Spiked, April 7, 2017

Brexitphobic comedians are the real populists
Sneering at the ‘enemy within’, stand-ups today are bien pensant demagogues.

in spiked, July 16, 2004; Italian translation 7

An eco-friendly Harley Davidson – worst idea ever?

in spiked, December 10, 2013

Pope Francis: the new King of Italy

In a country with little faith in politics, the 'people's pontiff' has become Italy's de facto head of state.

 

in The Catholic Herald, November 28, 2013

The Mafia cannot keep its stranglehold on Italy

Popes, judges and shopkeepers are leading resistance to organised crime, says Patrick West

Mafia Republic, by John Dickie, Sceptre, £25


How do you think Italians react when you mention you’re learning their language? With happiness? Interest? Gratitude, perhaps. No. Invariably, it’s something along the lines of: “Why do you want to learn my useless language, or learn about my hopeless country?” Despite our perceptions of the Italians as an amorous, stylish, artistic and sonorous people, when it comes to talking about their country today they’re a profoundly gloomy lot.
 
It’s not surprising, really. Anyone who follows Italian politics knows how embedded organised crime is in that country, and how for decades an endless stream of politicians, businessmen, architects and doctors have been bought by the mob. Many Italians regard their country almost as a failed state. Even so, Mafia Republic is still a shocking dissection of the rise of Italy’s three main organised crime fraternities: Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, the Neapolitan Camorra and the Calabrian ’Ndrangheta. 

The ’Ndrangheta is now the world’s most powerful mafia, which account for three per cent of Italy’s GDP alone. In Sicily, the mafia even tax petty criminals: burglars have to ask permission from the Cosa Nostra before they break into a house. John Dickie’s book exposes not just the level of corruption and extortion, but the depth of its reach.
 
How did this happen to one of Europe’s greatest countries? The author dismisses the theory, favoured by some northern types, that lawlessness is inherent to the southern Italian character. Rather, he attributes organised crime to the youth of the Italian state (united in 1861, a democracy since 1946), and the fact that it remains regionally disparate – culturally, politically and linguistically. Young democracies of this type are always unstable. Dickie challenges the belief that Mussolini crushed the mafia. Rather, Il Duce banned all mention of it in the media, in the hope it would quietly go away. 

The state continued to wish away the mafia after the war, with lamentable consequences, leaving the three main mafias to fester in parallel with the booming economy. The ’Ndragheta were only officially recognised in 1955 and, most shockingly, a witness protection scheme wasn’t initiated until 1992.
 
When the state did act, it often worsened matters. Mafia activity increased on the mainland as a direct consequence of imprisoning Cosa Nostra convicts on it. “God bless these prisons!” exclaimed the Camorra member Gaspare Mutolo in 1976, after his arrest for heroin trafficking. The Camorra had previously been an association of petty thieves and smugglers, but having been introduced to Sicilian gangsters to jails in Naples and Campania, their members moved on to more ambitious criminal activities.
 
Unlike France or the United States, Italy didn’t join in the war on drugs, and consequently it was Mutolo’s Camorra that re-routed the “French connection”. Naples became the new Marseilles, massively enriching the prestige, power and influence of the mafia bosses, and simultaneously spreading misery. 

By 1980, Italy had more heroin addicts per head of population than the United States. By the turn of the millennium the mafias had power bases not only in the north of the country, but also in Germany, Australia, Argentina and beyond. The illegal construction of houses is still rampant, as well as of massive towns without schools or hospitals, with potentially fatal consequences. (In July this year, 39 people were killed after a bus careered off a shoddily built viaduct.) One statistic sticks out: during the 1980s an estimated 10,000 people were killed in southern Italy’s mafia wars. That’s more than three times the number killed in 30 years of Troubles in Northern Ireland. Strangely, one of the most alarming constants of this book is not its gory narrative, but the degree to which the now defunct Christian Democracy party was involved in organised crime at an individual level. No wonder the country’s youth were drawn towards the Red Brigades in the 1970s and that many didn’t appear to muster much sympathy during the kidnapping and murder of former Christian Democrat prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978. Italian youth then drew little distinction between politicians and gangsters. 

But it’s not all gloom. Dickie believes that the mafia’s days are now numbered. Following the mayhem of the 1980s, a new resolve emerged, one epitomised by the fearless campaigns of two judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. By 1992, both knew that they were walking corpses. Falcone was killed by a bomb placed underneath a motorway on May 23 that year. Borsellino waited 56 days, frequently going out alone to buy cigarettes in the hope he would be shot dead alone, before a bomb killed him and six others. Both judges were Sicilians. Both were ready to die for their homeland.
 
