La Lega Cest Moi: the Legacy of Umberto Bossi in the Italian Second Republic.

Presented to ASMI annual conference 2004, THE ITALIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE, LONDON, 2627 NOVEMBER 2004 By: Daniele Albertazzi (University of Birmingham) and Duncan McDonnell (University of York). Contacts: Dr. Daniele Albertazzi The University of Birmingham Centre for European Languages and Cultures School of Humanities Muirhead Tower 4th floor Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom Tel. **44 (0)121 4147 503 d.albertazzi@bham.ac.uk

La Lega Cest Moi: the Legacy of Umberto Bossi in the Italian Second Republic.
In the League there is Bossi, then there is the League. There are no number twos, nor number threes, nor fours (Marco Formentini, former Mayor of Milan, in Cantieri and Ottaviani, 1992). - ... for as long as the instinct and skills of Bossi will be this good the Lega will manage to survive and will be crucial in the context of Italian politics. Interviewer: What you are saying is that the day Bossi steps back no-one knows what is going to happen... - I am sure there will be problems (Unpublished interview with Giancarlo Giorgetti, leader of the Lega Lombarda and close friend of Umberto Bossi, 25/6/04). Do not give up, because the love we feel for you is just as strong as our ideas (letter to La Padania, 13 March 2004, following Bossis recovery). Thank you for existing and thanks for what you have done, every single day, for all of us We are all with you. I love you (letter to La Padania, 3 June 2004, following the release of a message by Bossi to the party after months of uncertainty about his health).

A portrait of the populist as a Second republican Charisma is an increasingly required quality for leadership in democracies in the media age and this is particularly true of those democracies such as Italy whose party systems have been weakened (Mny and Surel, 2004: 145). As Gianfranco Pasquino and Donatella Campus say in their paper: the character factor, that is the emphasis on personal characteristics and political styles, has made its irruption into a political system that, from the post-war to the 1980s, had been entirely dominated by parties. As has been well documented, the crisis of the parties and political representation in Italy was brought to the boil by a mixture of the effects of globalisation; the end of the Cold War; the exigencies of the European integration process; the words and actions of those inside the political system such as Pannella, Segni, Cossiga and Orlando; the propagation (especially by the media) of the myth of a clean and energetic civil society juxtaposed with a tired and corrupt political class; the emergence of territory as a significant cleavage in the North and the exposure of widespread corruption of Tangentopoli. Into the vacuum opened up by this crisis have stepped a series of charismatic leaders offering salvation from the ills of the professional political classes and the corrupt elites of the First Republic. These saviours are portrayed as being of the people, but possessing extraordinary qualities and vision which enable them to find simple answers to the complex problems of Italian society. They break the linguistic codes of professional politics and work tirelessly for the people. Their relationship with the people is direct, unmediated by parties and they depend heavily on the media for the construction and reaffirmation of their image. They dislike the world of politics, but due to their unique talents, have been called by destiny to make the sacrifice of entering the political arena in a period of crisis. While, as Loris Zanatta rightly says, Umberto Bossi presents the most emblematic case of this new type of Italian populism, he is by no means its only proponent (Zanatta, 2001: 288). Indeed, if Bossi was (as he has so often claimed) decisive in determining the end of the First Republic through his unique style of personalised politics and charismatic leadership, that style has also helped shape the first decade of the Second Republic. From the new generation of Mayors like Riccardo Illy and Giorgio Guazzaloca to national politicians such as Leoluca Orlando, Silvio Berlusconi, Antonio Di Pietro and Romano Prodi, the figure of the charismatic saviour come to deliver his people from the crisis borne of stagnant and corrupt party politics has become a feature of Second Republic Italy.

