Sen. Grassley: The US shouldn't blame Russia for meddling cause of... Italy 1948

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This is a particularly strange argument as the Soviet Union ALSO tried to influence the 1948 election in Italy. Which, contrary to HOT TAKES from internet tankies, was not close: the DCs would have won a fair election comfortably.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Define "winning". I highly doubt it would have won an absolute majority of its own.

I mean that they would have been by far the largest party and would have had no difficulty in forming a government. It's hard to work out what would have happened (other than in general terms) absent meddling from the two superpowers, but I wouldn't rule out an absolute majority: I tend to believe that the odd result that year was mostly organic, the result of a fevered and deeply polarised political atmosphere. Probably the American and Soviet governments were wasting their money, but that's kind of cold_war.txt really.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean as a deeply religious person it doesn't strike me as odd that, faced with the possibility* of a Communist takeover, sincere Catholics whether political or not flooded to the polls to prevent it from happening.

_{*Well 'possibility' is more accurate: it's very clear in retrospect that the numbers for a PCI victory never existed and that the party's popularity was vastly overestimated by both domestic and international observers.}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yeah, I don't doubt that a good part of DC's bounce was genuine (worth noting that most of it came from those who had voted for various smaller right-wing parties in 1946, not from "moderate" left-wing voters).

And very clearly non-voters as well.

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The strategy of tension, yes. I think much (most? All?) of the mentality of that was home grown, even if it was obviously endorsed by foreign intelligence agencies. I think what the DCs took from the 1948 landslide was that they could keep their ridiculous ramshackle party in power forever if they could maintain a permanent sense of fear amongst the aforementioned basically apolitical practicing Catholics (who could so easily have otherwise turned on them) and so creating an unbreachable vote bank. And eventually the logic of this...