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2
The liberal, the Neoliberal,
and the illiberal
Dynamics of Diversity and Politics of
Identity in Contemporary Rome
michael herzfeld
t he ascent to power of pope pius iX anticipates in many ways the paradoxi-
cal status of the eternal City. hailed as a liberator (and, more to the point, as a
liberal), he soon demonstrated his repressively conservative and antirevolution-
ary colors and is now principally remembered as a cruel tyrant who authorized a
virtual orgy of executions in the desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempt
to perpetuate Vatican control of Rome. his motives were not those of the Greek
patriarch of Constantinople, whose opposition to his compatriots' national revo-
lution was inspired more by justifiable fear of ottoman reprisals—they eventu-
ally executed him despite his stance—than by any principled disagreement with
the revolution's ideals. pius iX, by contrast, did not fear the existing authority;
he represented it in his own person. what he did fear and resist was the Vatican's
political collapse that, over a period stretching from the nationalist insurgents'
capture of Rome in 1871 to the lateran Concordat signed with mussolini in 1929,
he and his successors were ultimately forced to accept.
echoes of the illiberal
today italians face a new paradox of liberalism, and it is one that to a striking
degree reproduces its first iteration. The shocking intolerance that characterizes
the political Right, in italy as elsewhere, bears the name liberal in another sense:
the neoliberal doctrine that sends the socially and economically weak to the wall
of despair, evicts long-standing populations from the centro storico and other
segments of Rome, and monumentalizes the past in way that further alienates the
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