In this paper, we will examine the political persona of Umberto Bossi as the highest embodiment of this type of leader in modern Italian politics and compare him with a number of his counterparts. The saviour of the people: an ordinary man with extraordinary qualities As Paul Taggart says, populism celebrates the ordinariness of its constituents and the extraordinariness of their leaders (Taggart, 2000: 102). The cornerstone of Bossis relationship to his people or heartland is that, while remaining one of them, his unique qualities mean that he is the only possible saviour of his people in what is characterised as a time of crisis, full of threats to their identity, prosperity and traditional way of life. As Weber says, whether or not the charismatic leader really possesses the qualities he claims is not so relevant, the important factor is that his followers are convinced that he is their uomo della provvidenza, their man of destiny (Weber, 1995a: 238). In the case of Bossi, therefore, the grassroots of the Lega accepts his decisions because in addition to looking and sounding like them, he also possesses extraordinary personal qualities and a fiuto politico which puts his actions beyond reproach. He represents an idealised form of us and we can see this self-identification with the leader for example in Roberto Biorcios research at the beginning of the 1990s, when Lega Lombarda supporters made statements such as when Bossi speaks, it is as if I were speaking and Bossi tells the politicians to their faces what we say amongst ourselves(Biorcio, 1991: 70). By saying what we say amongst ourselves of course, Bossi deliberately broke the linguistic codes of the Italian First Republic and used a type of language which put himself against the political class of Rome and with the people of the North. The self-image Bossi presents is thus of the Northern man on the street and his uncouth language, his dress sense, his taste in food, the fact that he takes his holidays in the North and not abroad or on yachts in the Mediterranean all contribute to reinforcing his image as ordinary man, albeit one who is also blessed with talents which mean that only he can save provincial Northern Italy from the evils of the state, immigration, the South and whoever else is the enemy of the day in Leghista discourse. Like all populists, Bossi has a black and white view of society. There are i piccoli and i grandi, the good and the bad, the piazza and the palazzo, the popolo and the oligarchie, the silent, virtuous oppressed majority of the North and the corrupt elites of Rome, high finance, the Mafia and the Vatican. Like David against Goliath, Bossi of course stands with the popolo. As says: io sento che dove c il popolo c il bene. Il male si annida nei palazzi del potere e nelle cupole mafiose (Bossi, 1992:187). Employing a discourse of what we might term Padani brava gente, Bossi uses a framework of interpretation in which a positively evaluated us honest, hard-working and simple-living Northern Italians attached to their local traditions are posited as prey to a series of threats represented by the powerful enemies of them. In this way, as Tambini says, the Lega provided a new source of self-respect for its followers. (Tambini, 2001: 105). Like an evangelist preacher, Bossi offered redemption from the sins of Italy by characterising his people as victims of the Italian state and proposing an alternative, positive identity in the new promised land of Padania. Again, like an evangelist preacher, he displayed a shrewd awareness of how to use the power of the media in promoting his movement and projecting an image of himself as the sole defender of oppressed Northerners. Bossi is not alone however amongst Second Republic politicians in presenting himself as the ordinary/extraordinary saviour of his people and, to varying degrees, leaders from outside the more traditional

parties have deployed this type of image. For facility of comparison with Bossi in this paper, and for reasons of time, we will focus on two of these: Berlusconi and Di Pietro. Berlusconi presents himself as the self-made millionaire; the ordinary Milanese man with the strong Lombard work ethic who paid his way through university and who, through his entrepreneurial skills, constructed a vast empire. He is still however the presidente operaio, the simpatico who tries to bring humour to boring EU meetings, the ardent Milan fan, the admirer of women, the devoted family man. He is not just one of the people, however, he is also how many of them would like to be. He is the successful businessman who takes his holidays in luxurious villas in Sardinia, has a beautiful wife, dresses impeccably, dines in the finest restaurants and owns his favourite football team. Like Bossi, he also breaks the linguistic codes of politics with his numerous battute (quips) which often become gaffes and his demonization of those who oppose him. This image is complemented by the common sense and simplistic discourse he employs when addressing the public from his favourite platform: the television screen. Like Bossi, Berlusconi also presents a black and white messianic worldview. As he said during his first period in government: I consider myself at war with everything that represents evil for me (Travaglio, 1995:98). Again, like his fellow Lombard, he offers his supporters absolution for the ills of the First Republic through a framework of interpretation in which only the professional politicians were responsible for Tangentopoli. As he said: I think we need to distinguish between the politicians doing the corruption and the businessmen forced to suffer it in order to be able to work. (Travaglio, 1995:109) Berlusconi thus represents the Italia che lavora against the Italia che chiacchiera (Berlusconi, 2001: 176-177). Similarly, just as Bossi offers a promised land for his people in which they will return to a lost era of prosperity and harmony, so too Berlusconi harks back to a mythologized Italy of the boom years with his promises of a second Italian miracle in the Utopia of the Azienda Italia. Antonio Di Pietro is also a man of the people and offers another version of the self-made man. He is, as he often stresses, the peasant who from a poor rural Molise background went to work as an emigrant in Stuttgart, served in the police force for many years and through hard work and talent became the judge who brought down the corrupt elites of the First Republic. However, despite his success, he makes it clear that he has retained his common touch and is different from his stuffier legal and political colleagues. Like Bossi and Berlusconi, he too has relied heavily on television for the construction of this image and Di Pietros courtroom persona of the indignant, honest citizen fighting corruption was beamed into living rooms across the country in the early 1990s and struck a chord with millions of Italians. Di Pietro also appears to his supporters (and many more in Italy in the first half of the 1990s) as a man whom destiny has called to save the country in a moment of crisis. Both as a judge and then in politics, Di Pietro breaks the linguistic codes of the elite and presents himself as the idealised little man fighting the rich and powerful. Mario Chiesa for example is famously caught with his hands in the cookie jar/con le mani nella marmellata and Di Pietros rhetorical style is impassioned and simplistic. As Marco Tarchi says, Di Pietro uses a direct type of language, to the point and tough, full of dialect inflections and grammar errors which is very similar to Bossis populist style. (Tarchi, 2003:184) Di Pietro also presents a simplified view of Italian society as divided between the honest, the Italia dei valori whom he represents, and the dishonest of the rapacious and powerful financial and political elites. If this cup can be taken from me

