Italian Elections: Destroying Democracy to Protect the Globalist Elite
Recent events in Italy show that the country is getting the same type of treatment meted out to other countries whose election results do not agree with the neoliberal globalist elite and so must be stymied. The attitude shown by this transnational elite towards the winning forces in Italy is the same as that normally reserved for recalcitrant countries like Russia, Venezuela, China and Lebanon following their own elections or constitutional reforms.
European populations are increasingly failing to abide by the electoral wishes of the international oligarchs, with votes being directed to populist parties and the most anti-systemic candidates available. The most credible candidates for the people seem to be those who openly oppose the economic measures (neoliberalism) adopted over the last 20 to 25 years by the financial elite. These measures were specifically adopted to enrich the wealthy and enslave the rest of us through debt. Unsurprisingly, people are voting in candidates who are fighting for greater monetary and military sovereignty.
Without wishing to express a political judgment (often it would be negative), we need to note that events like Brexit, Trump's victory, the partial success of Le Pen, the exploits of the nationalist fronts in Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Germany and, most recently, the victories of Lega and the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle, M5S) in Italy are symptomatic of how the European population feels about 25 years of a reduction in national sovereignty and the worsening of individual economic conditions.
The globalist front, centered around financial speculation and the expropriation of national assets, has built up over the course of three decades its political network consisting of NGOs, think-tanks, journalists, experts, senators and parliamentarians scattered across the United States and Europe. Large financial, economic and business interests have fostered a firm and lasting bond between large industrial groups (medical, agricultural, military, intelligence, IT, industry) and national politicians, often bribed to adopt legislation unfavorable to the country and its people. The type of public donations known as political lobbying in the US is prohibited in Europe, and so should simply be seen as corruption. Politicians elected by the people have often catered to the interests of their donors or financial backers, in spite of laws against this, and have advanced the type of austerity that is contrary to the interests of their constituents. The result has been politicians’ betrayal of their electoral mandates in favor of international finance or powerful lobbies in Washington or Brussels.
Naturally, banks, central banks, large industrial groups and speculators work closely with national governments, and have every interest in pursuing their interests to the detriment of the common citizen. This entails such things as bombing foreign countries for oil, preventing Eurasian integration (from Lisbon to Vladivostok), or beating an independent nation into submission with economic coercion (financial terrorism). Allies and enemies alike suffer the same treatment, being required to share their cake with international elites or face the consequences, which can be as severe as that experienced by Gaddafi in Libya.
In Italy, the Democratic Party (Partito Democratico, PD) and Forza Italia are the elite parties. They have never had to sell out as such, given that their purpose from their very inception had been to serve the interests of the globalist elite. The PD reflects the worldview of the Clinton faction of the American ruling elite, with its preference for humanitarian interventions, as seen in the Arab Spring, and a general inclination towards soft power over the type of hard power that was visited on Iraq in 2003. Having said that, the Democratic Party of the Left (Partito Democratico della Sinistra, PDS), the political father of the current PD, was as the forefront of supporting the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999.
Forza Italia leans towards America’s neoconservatism (Berlusconi is a great friend of Bush, and Italy invaded Iraq in 2003 alongside the US while Berlusconi was prime minister), and while maintaining good relations with Putin, Berlusconi has always viewed the Atlantic as his political lodestar (quite literally, as he was affiliated with the P2 Masonic lodge linked to Gladio).
M5S and Lega are cut from a different cloth. While Lega originates from Lega Nord, a regional party, M5S stems from the popular refusal to cede further popular sovereignty to Brussels and Washington. In recent months, M5S and Lega have repeatedly stated that the sanctions against Russia are wrong, that the war in Libya was an error of the past not to be repeated again in Syria, and pointed out how these wars served to spur uncontrolled immigration into Europe. M5S and Lega have countered over the last few months the narrative advanced by the media and the elite close to PD-Forza Italia and the European technocracy, explaining to citizens that an alternative is possible and that sovereignty belongs to the people, who are able to reclaim it through the vote.
