What is more, they often talk in metaphors and communicate with symbols. And since so much is therefore deceptive or illusory, given a choice between a simple explanation and a tortuous one, you are just as likely to be right if you plump for the second.
This is also the rationale behind what is known as dietrologia (literally, “behind-ism”)—the peculiarly Italian art of divining the true motive for, or cause of, an event. If a minister successfully campaigns for, say, greater resources for the physically handicapped, the dietrologo will not believe for one second that it is because he had their best interests at heart. He
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