While all three saviours may have different, although obviously to some extent overlapping, constituencies, they are all agreed on the need to save Italy from the professional politicians, or the UPPs as the first famous populist of the Italian Republic, Guglielmo Giannini, would have called them. Populist rarely enter the dirty world of politics because they want to, but because they have been called to do so by their people by dint of their unique qualities. When he entered politics in 1994, Berlusconi claimed that he and the other Forza Italia candidates were only lending themselves to politics and said that they would return to their former jobs once they had saved the country from disaster. (Tarchi, 2003:164). The world of politics is thus characterised as an unpleasant one for the saviour. It damages his health, ruins his family life and, most importantly, seeks to put barriers between him and the people and the achievement of their common goals. As Cacciari and Bettin observe, the message of leaders such as Bossi and Berlusconi to their people is one of basta con la politica (Cacciari and Bettin, 2001: 63). Theirs is the Utopia of a world where parliamentary politicians would simply not be necessary. As Taggart notes, it is a common claim of populists to be reluctant politicians because this is a way of embodying symbolically the populist ambivalence about politics in general while at the same time taking part in it. (Taggart, 2000: 61) While they would prefer to be doing something else, their love for the people, their heartland (Bossis Padania, Berlusconis Italia che lavora, Di Pietros Italia dei valori) and its (endangered) way of life combined with their extraordinary qualities morally obliges them to make the sacrifice of taking on the role of public saviour for which only they are qualified. When he enters politics, Berlusconi says he is being forced to drink the amaro calice/bitter cup of public service and is only doing do out of love for my fellow citizens as he really would rather continue looking after his business interests and spend more time with his children and grandchildren. This portrayal of personal sacrifice is common to Bossi, Berlusconi and Di Pietro. The lone hero foregoes his personal health and his family for the good of his people. Thus Berlusconi would say after two months in office in 1994: as you know my family is not with me in Rome and at nights, I go to sleep alone or else stay awake worrying about the situation we have inherited(Travaglio, 1995:104). Indeed, the lack of sleep seems to be an essential part of the man of destiny image. Like Mussolini, Stalin and Mrs. Thatcher, the Second Republic saviour spends little time at home or in bed. Berlusconi claims to only sleep three and a half hours per night (Travaglio, 1995:104). When he served as a Minister in the Ulivo government, Di Pietro also cultivated the image of the tireless, self-sacrificing worker and let it be known that he slept in a bed which he had put in the entrance to his office so that he could work longer hours. (Tarchi, 2003: 186) As Di Pietros wife would complain to journalists: my children cry when they see their father is on television and not at home (Ferrarella, 1997: 7). The purest example of a recent narrative which gravitates around the notion of sacrifice is that put forward by the Lega Nord following Bossis serious illness in March 2004. As Cavalli says, of key importance is the personal myth of the leader, consisting both of his legend (a reconstruction of his life in accordance with an heroic role) and the magnification of his or her superiority over other people, as a leader or even as a human being in general (1998: 163). In the pages of the partys newspaper La Padania the capo of the Lega thus fulfils three roles for his people, all of which are typical of the populist leader: firstly, he is the father of the party, i.e. the one who, being the founder of the movement, can interpret its real needs and guarantee that it will stay true to its mission; secondly, he is the hero, being the one who is endowed with almost superhuman powers, thanks to which he can lead Padania to victory; and finally, and crucially in this contest, he is the

