Nota bene: I now accept, having read and talked and listened a great deal more on this topic that I was very wrong on this point. People who voted no are generally very aware that they were not doing so at the behest of Salvini or Grillo. See, ad esempio, qui. Or qua.
Everywhere you look in Roma right now you are confronted with the word NO, and it is notevole that it is often not possible to distinguere between the posters of the ‘left’ and what is known here eufemisticamente as the ‘centre right’ (i personaggi principali of the Italian ‘centro destra‘ make Steve Bannon look like a member of the Tea Party). Disgraziatamente, the tattered ruins of the Italian left seems to have learned assolutamente nulla from the Brexit and Trump débacles, and it is oltremodo tragico that so many who think of themselves as progressisti are succumbing to il canto delle sirene of the trickster Grillo, who in the words of the leftwing collective Wu Ming has “confined the potential energies of an uprising against austerity to a discursive cage which makes a parody of political conflict”. Of course the riforma constituzionale is not by any means ideale and the whole referendum was una idea del cavolo in the first place. In modo molto simile, the European Union has never been perfect and Hillary Clinton was chiaramente not the best candidate for the Casa Bianca. Però, the left’s campaigning for the no side – inspired, like the ‘Lexit’ and Jill Stein campaigns, by a mix of ingenuità, cinismo and misplaced opportunismo – will help ensure that next week we will see Salvini (an outright teppista fascista), Grillo (choice quote: “l’antifascismo is outside my purview”) and Berlusconi (any italiani wondering who this ‘Silvio Berlusconi’ character is may like to fare una visita to the internet website google.it) brindando alla vittoria and being congratulated by Le Pen, Putin, Trump, and mentre che ci siamo, probably Assad. Qualsiasi persona con coscienza e cervello voterà sì. Anything else is francamente just puerile.
Infinite Coincidence 