First They Took Rome

A provocative look at Italy's political disaster from the Cold War to today
67% of Italian 18 to 34 year-olds still live with their parents. Over a third of them are unemployed. Economic growth has been close to nil for over two decades. The Eurozone's third-largest economy, Italy's long-term slide today threatens to blow up the whole European project. The rise to power in summer 2018 of Matteo Salvini's hard-right Lega and the eclectic Five Star Movement has pushed Italy, and the whole continent, into unknown territory.
The monstrous forces that now rule Italy emerge from a deep well of despair. What broke apart in Italy over the 1990s and 2000s was not just a once mighty Left but also the very bases of social solidarity. The rise of Silvio Berlusconi, the asset-stripping of the Italian state and the creation of the neoliberal Democratic Party hollowed out Italian public life; and when the crisis hit, Italians were left to fend for themselves. But the change they...