sacrificial lamb, the one who in 2004 almost lost his life for the North, caught in a deadly battle with the old system. Obviously the three subject positions Bossi occupies in this context are not clearly delineated and definitions tend to overlap. We would like to present to you a few examples of definitions of the leader as they appeared in La Padania this year. Examples are taken from letters to the paper by readers of La Padania (with the exception of a couple by the director Moncalvo). La Padania, March/April 2004. FATHER AND TEACHER Our great leader and friend Umberto (13/3 p. 6) a great teacher (2/4 p. 1) the king of the north (3/6 p 2) in his absence the partys line will not deviate one millimetre from the line indicated by him (2/4 p.4) HERO-WARRIOR He will come back sooner than we expect (12/3 p3) cavallo di razza (12/03 p. 1 and 3); as such he cannot but run: it is his life (ibid p. 6) Our Padanian warrior (12/3 p.8) the sword of Alberto da Giussano (12/3 p.8) indestructible, stronger than any adversities Invincible like a Ferrari (2/6 p. 4) SACRIFICIAL LAMB Following an article by Leoni in La Padania on 12/3 (p.1) the director Moncalvo points out that many throughout the last few years had insisted with Bossi that he should have slowed down, he should have said no at times to the incessant requests to give speeches and take part in political rallies, that he should have saved his strength (12/3 p. 6). The secretary, on the contrary, sacrificed his own life and the life of his family for our freedom (12/3, p. 9). The leader is said to have taken it upon himself to free the north from the grip of thieving-Rome through an incessant, indispensable but ultimately self-destroying struggle for Padania that has led to the consumption of his very considerable strength and, ultimately, to his severe illness. The idea that Bossi is a victim is of course not in itself new, as Bossis thin, malnourished, weak, tired body has always signified the extent to which he suffers to keep up the struggle with the regime. According to this typically leghista reading of recent events, interestingly the leghisti themselves are to be blamed for Bossis recent misfortune, as he pays a dear price for loving his own people too much (the religious associations are rather obvious here, with a suffering Bossi who becomes almost like a saint). Even Bossis health problems have thus been read by the movement through the conceptual framework that Bossi himself traditionally deploys to interpret political events in the country. What happened to him is yet another episode of the all-out war between the north, of which Bossi is hero, dux and spokesperson, and the system, of which Bossi is the victim. The populist and his party

Given the constraints of time, we will limit ourselves now to very briefly comparing Bossis party with that that more than any other embodies the First Republic, i.e. the Democrazia Cristiana. The following table summarises some of the most obvious differences between the two:

Table 1. Comparison between Lega Nord and Democrazia Cristiana on selected issues Lega Nord Power base Organisation Restricted to the north Centralised Associations emanation of the party, e.g.s. SINPA, Guardia Naz Padana Dc Support in areas of both north and south Week, Polycentric Associations keep party afloat/ have huge influence within

Leader(s)

One

Many (diachronically and synchronically), although chosen among a oligarchy

Ideas, Values, Beliefs Message Partys media Language

Leader is/ embodies/expresses Different leaders refer all of them to/express different ones Homogeneous Heterogeneous control All for (and controlled by) the Different leaders leader different media Clear, direct, even offensive politichese Others within the party

Target audience of Voters mass mediated messages Financing Militants, state (legally)

Militants, state (legally and through state companies), kickbacks, Banks, Vatican, CIA. Coincides apparatus with state

Relationship with the Anti-state state

One issue which seems particularly important given the focus of this conference is that of the power of party leaders within these organisations. The Dc was never identified only and exclusively with one person (with the exception of the immediate post-war period), although there were of course moments in its history (but relatively short ones for that matter) when one personality dominated over the others. While leaders of the Dc and Presidenti del Consiglio expressed by the Dc were, in effect, interchangeable, naturally Bossi is the Lega and, as the leghisti themselves are very aware and say loudly, if Bossi disappears the Lega is likely to disappear, too. Not only it is not conceivable for anyone to challenge Bossis position as secretary of the Lega; in addition, it would also be impossible to imagine a Bossi that leaves his post as Ministro delle Riforme to, say, Maroni due to a shift in power-relations within the party. If Bossi leaves, he leaves in order to send a message to the governing majority. What for the Dc would have been routine (i.e. someone serving as leader for a certain period to then take on a lesser role), for the Lega is simply an impossibility. The same of course can be said of Berlusconi. To say it in his own words: The recovery of Italy is called Forza Italia. Well, lets push it even further, its called Silvio Berlusconi 23/11/94, (p.98). Berlusconi perceives himself as saviour of the country and as unchallenged

