26 February 2018

The Guardian: Emma Bonino: Italy's pro-Europe, pro-immigrant conscience

These days, the former foreign minister, activist and candidate for parliament, is waging an equally difficult battle in support of migrants and in defence of Europe, two ideas that seem radical in today’s bitter political environment.  [...]

While she is not realistically hoping to win next Sunday’s national election, if Bonino and her party – More Europe – do well, she will win 3% of the highly fractured Italian vote, a result that would give her control of her own parliamentary group. It would also grant her a fair amount of influence in the event that the election ends, as many expect, with the creation of a grand coalition government between the centre right and centre left parties headed by two former prime ministers, Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Renzi. [...]

She has been thinking about the “banality of evil”, the term coined by Hannah Arendt, the political theorist who examined the rise of Nazism, after she saw a viral video of an elderly Italian woman harassing a black man on a bus while other passengers looked on. [...]

She is convinced that Europe’s demographic challenges and low birthrates will, eventually, give European capitals a wake-up call about their need to welcome immigrants.

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