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Corruption in Italy: Church, politics and universities (3)Domenico Pacitti talks to Indro Montanelli PART 3 Pacitti: How did you first get started in journalism? Montanelli: I started off with voluntary university magazines. But I first began professionally when I was a student in Paris. I attended courses at the Sorbonne as a journalist for a paper which at the time boasted over two million daily copies. It was the Paris Soir. That’s where I began to learn the rudiments of the trade, the reporter’s job. Pacitti: Was writing French ever a problem for you? Montanelli: I was able to write French as easily as Italian. As a recognition of merit the Paris Soir sent me on a trip to America. And there, thanks to a United Press correspondent for Paris who had seen my work and had perhaps understood that I had the qualities to be a journalist, I was given a job despite the fact that I didn’t know any English. I could read it but I couldn’t speak it. I did three months’ apprenticeship at United Press. It was this great press agency that taught me the job, which is to say they taught me how to write up the news. Pacitti: You attended the University of Florence. How much did you get out of your studies? Montanelli: I have two university degrees – one in law and the other in political sciences, both from Florence. They have never been of the slightest use to me. Pacitti: Italian higher education minister Luigi Berlinguer has said he intends to carry out extensive reforms to the Italian university system. Do you think he will be capable of doing this? Montanelli: Berlinguer is a fine person and an honest man who is well-intentioned. But he lacks the raw materials to carry out reforms. He lacks the men. And when you lack the men how can you change a whole education system? To whom do you entrust your good intentions? The Italian education system is a disaster, a complete disaster. Pacitti: How do you feel about restricted student entry to universities? Montanelli: I think it’s definitely needed. Why not? It would be better. Pacitti: So that might be a step in the right direction? Montanelli: Well it might be a step in the right direction in the same way as a reform of the social state would be a step in the right direction. I don’t know. But what Italian government has the strength to tackle such a problem? No government. Pacitti: On the question of governments, Italy has since the last war been running at a rate of over one a year. How would you explain this to our readers? Montanelli: Look. In Italy we believed – not me personally but this new political class that followed the universal flood of Bribesville – that in order to simplify political life, in order to reduce it as in Britain it would be best to have just two parties. One was the majority governing party and the other the minority opposition that would have to wait its turn. They thought that a single new law, the majority law, would suffice for this purpose. Well we did it, we introduced the new law and on paper Italy is divided not into two simple parties – that would have been too much to ask – but into two blocks of parties: the centre-right and the centre-left. Now within both the centre-right and centre-left the old parties have been reborn. Rather, they have multiplied. We now have forty-two. And what do you do in a stable majority that has forty-two wandering parties that ally themselves with one party one minute and with another the next? Pacitti: Well, why does this happen? Montanelli: It happens because, again to put it in Freudian terms, the great dream of Italians is that they want to be governed and so they lie involuntarily. Italians don’t want to be governed in order that everyone can do what they like. Pacitti:
And has it always been so? Montanelli: It has always been so. Pacitti: It might not be unreasonable to think that mindful of the Mussolini experience people are afraid to entrust too much power to one person or one party. Would you agree with that? Montanelli: Certainly. Pacitti: Can you explain how this developed? Montanelli: The 1947 Constitution was drawn up as a mark of hatred for a dead man. It was a constitution that was in polemic with fascism, which was dead. Fascism had given rise to an absolute prevalence of executive power over legislative power. It was the government that commanded because Mussolini was in control and parliament counted for nothing. In order to reverse what Mussolini had done with fascism, they did the opposite. That is, they gave all the power to parliament and stripped the government of all its power. And that’s how what was born was born. Well, you can’t draw up a constitution in polemic with a dead man. It’s sheer madness. But if you said those things at the time – and I said them – you were considered a fascist. They said we wanted to perpetuate the fascist system. So what was to be done? To reduce and simplify Italian political life is the silly prejudice of poor dreamers who have no contact with reality. The Italian reality does not allow this. It simply does not allow this. If you create two blocks, the same parties you wanted to abolish are reborn within them. And here