EDITH KURZWEIL
589
act immediately to win the five impending referenda, and particu–
larly the referendum to retain the three-year-old law which legalizes
abortion under very controlled and limited circumstances. In retro–
spect, one might argue that the large margin of their victory (68
percent on abortion) would indicate they could not have lost. But
this is far from clear. The use of television, not only as propaganda,
but as a means of education, turned out to be effective. And since the
"right to life" movement got equal time, as did the forces for and
against life imprisonment, the post-mortem editorial in
La Repubblica
concluded correctly that Italians had matured politically: nearly 80
percent voted; Christian-Democrats, though practicing Catholics,
frequently disregarded their leaders' advice; and Italians - from
industrialized northern cities to backward southern villages - talked
about issues and convictions rather than party loyalty and slogans.
It has been argued that Italian democracy is too successful, that
it is too open to anarchy, to fascism, to foreign influences, etc.; and
that openness allows for the excesses of self-expression, for the
manipulations leading to the perennial scandals, and ultimately, for
the presence of terrorists like Agca. Though Agca himself is not an
Italian creation, his presence in Italy does not seem fortuitous. It
probably has been facilitated by the fact that Perugia's local govern–
ment, for financial benefit, has allowed the construction of an
Islamic center- including its own mosque - to accommodate
approximately two thousand students, some of whom are members
of extremist groups. But even before Agca's interrogations where he
would come off as a clever idealogue rather than as an ordinary
fanatic, the Italian press spoke of "the presence of international organ–
izations which aim to subvert civil life, to fuel and extend conflicts
between people and nations, to generate fear and violence and thus
obstruct open discourse and the democratic process ." Other state–
ments, increasingly, linked terrorism, which now transcends "right"
and "left" politics, to special, and hidden interests. And on May 23
La Repubblica
reported specifically how, and through what channels,
the Lybian government and the PLO had provided bombs, machine
guns, and other munitions, for the most part Russian-made, to such
terrorist groups as
Prima Linea
and
Metropoli
"without charging a
cent" - "in order to destabilize Italy's social-political situation."
Italians are particularly prone to believing in conspiracy
theories. But it is quite possible that in a country where chaos is the
norm, many people can easily remember that "something violent
happens" before every election and before every referendum,