leader of both FI and the centre-right coalition (as Pasquino and Campus remind us in their paper to the conference). As for the Lega, Bossis total control of the party is accepted within it because, despite several leghisti having in fact become now professional politicians, and despite some of them (i.e. Maroni) having tasted the pleasures of Rome-based political power more than once, no-one within the movement can command a tiny fraction of that respect, love and admiration that the base shows for the capo. As Tarchi (2003) demonstrates, the fact that the leader is not in fact interchangeable but rather embodies, expresses and makes visible in his own persona, through his own appearance, style and language all the fundamental values and virtues that the party is ready to fight for, is an absolutely essential aspect of the populists way of conceiving politics. Revolving door governments, Revolving door leaderships, reshuffles of any sort, in the eyes of the populist, simply demonstrate how totally and fundamentally void of values the old way of doing politics really is. Loyalty to a leader who is always and constantly involved in an unequal, deadly struggle and is giving everything to the cause is thus an essential demonstration that the militant, the party official or the regional leader have in fact given up on corrupt and fundamentally unethical hopes of personal advancement and have learned to put the party first. The consequences of this are illustrated in our table: the Lega is a party which gravitates around its leader, where the media are all controlled by the leader and where the message is one (that of the leader). Bossis power within the movement is of course strengthened by the partys organisation, as many have pointed out (e.g. Tambini, 2001). It is true that following the first congress of the Lega Nord in 1991, new members would have to wait a year before being elected to local office, and two years before election to the provincial council (ibid., 92). These decisions, as Tambini points out, and the three year delay before being able to rise to the consiglio nazionale, and four years to get federal responsibilities, would ensure that there was great continuity in the leadership and control and surveillance of rising stars (ibid.). As if this wasnt enough, it is also true that regional leaders enjoy very little independence from the centre (none, in fact). If in the old Dc Andreotti, Cirino Pomicino, De Mita could flex their political muscles vis a vis Piazza del Gesu due to their dote of hundreds of thousands of votes brought to the party and due to their good connections in certain areas of the country and among people who counted, Gobbo may be the secretary of the Liga Veneta, however, as the experience of his predecessor clearly illustrates, his political future depends entirely on the national leadership. Gobbo (and all the other regional leaders) can in fact be temporarily suspended at any time by the secretary and, incidentally, Bossi has a great fear of the Veneto. It is useful for votes, but its representatives must be prevented from gaining too much power or visibility. But whats more, it is our conviction that what little formal division of powers still exists within the Lega (for instance, the secretary is formally chosen by the federal congress) is in reality, in practice, completely overridden by the informal use of central powers. The source of Bossis influence is, therefore, not the formal division of power within the party, but rather the very remarkable intensity of the personal, intimate relationship between Bossi and his followers, including those who have acquired a position of some authority within the Lega. It is truly and simply a matter of love. Conclusions The fertile terrain provided by Italian politics for populism over the last two decades has attracted the attention of many scholars and led to the description of Italy as a populist paradise (Zanatta, 2001). Unlike his populist counterparts in France and Austria, Bossi has benefited from the fact that, over the last ten years, he has been courted by both centre-left and centre-right, thus gaining full legitimisation. For example, in

February 2000, when Berlusconi and Bossi re-established their alliance, Berlusconi said of the Lega leader: its time to re-evaluate Bossi. He is a political animal, a courageous, tenacious and coherent man. Its not just me who thinks so, DAlema said the exact same things on the 14th of February 1999 (Rossi and Spina, 2004: 132). In many ways, Bossi may be considered the forerunner of many new politicians of both the left and the right in the Second Republic, due to a variety of reasons, some of which can be briefly summarised as follows: a) the total control that he exercises over his own party, of which he is father, teacher and hero and to which he does not, simply, provide leadership, but for which he is even willing to shed his blood; b) his ability to maintain a strong relationship with the base without having to rely on the mediation of the party apparatus; c) a style of communication that is direct, simplistic, even offensive and constantly puts forward an oversimplified version of reality; d) a constant effort to portray himself as the epitome of the anti-politico. When one considers that Bossi is the longest serving major party leader in Italy and someone who has been leading his movement since 1979, it is surely the latter claim the one that is becoming increasingly more and more difficult to accept.

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