There is a nationwide fear of the amount of people that have been coming from African countries into Italy. This fear is caused by Italian media misrepresentations of different countries and ethnicities. The same thing happened in the 1900s when Albanian people came to Italy to look for refuge. There were 700 thousand Albanians in just around fifteen years, and now 600 thousand of them are legal and are completely naturalized to Italian ways of life. These people were hated at the beginning, and there was even an incident in which 100 of them were killed because a boat wasn’t allowed to stop on the shoreline. If the same thing happened just a few decades ago with different people who are now considered completely Italian citizens or residents, then shouldn’t Italian people have learned how bad hate toward immigration can be and what it can cause to the country and the people arriving?
The problem is that media tends to turn the situation against the immigrants for political reasons, but once we look into more liberal sites and pages, we can see that there are people trying to tell better stories too.
The Lega, an historically leftist Italian political party, has shifted to the right. Now its positions are much tighter on immigration. One of the policies that party proposes is to not grant citizenship to those born and schooled in Italy with foreign parents. Its advocates also demand strict limitations on granting Italian rights to immigrants from other countries. Unfortunately, the Lega’s support has grown more and more since the number of immigrants from African countries in Italy has been growing at a very high rate, and this has led to increased xenophobia throughout the country.
Since politics and media in Italy are intertwined, especially television, we can see how much every party’s ideals are shown in the channels they own. Political advertisements are also very common in Italian television. The Lega even used immigrants of color in one of their spots in which they made them say how much Italy was bad for them and that what they were looking for was nowhere to be found in that nation. All of the people in those ads had their stories obviously scripted, and everything sounded very mechanical. Another example is of the political party called Forza Italia, that leans more toward the center-right of the spectrum, that released an ad all about patriotism, and how the best people are those who defend Italy from all that is coming from outside. In the first 10 seconds of the clip, one can hear the candidate, Giorgia Meloni, saying how Italians should protect Italy from the incessant immigration that is supposedly causing it to lose its traditions.
Italy is full of different traditions though. A very similar oppression happened too between Italians in the early 2000s, when almost 600 thousand people from the south moved up to the north to find opportunities and better lives for themselves and their families (Caporale). They were called “terroni,” by the northerns, a very hurtful term that could be compared to the n- word for people of African descent. Those same people that weren’t treated as Italians and hated by the north are now voting for the Lega, to stop immigration from African countries. Now northerners are calling them hypocrites, as we can see in a viral video in which a man from the north tells the story of how people from the south hoped for the same things that immigrants from Africa are dreaming of, and yet they are hating on them and hoping for their removal. It is a very powerful video, because it shows how much all immigrants are the same and should be treated as people wherever they end up going.
It was much easier to find pro-immigration videos posted on the internet than ones shown on television, since Italian television is so thoroughly controlled by the government. A very moving video was made by people of Naples when the case of the Sea Watch was happening, where 47 people were held at sea because the Italian government wasn’t allowing them to get to the shoreline. The people in the video read letters sent from thousands of residents of Naples where they offered their help even though they could barely afford their own living. Another video that criticizes the right wing political parties is a video that attacks the idea that people should be helped in their own country. Through sarcasm they pretend to make a commercial for a charity that helps African kids in their own homes, saying that if we pay to help them in their own country, we won’t have to worry about them stealing our jobs. At one point one of the speakers gets upset and tells one of the producers that Italians aren’t like they used to be and they have very high moral values that don’t allow this kind of hatred, but then he gets convinced really quickly, probably by the money. This is a parody of the many commercials that ask Italians to help kids in Africa, that criticizes this point of view, and how much money and corruption has a part in what is being shown.
There are different views in the media on the issue of racism, but Italian television really only shows one, since the right’s view is the most popular right now in the nation. Political parties have a lot of pull on television station’s and because of that only one point of view is shown. On the other hand, the Internet has a lot more diversity, and we can find videos that are against hatred toward immigrants. People from African countries are coming to Italy with the hope of a better future, just like Italians move to other countries for the same reason, so they should not condemn African immigrants for dreams we all have.
The following links offer demographic, statistical, and historical support for the brief discussion offered here:
- https://www.ilgrandecolibri.com/immigrazione-invasione-albanesi/
- https://www.thelocal.it/20180118/political-cheat-sheet-understanding-italys-northern-league
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIQLVq84GQc
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUZcMaVH-gQ
- https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2018/09/17/gli-emigrati-dal-sud-sono-piu-degli-immigrati-che-arrivano/4630120/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK1lOwG8y9Y
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CH3gZgjNmx0
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlQP9dwN-zc
Beatrice Folchi
Beatrice Folchi is a junior at the University of Connecticut studying philosophy and communication. Her studies focus on analyzing the media, especially films, through a philosophical lens.
