Evicted From Eternity_ The Restructuring of Modern Rome - Michael Herzfeld [164]
Even a leftist councilor, however, argued that the poverty of these families was to a significant degree artificial. Current legislation gave proprietors the right to use their properties as they wished within fairly generous constraints, he argued, and many of those living in buildings that had been sold off by government or religious bodies had originally been able to acquire their apartments through connections with powerful patrons. In his view the older system of rent control had allowed-indeed, encouraged-entire families to depend on a single breadwinner, since a depressed collective income entitled them to the lower rent for which the new legislation provided. But this legislation was vague, excessively arcane, and penally toothless and encouraged back-channel deals against which it offered no effective sanctions-again exemplifying the way in which laws were created to benefit legislators as much as their electorate. It did allow some artisans to continue working close to their homes. The councilor, however, argued that there was something dangerously anachronistic in a situation that permitted a television repairman to continue to occupy a space for which an artist would be willing to pay much more money.
Thus it came about that a dedicated Communist found himself recognizing the logic of the market-not, he reasonably insisted, as an acceptable ideological stance, which perhaps for him it was not, but as an "ineluctable" reality-against a group of people he regarded, in part inaccurately, as rightwing freeloaders and therefore undeserving of his support. As a left-winger he could not very well attack welfarism (assistenzialismo) outright; instead, he decried the old rent regime as "paternalist" and linked the neofascists' exploitation of the tenants' current resentment to their lack of respect for the rule of law as evidenced in their support for those guilty of illegal building in the suburbs. Only ideologically committed right-wingers were comfortable about criticizing welfarism as such; and they, unlike the leftist councilor, showed no compunction about doing so, straightforwardly and relentlessly. But they chose not to see the protection of their constituents' residential rights as welfarist at all, representing it instead as a question of social justice and the patrimonialist preservation of authentic populations.
The councilor's position shows how massively the traditional Left had embraced a view of property ownership it had once categorically rejected. In practice, too, older forms of intimidation could now harness new legal knowledge and access to big money. An elderly lady fretted to her lawyer about the difficulty of understanding and paying off the utility bills, which can be a bureaucratic nightmare almost anywhere in Italy. He reassured her-"I'll take care of it" (ci penso io), said the sly fellow-and then proceeded to get her signature on what she thought were payment slips but that in fact were deeds transferring her apartment, room by room, into his unscrupulous hands. Despite the best efforts of a kindly priest to help her, she had signed her home away, and the law gave her no recourse.
The disclaimers of mafia-like activity or of evil intentions and the professions of friendship are excellent illustrations of how politeness can convey a sense-and often also the substance-of danger. Sometimes the threat is playful, or at least familial, as when a passionately committed Communist used to tell his family members, "Vote as you wish, but.... " But sometimes the politeness amplifies true menace. Just as racist sentiments are often prefaced by the very widespread affirmation, "I'm not a racist" followed the same demurral (pero, "but... "% so the implicit threat of violence is all the more effective in conveying deep hostility in that it