Umberto Bossi (born 1943) is an Italian politician, and leader of the Northern League party that seeks autonomy or independence for northern Italy.

Politics

Before becoming a politician, Bossi was also a sympathiser of the Italian Communist Party in his early years. In the eighties, he founded the Lega Lombarda , later federated with other Legas in the Lega Nord, of which he still is the federal secretary.

Ideological background

Especially in the early years, he exploited resentment against Rome and the Italian government, widespread in northern Italy. Racism against southern Italians, often dubbed terroni, and against immigrants, was also exploited. The Lega Nord's successes began roughly when large numbers of black-skinned immigrants began to be spotted in northern-italian cities.

Another key factor was public disillusionment with old political parties, as the scandals of Tangentopoli were unveiled from 1992 on. Bossi rode the wave, presenting himself as the new man in politics, set out to sweep away corruption and incompetence. Bossi was hovewer sentenced, along with Lega Nord's treasurer Alessandro Patelli , for receiving a 200-million lire bribe in a trial that sentenced also many of the politicians he routinely attacked, as Bettino Craxi, Arnaldo Forlani and others.

Federalism or secession

The exact program of Lega Nord was not clear in the early years: some claimed it wanted secession in Yugoslav style, other times it appeared he simply requested more autonomy for northern regions. He finally settled on the buzzword federalism, that became rapidly a popular issue in most Italian political parties, with the exception of fascists and communists, which opposed it for respectively breaking up the motherland and undermining cross-regional solidarity, especially important in Italy because of the impressive economic divide between the rich north and the poorer south.

He later moved on to open secessionism, declaring the splitting of Italy in three entities, named by Lega-Nord ideologist Gianfranco Miglio Padania, Etruria and the South. The South was only later dignified with the name Ausonia. As a symbolic act of birth of the new nation, Bossi took a bottle of water from the springs of Po (which in latin is padus, giving background for the name Padania), which was poured in the sea of Venice by a little girl a few days later.

A paramilitary corp, the green shirts , was also established, causing great alarm in the country that saw the invention of the black ones by the fascist movement. This movement is however declared non-violent and has not been found to be holding any weapons.

The renewed alliance with Berlusconi forced Bossi to tone down, and Padania became just the name of a proposed "macro-region" that should attain some degree of autonomy. The new buzzword devolution (in English) was also introduced. The choice to tone down and settle just for devolution instead of secession caused harsh criticism by part of his party's base, which led to splitting of the Lega and to a consistent reduction of electoral support by the voters. Padania gains today some attention only for the Miss Padania beauty contest, which sports some racial and ideological requirements from the participants, and occasionally for football matches, organised by Lega Nord, between selections of Padania and Ausonia, cancelled after the few southerners that showed up for Ausonia regularly humiliated the Padanian selection.

A peculiar style

He is often described as a racist (against immigrants and southern Italians), low-cultured maverick. His politics has been compared by critics to that of the Austrian nationalist leader, Haider, whose extreme right wing opinions and political agenda frightened Europe in the same years of Bossi's popularity peak. His supporters appreciate the his easily comprehensible speeches, despised by many as they often contain blatant insults, references to unlikely conspiracy theories, and gestures difficult to misunderstand.

Above all of Bossi's expressions, one is especially remembered: "La Lega ce l'ha duro!" ("The Lega's got a boner!"), uttered in front of a large public of supporters gathered at a meeting in Pontida in the early years of Lega's success. The phrase sounds quite awkward in Italian, as "Lega" is actually a female-gender word. The expression gave birth to the Italian neologism celodurismo , "bonerism", indicating populistic and demagogic politics appealing to the lowest instincts of electors.

Speaking to a public in Venice, and seeing that a woman had a put an Italian flag on her terrace to silently protest against the Lega Nord, he shouted in the microphone, while delivering his speech and in front of national TV, "Madam, hang that flag in the toilet!" (using the harsh Italian word cesso). For this, he was later prosecuted for insulting the flag.

Institutional experience

He was instrumental in the unexpected victory of Silvio Berlusconi's coalition in 1994, but he broke the alliance after just a few months, with the first Berlusconi cabinet collapsing before Christmas 1994.

He later attacked repeatedly Berlusconi with impressive verbal violence, using much of his rethorics: Berlus-kaiser, Berluscazz ("Berlus-penis"); he also threatened mining the antennas that spread the signals of Berlusconi's televisions, a threat that a few extremist followers took seriously, carrying out some minor sabotage actions; these never compromised Berlusconi's TVs, however, and were mostly a curiosity in the news.

After a subsidiary of the Berlusconi empire granted a loan to relieve the waning finances of Lega Nord, Bossi agreed to return to an alliance with Berlusconi, which ultimately led to the (this time, easily predicted) 2001 electoral victory.

He then served in Silvio Berlusconi's second cabinet as Reforms Minister, but, after suffering a serious stroke on March 11, 2004, which seriously impaired his speech, quit on July 19, 2004 to take up a seat as a member of the European Parliament. He is now slowly returning to active politics.