In the March elections, Italian citizens gave the two parties an overwhelming mandate to implement their electoral promises. What happened next represents what is now becoming a regular routine, whereby popular sovereignty is quashed, especially in Europe. The president, Sergio Mattarella, challenged the appointment of Paolo Savona as economy minister, a person who has expressed mildly anti-euro positions and promises to fight for Italians in Europe. Mattarella did everything possible to protect the interests of the unelected technocracy in Brussels, effectively neutralizing the danger posed by a M5S-Lega government. Mattarella also protected NATO interests, since the new government was strongly opposed to sanctions against Russia (and possibly against Iran as well), and also opposed to new wars, and, above all, to a socio-economic policy based on austerity that particularly hit hard weaker countries in the EU like Italy.
This sabotage undertaken by the European bureaucracy, in league with Berlin, Brussels and Washington, will have the opposite effect and backfire, recounting the results of the West’s foolish efforts to subvert the popular will as seen in places like Syria.
Mattarella has dutifully appointed a favorite of the financial markets, rating agencies, and the central banks of the EU, Italy and Germany. Carlo Cottarelli, ex-IMF director, famously authored the spending review (advocating for all those cuts that have brought the Italian economy to its knees, antagonizing the population to the point of voting two strongly anti-European parties) and is the ideal figure to approve budgetary laws completely running against the interests of Italians. Cottarelli will not even gain confirmation in the senate and the chamber, even though he will still remain in office until the next government is set up. It is a clever way for the elites to neutralize the populist government; for now.
The elites do not seem to realize that in acting this way, M5S and Lega will have all the ammunition they need to attack the new executive over the coming months as it enacts impositions from Brussels and Berlin in direct contravention of the will of the people. Cottarelli, Mattarella, the PD and anyone else supporting the executive will find themselves struggling to survive in the next snap elections for the parliament that could be held as early as this July or October. In the months between now and the upcoming election, M5S and Lega will pound on the fact that Mattarella wanted to support international elites rather than the national interest as expressed by the people through the polls. They will insist that the popular will has been sabotaged by technocrats, big banks, lobbies and powerful groups. In light of recent events, with Cottarelli appointed by Mattarella a few minutes after Giuseppe Conte’s decision to stand down, what else can they be expected to say?
The ramifications will boil into a popular rage fomented by the two leaders, who will be able to blame the new Cottarelli government for any decisions that worsen the conditions in the country. They will blame Mattarella and the EU for preventing them from implementing the measures that would have served to protect the Italian people and reform the European economic prison.
In September, when the Italians will be called on to vote, what will count is the political propaganda that Italians will have been subjected to over the summer months, with threats coming from the financial elite under the form of increases to the financial spread between the Italian BTP and the German Bund and speculation on the stock market. No one should be surprised if Lega and M5S collect more than two-thirds of the total votes as an expression of popular feeling. In this way, the new government will be able to change the constitution and implement the necessary profound changes that, absent Mattarella’s intervention, would have otherwise been unfeasible.
The international elite linked to speculative finance and the NATO military bloc is struggling to accept a change that has been ongoing for years, namely; a change that signifies a transition from a unipolar world order to a multipolar one. This elite has repeatedly used economic and military measures like financial terrorism, coups d’etat, and wars (thanks to the supremacy of the dollar) to subdue foreign countries. This mindset of American exceptionalism, enshrined and promulgated as the neoliberal world order in the early 1990s, has also reduced international institutions into mere executors of the unipolar will. The insistence on a unipolar model actually accelerates a transition to a multipolar one, whereby Washington, London and Brussels represent only a portion, sometimes a small one, of global politics.
The unipolarists visit their opprobrium on countries refusing to bow to their will, scorning Putin’s re-election, Hezbollah’s gathering of support in Lebanon, Xi Jinping’s mandate being prolonged by the party; and now even the victory of two unapproved Italian parties unwilling to align themselves with European diktat.
In three months’ time, the practical consequences of Mattarella’s nefariousness will be made evident, with Lega and M5S now made able decide the fate of the country and probably of the entire eurozone, with a wave goodbye to Mattarella and international finance led by Brussels and Berlin hoping to stymie the consequences of thirty years of degrading laws and budget cuts.
posted by Satish Sharma at
17:28
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