A Post- or Super-Nationality in the European Union
Series Preface
The Italians: Family as a Core
The Italians, since the Roman era, have been divided into North and South. Their experience with foreign invaders and the lack of strong local government has led the Italians to perceive that help only derives from the family, which explains why, apparently, family-like organizations such as the Mafia and the Fascist regime were trusted more than any form of government, including the EU. Therefore, the Italians, generally speaking, do not provide a solid source of support for any political regime, but are also unlikely to secede from the EU, for they have no better alternative political framework.
The immediate family and the family matriarch provide the Italians with basic support, and are the source from which dominant social structures have emerged. Italians perceive the state, with its western principles of the rule of law and civil rights, as foreign and alien. The Italians’ distrust of the state led Italian soldiers to distrust comrades-in-arms who were not members of their family but were posted by the state to serve with them. This explains the lack of valor among Italian soldiers, and Italy’s mediocre record on the battlefield. It also explains why family-like crime organizations operate with impunity vis-à-vis the country’s law-enforcement organizations. All these facts combined imply that the Italians are not a component upon which the supra-state framework of the EU can rely, since that framework is even more alien to the Italians than their own state.
Italians thus constitute an unstable foundation stone for EU integration.