they have been reborn exactly as they were before. So what are we changing in Italy? In order to change Italy you would have to change Italians. And who can do this? Where are the powers? Pacitti: Well how about Europe? Could the European Union mark the first step in such a change? Montanelli: Look. Write this. We do not have the legal credentials to get into Europe. We do not have them because our economic figures don’t add up. There’s no use trying. We just don’t have the credentials. But Europe should remember one thing: if they don’t give us an admission ticket, Italy will fall apart completely and decompose. It will decompose because there is a centre-north in Italy that has the right credentials to get into Europe but that at the same time doesn’t have the credentials because it has to drag the weight of the south behind it. And so since the people in the centre-north have the credentials and they want into Europe, they will simply dissociate themselves from the south of Italy. Pacitti: So in this sense you’re a Europeanist? Montanelli: I’m a Europeanist rather malgré moi. I perfectly understand the British reluctance to enter Europe. I think they are right. The Europe of Maastricht? What can I say? Not even Germany and France have the credentials to enter Europe. The British are quite right. The British are in principle, by instinct and by tradition against any form of European union. What has always been their history has brought them to this. Every time someone sprang up in Europe with the ambition of uniting it in some way, whether it was Napoleon or Hitler, the British were always against it. Here in Italy we don’t see things from this point of view because we don’t have the same traditions as Britain. But what we do have is that for many Italians Europe is the German gendarme who, together with the French or Dutch administrator, comes along in order to put some order into our country because we no longer believe in ourselves. We know only too well that we could never excogitate a regime to bring us up to scratch, to impose the sacrifice that has to be made. What Italian government will ever succeed in dismantling this parody of a welfare state that Italy has? No government. Here if you try to touch pensions, all hell is let loose. So, you see, Italians hope that the German gendarme will come along. That’s what it’s all about. But as Europe already has so very many problems, I don’t think it has any desire to add yet another, namely the dissolution of the Italian nation. I mean, I think Europe will not come about in Yugoslav fashion but in Czechoslovak fashion. That is to say, on the basis of an agreed divorce. There are no Italians disposed either to kill or to die at the hands of other Italians or at the hands of anyone. Pacitti: This could also be seen to be a form of positive value. Montanelli:
I suppose so, but it’s nevertheless a value that renders us rather imbecile,
but there it is. Pacitti: How would you summarise the essential defects of Italians? Montanelli: Lack of character, willingness to descend to any compromise, shamefully conformist, lack of social and moral conscience, not a ruling race. Pacitti: And the merits? Montanelli: A great capacity to cope with trouble when it strikes, immense ability to get by, a certain basic politeness, a sort of creative intelligence – the ability to make armoured tanks out of sardine cans. Pacitti: And how would you summarise Italian politics? Montanelli: We have a political madhouse that nobody can understand. There is the constant fundamental desire to paralyse executive power. The Italian I like is the anti-Italian – the only acceptable Italian. I would describe myself as an anti-Italian. Pacitti: Yes, but you have to be Italian in order to be a self-respecting anti-Italian. Montanelli: Yes, that’s true. Pacitti: My own dual Italian and British nationality should qualify me all right on that one. As you know, this interview is being commissioned by the Times Higher Education Supplement and Guardian, though I’m not sure how much space they’ll find for it. Since higher education is the focus, can I press you one last time on how Italy can solve its university problem? Montanelli: By eliminating 300 years of history. Pacitti: That’s assuming of course that Italians know their history, which they don’t. Montanelli:
Precisely. As Ugo Ojetti once put it: “We live in a country of contemporaries
who have neither ancestors nor descendants, because they have no memory. When we
die, everything dies with us.” Pacitti: Perhaps we had better stop here. Thank you so much for your help and also for your patience. Montanelli: Not at all. I have freely said what I think throughout. Go ahead and make the best use of it you see fit. END OF PART 3
Note: Part 3 of this interview, originally in Italian, was first published by JUST Response on 23 July 2003. A few quotations from this interview that were slightly adapted with Indro Montanelli's consent appeared in the following articles by Domenico Pacitti: Clan mentality rules in Italian universities (The Times Higher: 9 Jan 1998) and Renaissance man steps in (The Guardian: 3 Feb 1998).
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