To follow up some points from this bit of ‘kipperology, the Grauniad recently interviewed Alan Sked. Of course he does his shtick about how there were no nutters or extremists in the gang when he was around, no sir. He also makes some reasonable points about UKIP being a sorry mess and there being a sound Keynesian critique of the EU.
But then he comes out with this turd:
Between 1980 and 1990, he was convenor of European studies at the LSE and chaired its European Research Seminar. “I would meet all these European politicians and bureaucrats who came over, and the cumulative effect was that I realised it was time to get out. We had an Italian senator and MEP once. I said, ‘How many mafiosi do you have in the European parliament?’ He said, ‘Oh, we only have about 12.’ I spent 10 years meeting these loonies.”
What gets me is that apparently that was all the LSE’s head of European Studies could think of to ask an Italian, and in the 1980s to boot, when for a while at least it looked like they could teach us a thing or three about how to run an economy. Hur hur. Mafia. Spaghetti. Roberto Baggio’s hair. Hur hur. I mean, what did the Senator make of Sked?
Such Farage. Much Godfrey. So UKIP.
Paul Ginsborg, in his ‘Italy and its discontents: 1980-2001’ argues that Mafia penetration of the Italian state, and the fight against it by certain civil servants, was one of the most important factors in the transformation of Italy in this period. (The others, he says, were Italy’s interaction with Europe, the collapse of Soviet Communism, and the endemic corruption in the Northern and Central regions revealed by the Tangentopoli investigations.)
Ginsborg argues that the Mafia were, indeed, so central to Italian politics that events in three cities drove the transformation of the Italian state in the 1990s: Rome (where the national politicians met), Milan (centre of the Tangentopoli investigation) and Palermo (centre of the Mafia, and also of the anti-Mafia investigating magistrates, of whom the most famous were Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino). The Mafia’s 1992 murders of first Falcone and then Borsellino- says Ginsborg- were among the most important events of the entire period and forced major change upon the Italian state. He also argues that the Andreotti faction of the Christian Democrats, the most powerful CD faction throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, and the most powerful faction in the whole of Italian politics bar possibly Craxi’s Socialists, was inextricably linked to the Mafia.
Ginsborg is, of course, the leading English-language scholar of the history of postwar Italy, and in fact seems to be regarded by Italian scholars as one of the leading scholars in the field tout court. And he also thinks, like the apparently ridiculous Sked, that the Mafia were very, very important to understanding the Italian state in the ’80s and ’90s. Central to understanding the Italian state, in fact.
Perhaps you might trouble yourself to read Ginsborg, which I rather strongly suspect you haven’t done, before discoursing on the foolishness of anyone who thinks the Mafia are a big deal in Italian politics?
Is mafia influence in Italian politics a reason to leave the EU though? Plus, I don’t think Ginsborg describes them as ‘loonies’.
The argument I’m objecting to is this: ‘What gets me is that apparently that was all the LSE’s head of European Studies could think of to ask an Italian, and in the 1980s to boot, when for a while at least it looked like they could teach us a thing or three about how to run an economy. Hur hur. Mafia. ‘
There’s no evidence at all in the article that the Mafia was the only thing Sked asked the Italians about. But certainly he was right to ask them about the Mafia, and certainly anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t bothered to read about Italy. EU withdrawal strikes me as a mad policy, but there’s no point in distorting, or ignorantly dismissing, your opponent’s arguments. Which is what Alex has done here.
To summarise Ginsborg: ‘Mafia. Not hur hur. Quite important, really. Crucial, even.’
On a relevant topic, a lot more people should have been asking about Greek corruption before they were allowed European entrance, and even more so before they were allowed to join the single currency. But very few people did. One has little doubt that was justified on the grounds that all this about corrupt Greeks was just stupid and offensive stereotyping. ‘Greek corruption. Hur hur.’ Well, not hur hur really, but it’s a bit late to realise that.
There is in fact a way to assess how much he knew or cared! Here is Sked’s publication history, which is either about 19th century Austria or else about his political ambitions in the UK:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/internationalHistory/whosWho/academicStaff/sked.aspx#DynamicJumpMenuManager_1_Anchor_1
But anyway. Consider for a moment Sked’s self-presentation above. Does this sound to you like someone making an intelligent and subtle point about the Mafia’s influence on Christian Democracy? My arse it does.
I said, ‘How many mafiosi do you have in the European parliament?’ He said, ‘Oh, we only have about 12.’ I spent 10 years meeting these loonies.
So here’s Sked raising the issue of organised crime in Italian politics, in the form of a question addressed to somebody who seems to think the issue is relatively unimportant, and who Sked thinks of as a loony.
What’s wrong with this picture isn’t the idea of raising the role of organised crime in Italian politics – which is a very serious issue – but the way Sked supposedly did it. “How many mafiosi do you have in the European parliament?” isn’t a serious question. ‘Mafia’ isn’t a word I can imagine using to an Italian guest. If there were specific allegations which you could back up, you might mention the specific criminal organisation being talked about. If you were just raising the subject, then you might go so far as to say ‘organised crime’ – although to raise the subject at all I think you’d have to know your guest really well or have really good reasons for trusting them. (Which Sked seemingly didn’t.)
Going straight in with a question like “how many mafiosi” – as if you were asking “how many merchant bankers” or “how many old Etonians” – is just asking not to be taken seriously. It’s certainly not going to get a serious answer, let alone an accurate one.