Suddenly, it wasn’t only the Communists speaking out. In 1990, John Paul II told an audience at a football stadium in Sicily not to be seduced by the mafia’s “culture of death”. He said: “Convert! Because one day that judgment of God will come!” By now, writes the author: “The Vatican had abandoned its traditional misgivings about the anti-mafia cause. Cosa Nostra, finally, was anathema.”
Shopkeepers formed an organisation called Addiopizzo (“Goodbye Extortion”). They signed a public pledge not to pay protection money; and consumers signed a pledge to patronise businesses that did not pay. This surprisingly simple idea worked: mafiosi couldn’t be bothered with those who made the pledge. The mafia is now quite literally going underground. In Campania and Calabria the powerful bosses have taken to building underground bunkers as mafia hunters have become ever more expert and determined.
 
Although written in slightly breathless prose, Mafia Republic is an excellent achievement. It may be an indictment of Italy’s rulers, but it offers much hope. My generation grew up assuming mayhem and murder in Northern Ireland was the norm. Let’s hope tomorrow’s Italians will one day think of kidnappings and assassinations as things that happened in the bad old days.

in The Catholic Herald, September 13, 2012

Cheap Thrills
Despite some great set-pieces this novel of the 16th century has no heart, says Patrick West

Altai
BY WUN MING
VERSO, £16.99

Wu Ming is not a real person, and the title of this historical novel is irrelevant (“altai” is a type of falcon, but like Trainspotting or Reservoir Dogs, it tells you nothing of the plot). With this in mind, the reader might expect a self-consciously postmodern book, it being the creation of a four-man collective of Italian anarchists. As it happens, Altai turns out to be a rollicking, swashbuckling adventure story set in the late 16th century, the backdrop being a war between the Ottoman Empire and forces loyal to the papacy.

When a fire breaks out in the Arsenal of Venice in 1569, everyone blames the arch-enemy of the Republic, the dastardly Giuseppe Nasi (“The Sultan’s favourite Jew” – a kind of Bin Laden bogeyman). But it is the city’s chief spymaster and torturer, Emmanuele De Zante, who is framed for the blaze, and accused of being a spy himself.

Having escaped jail, De Zante flees to the Balkans, rediscovers his own Jewish roots, heads on through Salonika to Constantinople, and ends up working with Nasi himself. With the patronage of Selim II, Nasi seeks ultimately to build a new Zion in Cyprus. A great religious war ensues when the Turks invade the island, reaching its terrible conclusion at the Battle of Lepanto.

Altai is the follow-up to the collective’s novel Q. Like its predecessor, it’s been a best-seller in Italy. It’s not hard to see why: Altai is gory, epic and sensual, constant with themes of love and betrayal. It’s written in the first person, present tense, in a staccato style that gives it irresistible momentum. At times it has the feel of a detective novel, with each terse chapter ending with a cliff-hanger worthy of Philip Marlowe or a 1970s cop show. (For example: “She left without a sound, leaving me prey to my obsessions, my eyes lost in the night.”)

Wu Ming’s underlying motive, of course, is political: to channel and echo the sentiments of Europe’s disillusioned youth, to the discontents and malcontents who feel betrayed by their elders and rulers. 

Corruption and deception are pervasive in Altai. Venice is a sordid state riddled with anti-semitism. The papacy is rapacious and cynical. The Ottoman Empire, while superficially tolerant and multicultural, is as scheming as its main foe: the Sultan fabricates a pretext for invading Cyprus – a nod, again, to real-life geopolitics.

Like a Sergio Leone film, there are no good guys or bad guys, and no redemption – only the inevitability and thrill of violence: “We fought for ages, acrid smoke and the smell of death filling our lungs … The clash dragged on in a hideous balance of death, attacking, retreating, gaining a few feet of ground, with shouts, curses prayers, insults, music, hissing arrows, roaring arquebuses, the smell of combusted bodies, of burnt wood”.
Throughout, De Zante agonises over his maternal religion, embracing then rejecting his Judaism in turn, seemingly condemned to be the wandering and wondering Jew. He is a man utterly self-absorbed with his identity, a veritable embodiment of Generation Me.

The success of this novel is a depressing sign of the times. Altai, in a perverse way, is a marvellous work, with its stirring pace, attention to historical detail and linguistic wordplay. (If you speak a Romance language you will understand the lingua franca spoken by its seamen: “Kon una barba blanka ke lo faze pareser un profeta.”) But it’s cheap thrills all the same. This book has neither heart nor feeling. It solicits no sympathy. In the end, I didn’t care what happened to the protagonists. There was no one I wanted to live and no one I wanted to die. How strange that such an immense piece of work can feel so hollow. 

in The Catholic Herald, April 19, 2013

Come on, you saints

Patrick West on why so many priests love the beautiful game

One of the great comic devices of the television comedy Father Ted was

having Ardal O'Hanlon's Fr Dougal wear a Republic of Ireland football shirt

in bed. Good comedy is often based on incongruity - a horse walks into a

bar: "why the long face?" - and whereas there's a common perception that

priests are responsible, kindly and serious types, football conversely

brings to mind stereotypes that are more aggressive or frivolous. To connect

things that belong in opposing mental categories is funny in both senses.

