I wonder if you twist words on purpouse or you really can't grasp the meaning of words. I said italians, like ANYONE in the world, dislike THIEVES. The fact that some gypsies are thieves does not mean in any possible way italians are racist, and I am not generalizing at all, like I said I am specifically targeting a kind of person and you answered for the third time with a racial generalization. YOU are generalizing.
Consider the following hypothetical conversation:
X: “A gipsy camp near Naples has been burnt to the ground by the angry mob. It seems that many Italians are growing more and more intolerant of gipsies.”
Y: “Not really. Let me explain. Italians don’t really dislike gipsies qua gipsies. Rather, they dislike thieves.”
Quite a part from its having racist implications, Y’s generalisation is both stupid and misleading. It’s misleading because it implies that a serious act of ethnic discrimination can be explained in some other way (“it’s not xenophobia, it’s natural dislike of thieves”, “it’s not xenophobia, it’s the Camorra” , etc.). And it’s stupid because it suggest that people can somehow identify as an object of dislike a sub-group of supposed thieves within the larger ethnical group of gipsies. How do Italians know which gipsy rightfully deserves to be disliked. Do gipsies walk around showing to the crowd their criminal record?
The wave of racial discrimination against gipsies is currently being investigated by Amnesty International and the European Commission, with special attention to the complex Italian situation. Try and explain to the EU’s investigators that there is no racial discrimination as “Italians just dislike thieves, like everybody else does”. I bet they would laugh in your face.
Finally, is it even true that “Italians, like anyone in the world, dislike thieves”? Italy’s prime minister has been several times on charge for false accounting, tax fraud and embezzlement. Yet he’s very popular, and the majority of the population (even many of those who have voted for the opposition party) don’t dislike him at all. As the Los Angeles Times has recently commented, in Italy not only does crime pay, but it may also get you elected:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-italy13apr13,0,4967271.story
Each general election, an unusually high number of convicted criminals is elected to a sit in the Italian’s Parliament (examples: senator Cuffaro, who prior to the last election had been sentenced to eight years for mafia association; Giuseppe Ciarrapico, sentenced to seven years for a number of frauds). If Italians really disliked thieves as you claim, they would burn to the ground, not the gipsy camps, but their own Parliament!
If I'd say: I know gypsies, they are thieves. THAT would be a racist comment.
But this is more or less what you said. More specifically, you said: “I know how they live and how they think. Some of them are thieves.” You seem to think that the little phase “some of them” makes for a big difference, marking the thin line between a racist comment and an harmless one. This is not so. Racial slurs need not take the form of absolute universal generalisations. Vague generalisations, as the one you have made, can be derogatory too.
Funny, I have not said anything of gypsy camps... why don't you quote what I said of gypsy camps instead of making up things ?
You claimed: “I grew up near gypsy camps”, and then said various derogatory things about people who live in such camps, such that, for some of them, robbery “is art and life-style”. Don’t ask me to pinpoint the exact quote. It’s not really my fault if you don’t remember your own words.
Campo nomadi is a general term not necessarily referred to gypsies.
Although the Italian expression “campo nomadi” can have a more generic meaning, it’s typically used to refer to gipsy camps. This is by far its most common meaning.
Gypsies aren't called nomadi.
Not true. In Italian, gipsies are often called “nomadi”. More exactly, there are at least four expressions which are commonly used to refer to gipsies: “rom”, “zingari”, “gitani” and “nomadi”. The name “Rom” is mostly used by the media. “Zingari” is quite common but somewhat derogative. “Gitani” is rare, literary and old-fashioned. “Nomadi” is the generic politically correct expressions.
Do you even read what I write ? In english Camorra is called Mafia, this is what I have written.
In English, the Camorra is called “Camorra”. For example, in the English subtitles to the movie “Gomorra”, based on Roberto Saviano’s novel, the word “Camorra” is never translated into “Mafia”.
But this is besides point. The point is that Camorra and Mafia are not the same, regardless of how they may be called in English. To say that the fire-raisers in Naples where instigated by the Mafia is both imprecise and incorrect. It’s more precise to say that the fire-raisers might have been instigated by a mafia-like organisation known as Camorra.
I thought you didn't miss the part in which I wrote I don't trust mass media. And you shouldn't , as well. You seem a reasonable person, wake up and stop being brainwashed.
So anybody who reads the Independent is brainwashed?
How about the BBC? Have a look at this BBC article, “Italy condemned for 'racism wave'”:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7423165.stm
my opinion of his article is, in short: a bunch of suppositions and illations.
This is bare assertion without argument. What exactly were the suppositions and illations in the Independent’s article? Can you disprove what that journalist said?
I never said "I am not a fascist". I said "Also, I am italian but this does not mean I am a fascist".
The latter sentence entails the former. By saying the second sentence you obviously implied the first. Berlusconi is notorious for blatantly contradicting himself (“I never said it”, “I’ve been misintepreted”, etc.). I can see now that he’s not the only Italian with this curious trait.
I said it in a precise context, which is not a justification nor an apology, but a criticism toward one of your many generalizations.
What generalisations? I never said nor implied that “Italians are fascists”. You did not need to “criticise” this statement because nobody ever made it. Your reaction was totally uncalled for. Hence, it was unnecessary self-defence, as if you had to purge yourself of an accusation nobody had made.
