ITALY ON A KNIFE-EDGE AFTER RACE HATE BOILS OVER

It would be nice to have elections where the main issues were, say, things like farm subsidies, dog hygiene, maternity leave, bicycle paths, whether museums should be free or not, and which days to have national holidays on. But forget it. Those days are gone. Practically all Western countries live under the curse of mass immigration and the moral tyranny of taking in the world's refugees. This means that from now on all elections will be increasingly -- and maybe even exclusively -- about race and nothing else.

Italy is the latest country to discover this unpleasant truth, with an election due on March 4th, in which other issues have been swept aside by race, following years of disastrous immigration and refugee policies, and some brutal recent events in the town of Macerata. As reported by the BBC: 

"Italian police have arrested a gunman suspected of carrying out a drive-by shooting spree that targeted African immigrants.

At least six people were wounded in the central town of Macerata.

The suspect, named locally as Luca Traini, 28, had an Italian flag wrapped around his neck when he was detained.

He had taken part in regional elections for the anti-immigration Northern League last year and reportedly made a fascist salute when he was captured."

The attack, which targeted random African migrants, is thought to be in retaliation for the rape and murder of a beautiful 18-year-old Italian girl by a Nigerian migrant. Her body was found dismembered and hidden in two suitcases.

Pamela Mastropietro: one young lady who won't be holding up a "Refugees Welcome" sign.

Predictably both the Left and the Right in this election are trying to benefit from these events, with the Left "morally signalling" and saying nationalist, anti-immigrant, and even conservative rhetoric had spread "hate." Meanwhile the Right is pointing to the unstable situation that Italy's open-door refugee policy has produced. Until quite recently, NGOs and the Italian navy were practically running a ferry service from the refugee camps in Libya to Italy's shores. 

A large section of the public want to have the best of both worlds by looking for a way to get rid of the African migrants but one that allows them to feel they are not being too "racist." 

This "cake-and-eat-it" sentiment seems to be what is behind the remarkable rise of the Five Star Movement, which is currently leading the polls with around 27% of the intended vote, compared to the Leftist Partito Democratico (23%) and right-wing Forza Italia (17%) and Lega Nord (14%). 

Five Star is a weird amalgam of anti-system Populism, Euroscepticism, environmentalism, and support for E-democracy. As such, it is outside the usual right-wing channels of anti-immigrant feeling. But the party's leaders have been careful to take positions that play well to the "worried middle" of Italian voters, i.e. those concerned about immigration but also wary of being seen as "racist."

Beppe Grillo

For example, the party's leader Beppe Grillo wrote that all undocumented immigrants should be expelled from Italy, the Schengen Agreement on open borders in the EU should be suspended in the event of a terrorist attack, and the Dublin Regulation, which returns asylum seekers to the EU member state through which they first entered the EU, should be repealed. As Italy is on the front line of migrant entry, this regulation ensures that it gets a much bigger share of asylum claims than its neighbours to the North. 

Grillo and other leading members of Five Star have also criticised traffickers and NGOs bringing migrants across the Mediterranean to Italy. 

These relatively strong anti-migrant positions are presented within a context of fake sympathy for the migrants and a willingness to trust "direct democracy" with its NIMBYist tendencies. This means Five Star is the perfect mix for voters who want to stop the migrant madness but are still cucked by the R-Word.