Putting priests and football together makes us smile. Hence the graffiti

legend: "Jesus Saves ­ but Keegan scores on the rebound."

This was why much of the media thought it a wheeze to report that Pope

Francis is a card-carrying fan of the Argentinian football club San Lorenzo.

The Sun certainly did so with a gallery of photographs of him holding aloft

a replica shirt and club flag. That newspaper also had a striking headline

after Pope Francis's election: "The New Hand of God", a reference to

Maradona's fist, which put England out of the 1986 World Cup. And it's the

reason why one of the most celebrated Father Ted episodes is the one about a

match.

When you think about it, football and faith is not really an unlikely

association. At the beginning of the 20th century, a Buenos Aires priest

named Lorenzo Massa, who was concerned about children playing football near

tram tracks, told the boys that they could instead play in the church's

backyard - as long as they went to Mass on Sundays. A football club was

eventually established in 1908, and although he initially refused the

honour, Lorenzo finally accepted the proposal to name it after him.

San Lorenzo team's nickname, "the Saints", is the same as Southampton FC's.

The English clubwas founded by members of the St Mary's Church of England

Young Men's Association ­ a reminder of how sport and muscular Christianity

were intertwined in Britain. The Northampton Saints rugby union team was

established in 1880 by a vicar for this reason, and in Ireland the clergy

were at the forefront in the creation of the Gaelic Athletic Association. So

while it might appear odd to many atheists when American Football players

kneel to praise God, or southern European footballers cross themselves

before games (by my logic, asking God to make the other team lose), it's

only superficially irrational.

In 2009, a priest in Manchester who reads the scores after the Saturday

evening Mass was quoted saying he asked worshippers to pray for Manchester

United victories. But Fr Paddy McMahon, of St John's in Chorlton, hastened

to add: "...and Manchester City, but then they really need it! It's a bit of

fun." (His prayers came true: City won the league last season). You'd have

to be rather dim to take his exhortations literally, and Fr McMahon

explained that "talking about football at the end of Mass means people leave

with a smile on their faces". The spectacle of a group of people seen

leaving a church smiling: what a fantastic advert for the Church.

Indeed, some have used football deliberately this way. In 2006 Fr David Cain

of St Barnabas, Nottingham, established a "World Cup chapel" to coincide

with a poster recruitment campaign for the priesthood. Fr Cain was also

asked about partisanship and its potentially divisive nature. "Although,

understandably many people will be fiercely cheering on their own nation,"

he said, "sport generally, and football in particular, can provide a great

bridge in promoting harmony between nations despite differences that exist

in race, religion or politics."

Like religion, football teaches you life lessons. It instills discipline,

hard work, self-control and self-respect. It makes you value leadership and

the virtues of co-operation, and to realise that there are some situations

you can't change and some you can. This is why Christians of the 19th

century were so keen on football. It's true that money has ruined the game

in recent years, but that's because footballers have become spoilt. The

sport remains inherently a good thing.

These are some of the reasons why in 2007 the Vatican established its own

domestic competition, the Clericus Cup. It was the creation of Cardinal

Tarcisio Bertone, a fervent Juventus fan and a football commentator in a

country beset by corruption in politics and sport itself. It was devised

consciously as a way of setting a good example.

The relationship between football and the Church in Italy has always been a

close one. As an expert on Italy, Paddy Agnew puts it: "Ninety-six percent

of Italians are nominal Catholics, but the same 96 per cent are committed

football fans." Most children play their first game at church-run youth

clubs, and a lot of priests remain players. For them, the Clericus Cup can

serve as a reminder in humility. Players must do community service if they

are issued a yellow or red card. A player given a blue card is sent to a

"sin bin" for five minutes of contemplation ­ perhaps even to ask for

absolution.

As the captain of the British team, Tony Preston, reflected after losing to

a team of Croatian priests in the 2008 semi-finals: "The whole idea, not to

get too heavy, is the idea of sport bringing the finer qualities out of

humanity, like humility in victory and gracious in defeat ­ we've got a bit

of experience in that." Sport and religion can be an ideal combination. As

in life, football teaches you that you win some, you lose some. Apparently,

however, football has no agreed patron saint. A fine choice would naturally

be St Mirren.

Patrick West is author of Beating Them at Their Own Game: How The Irish

Conquered English Soccer (Liberties Press, 2006)

in Spiked, February 1, 2013

Taste in opera: a
window to the soul

So, do you prefer the ‘absolute shit’ Wagner or the therapeutic Verdi? Your answer is likely to be very revealing.

in spiked, November 8, 2011

Questo corso è molto prevenuto

Language courses always come with baggage, like the BBC one that teaches you to talk about climate change in Italian.

in spiked, March 4, 2011

Viva Verdi?

As Italy approaches its 150th birthday, Verdi’s ability to stir nationalist sentiment has apparently become problematic.