No sooner had Silvio Berlusconi made his claim on Sunday that there was a plot to install “a non-elected person” in his place than the bars, corridors and newsrooms of Rome were buzzing with names.
Did the Prime Minister mean a technical “caretaker” government headed by Mario Draghi, the Governor of the Bank of Italy? Did he mean an emergency government of national unity? The cast was duly assembled — the plot involved Massimo D’Alema, the former Prime Minister; Giulio Tremonti, the Economy Minister; Gianfranco Fini, the co-leader of the ruling People of Liberty party; and Pierferdinando Casini, the leader of the Christian Democrats.
Never mind that there was not a single hard fact: no e-mail, not even an overheard whisper. “There is no plot,” Mr D’Alema said — promptly feeding the frenzy by warning of “shocks” to come in which the opposition would have to “assume its responsibilities”.
The name for this phenomenon is dietrologia — “the desire to find at all costs a hidden explanation for everything”, according to one dictionary. Italians admit to a love of conspiracy theories, which derives in part from Italy’s history of intrigue, from the Romans to the Borgias, to the Mafia.But just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you. Italians remember only too well the real plots to destablise the country in the 1970s and 1980s, when left-wing terrorism combined with extreme-right plots in what became known as a “strategy of tension”, with murders and bombings by both sides. They remember, too, that within the past 20 years Italy has had to fall back twice on “technical” governments in times of emergency — both involving the Bank of Italy as the one institution the country could rely on.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6506542.ece
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