Joel Schalit / 26 Sep 2022
The Week Before the Election
Photographing Italian Politics
Few Italian elections since the turn of the millennium have felt more like the twentieth century than this one.(...)
Silvio Berlusconi
Charlie Bertsch / 13 May 2020
The Power of Failing
Lorenzo Senni’s Scacco Matto
Scacco Matto sounds like a mosaic of Europop hits from the early 1980s. The album is made from pieces so tiny, their arrangement so abstract, that it transcends the referentiality of so much postmodern music.(...)
Joel Schalit / 26 Feb 2020
Coronavirus as Politics
The Populist Disease
Every disaster has a silver lining. You just have to be heartless enough to exploit it.(...)
The Battleground / 05 Jul 2019
The Appeal of Victory
Italy’s Strongman Complex: The Brando Benifei Interview
Salvini is always the winner. Peruse most major news media on the 2019 EU elections, and when you hit Italy, it’s always the case.(...)
Sean Quinn / 19 Jun 2019
Circular Firing Squads
The Self-Defeating Italian Left
The corpses of security guards lay strewn among broken glass and crumpled cars on Via Fani. A dead body, displayed in fetal position, in the trunk of a red Renault 4 and a dejected, thin-faced man with a wry smile posed before the flag of his captors.(...)
The Battleground / 17 May 2019
Italy’s Democracy Crisis
The Anna Momigliano Interview
Few countries occupy as difficult a place in European news as Italy. Only reported on when there’s an economic crisis or a tabloid-style story about its flamboyant political leaders — read Silvio Berlusconi, or, Matteo Salvini — Italy screams out for more considered coverage.(...)
Joel Schalit / 11 Apr 2019
Repetition Syndrome
Towards a Nationalist European Union
The first time the heads of Italy and Germany’s two biggest fascist parties met was in Venice, in June 1934. Things didn’t go so well for Benito Mussolini, who, a longtime hero of the new German chancellor, sought Adolf Hitler’s assurance that Italy could control Austria.(...)