I mean, what did the Senator make of Sked?
To be scrupulously fair, I don’t think the Senator thought “ask me about spaghetti and Roberto Baggio’s hair, why don’t you”. I think he probably thought “It’s a good question, God knows… but I’m not going to get into that here, now, with this clown.”
How many? 42. 57. About 136. No more than a dozen, how blasé we are, you crazy Italians, let’s move on.
On a relevant topic, a lot more people should have been asking about Greek corruption before they were allowed European entrance, and even more so before they were allowed to join the single currency.
No, this is ignorant. The root of the problem was not corruption – it was lax management (in particular inability to collect taxes and clamp down on tax evasion) coupled with deliberate deception by the Greek government. Yes, Greece is more corrupt than other EU states, but that’s not what caused the Greek debt crisis.
I think when you have tax evasion as pervasive as it got in Greece, the distinction between “lax management” and “corruption” gets a bit academic – plus there was plenty of corruption of the straightforward “absurdly overpaid sinecure jobs for political loyalty” kind. Greece didn’t suffer from kleptocrats in the post-Soviet mould, but there’s a reason why it was such a low-trust society – people didn’t behave in a trustworthy manner. One of my friends actually got so sick of the practices of Greek universities that he decided to leave and make a career in *Naples*.
I don’t agree that this was or could have been a reason for keeping them out of the EU though (the euro is a different matter, everyone agrees that was a dumb idea born of post-1989 euphoria). Greece is how it is because, more than any other country in Europe, it’s never got over the Second World War. Europe really owed them.
Could you dial it down a bit, Dan?
Since you ask, no. There’s nothing there I wouldn’t readily say to Alex’s face, and I’ve certainly said blunter things to him over a drink.
I think the idea (reality often works out differently) is that working within a supranational system of rules and regulations will reduce corruption, as many of the more dodgy financial regimes tend to be in places with special statuses or strange enclaves. Unless people in the rest of the EU were going to boycott trading with places like Greece or Italy because of corruption or mafiosi then this argument makes at least some sense. I don’t think UKIP has traditionally held a policy of ethical trade.
I wasn’t in the UK during the 1990s so I missed out completely on the early years of UKIP. I read the interview with Sked because I was hoping to learn more about the back story but, unfortunately, there was very little. “I spent 10 years meeting these loonies” doesn’t strike me as a thoughtful analysis that would lead someone to set up a political party.
There is a little more in a Times’ Higher Education article, but not much.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/101362.article
‘What gets me is that apparently that was all the LSE’s head of European Studies could think of to ask an Italian, and in the 1980s to boot, when for a while at least it looked like they could teach us a thing or three about how to run an economy. Hur hur. Mafia. Spaghetti. Roberto Baggio’s hair. Hur hur. ‘
This was stupid point when it was first made and it will remain a stupid point no matter how many rhetorical defences of it are offered. Spaghetti? A superficial and clichéd image of the Italians of no relevance to the Italian state of the ’80s and ’90s. Roberto Baggio’s hairstyle: ditto. Mafia? Extremely important to understanding the Italian state, actually, though purveyors of received wisdom, certainly including most pro-federalists, have spent decades busy pretending the opposite. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t done any intelligent reading on the subject.
As I say, I think there are no good arguments in favour of Britain leaving the EU, so Sked’s idea that we should do so because of Italian toleration of corruption strikes me as silly. It doesn’t strike me as utterly unthinkable that someone with eccentric and often disagreeable views on European integration, but also a fairly decent record of original research into the Habsburg Empire was capable of reading up on modern Italy. But one place where virtually everybody believes the sunk costs fallacy is a blog comment thread, so I won’t have any joy in getting Alex to admit that his original post was not merely scatological but dumb.
I’ve had trouble finding good sources on modern Greece, but what I have found (James Pettifer is probably the best) generally supports the thesis that problems with the Greek tax system are the result not merely of ineptitude but of pretty endemic corruption as well. Greek public employees (surprise!) got a lot of the blame for their country’s problems in the early days of the European reaction to the Greek crisis, but there is good reason for thinking that a series of convenient agreements between the fiscal authorities, the richer businessmen and the political parties, particularly New Democracy (ie the conservatives and ex-supporters of military rule) have rather more to do with it.
Whatever. No doubt Pettifer is ignorant as well, having merely spent his working life studying the Balkans.
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But one place where virtually everybody believes the sunk costs fallacy is a blog comment thread, so I won’t have any joy in getting Alex to admit that his original post was not merely scatological but dumb.
However often one tells people, very clearly, that they are all stupid and ignorant and generally far less worth listening to than oneself, they still fail to realise it. It’s a constant source of frustration. What to do? Tell them again, louder, I suppose: it’s the only way.
No, I’m betting that Alex will probably read Ginsborg at some point in the next year or so, just as I’ve read or intend to read a number of books from having seen Alex recommend them, sometimes in the course of strong disagreement with me. I’d also recommend reading Alexander Stille’s ‘Excellent Cadavers’, which I am reading now, and is really quite frightening in a lot of ways, including how it details the centrality of the Mafia to Andreotti’s DC faction.
That’s one benefit of taking other people’s views seriously to actually listen to them. You should try it some time, Ajay- it might stop you being the kind of individual who pronounces on which Englishmen may, and may not, talk about Scotland.