The Italian case

Hi guys! Hannibal Barca asked me a pair of questions about my country and he suggested me to open a new Topic.

The questions were: "What the people are thinking? Do they love West? USA? NATO? What do they think now with the crisis?"

Please forgive my barbaric english.

so... in Italy we have lot of opinions about this topic, because Italy was:
- An important fascist country, so we have lot of men and women from the traditional right wing (PDL of Berlusconi, fascists parties like Casapound and Forza nuova ecc..) and nowadays the 15% of the italians vote for those parties.

-and an important left wing nation. Italy was the wastern country with the biggest Communist Party (with a pool of 40-50% during the cold war), and also during ww2 lot of fighters ("partigliani2) joined a communist guerrilla.
The left wing tradition died after the cold war, and was transferred in a pro-USA and pro-EU party called PD. Lot of italian communists rejected their idea after the fall of the soviet union (also couse of the propaganda of the media) and became supporters of PD, and of the NATO. Most of them just can't see an alternative to the neoliberal policy.

The scenary has been very sad for many years, because almost every party was a puppet of the United States.
Anyway 2 year ago there was an huge change, and nowadays many Italians have refused NATO and Europe and they vote for a new party, the "Movimento 5 Stelle".
This party is against the "financial Europe" and seeks to change Italy, which was destroyed by the European policy.
It is the only italian party that criticizes the United States and the NATO wars and I'm quite a supporter of this movement .
However Movimento 5 Stelle is young and it’s having some problems with the Media controlled by the other parties, which defame the movement.
The Movimento 5 Stelle controls the 19-30% of the electorate.
Even if the MPs of the M5S are doing a great job ( they all are young guys), the traditional left and right wings have joined to face the new honest threat, and Matteo Renzi ( a criminal in my opinion) from PD is the new PM.
therefore our government is pro-EU and pro-NATO,but many people will no longer tolerate the crisis and the unsuitability of the current government, and I hope for a change bigger than the Movimento 5 Stelle.

If a referendum have been organized next week what percentages you would expect to get for:
-leaving Euro or not
-leaving EU or not
-leaving NATO or not

Hannibal Barca wrote:If a referendum have been organized next week what percentages you would expect to get for:
-leaving Euro or not
-leaving EU or not
-leaving NATO or not

That's an interesting question. I think that lot of people in the sud would support these initiatives, but overall:

Leaving euro: 30%
Leaving Eu:25/30%

to leave NATO is a different situation. I think that many students will agree with this referendum, but, as i said,in Italy lot of people who criticize the United States do not see an alternative to NATO, because of the brainwashing done by the media.
I think the outcome will be 25/40 %.
But remember that if you asked the same thing 3 years ago the result of the referendum would have been:
10%
10%
20%
or something like that

Thank you. The similarities with Greece are striking and I agree with your percentages about Italy.
Greece's percentages might be slightly higher but I guess also 3 no
The alternative thing is a major issue here as well.
There are some differences though. For example in Greece there is a percentage of about 10-15% who very clearly and soberly want to break away from West something that in Italy is simply not there.

Yes it's a pity that the majority of the population doesn't understand what is really happening in our countries and in the world in general.
The power of the media under this point of view it's determinant. But with all the media belonging to the "enemy" our struggle isn't lost, it's just slowed.
In italy we are having some symptoms of awareness and every day I find some new group or association that is against NATO.
The only big problem is that a large part of the "new generation" is stunned by the Media and they have not the sensibleness of what is happening. They don't care of politics and it's an hard to wake up those persons, but sometimes we had extraordinary results.
A boy from my city, that 3 years ago was completely ignorante now it's the perfect anti-American
So maybe there is an hope for Italy