By ALESSANDRA GALLONI
ROME—Umberto Bossi has raised his middle finger during the Italian national anthem and described immigrants as "bingo-bongos." He has called for Italy's northern regions to secede. And here, in this nation of Catholics, he once said that the Catholic Church will go down the "toilet bowl" of history.
Mr. Bossi is also one of the most influential politicians in the land. He is a government minister and one of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's closest allies, and he leads Italy's third-largest party, the Northern League.
Mr. Berlusconi faces a confidence vote in parliament Tuesday that, if he loses, may result in a national vote early next year—an election in which the Northern League would likely increase its voter base. No matter what happens this week, Mr. Bossi is set to remain one of Italy's power brokers.
While his rhetoric may sound extreme, Mr. Bossi's current vogue—after 30 years in politics—speaks to how the European economic crisis is hardening the divide within Italy, exacerbating age-old divisions between its richer north and poorer south.
The sentiment threatens the EU as a whole. As Europe is being forced into billion-dollar bailouts of poorer countries, some people in the wealthier nations of Germany, France and the U.K. complain that they are unfairly footing the bill. And voters' fears about the future have spawned anti-immigrant fervor that is sweeping the continent.
"We are true believers, and true believers have an edge on everyone else," said the 69-year-old Mr. Bossi, scraping a half-cigar with blackened fingernails. He spoke while picking up a shot of cherry liqueur at midnight with friends at a roadside canteen, a nightcap following a political rally that drew hundreds to the remote town of Pecorara in late October. "Our march has only just begun."
Antic politicians are common in Italy, but Mr. Bossi stands apart. His grass-roots appeal blurs traditional political boundaries. Mr. Bossi's basic message promoting local identity and self-sufficiency has long pleased right-leaning small business owners and farmers in the north, but is now also drawing formerly communist-voting laborers who fear losing their jobs to foreign competition. One irony of his success is that Mr. Bossi is now a key cog in the Italian establishment that his secessionist movement would destroy.
In Europe, he is part of a wider political movement that takes varied, and sometimes more extreme, forms but shares a driving force: Economic uncertainty is deepening fears that minorities take away jobs and bring crime and terrorism. This year, France deported thousands of gypsies and the Swiss voted in favor of expelling more foreigners convicted of serious crimes. Xenophobic movements in Sweden, Austria and the Netherlands have gained power as well.
Mr. Bossi's party has long been tough on immigration, mainly because more than 60% of Italy's immigrants live in the north—his power base. Pushed by the Northern League, Rome last year passed a law that makes it a felony to be an illegal immigrant. It has also been implementing measures allowing police to turn back migrants stopped on the Mediterranean Sea before they can reach Italian shores and apply for asylum.
In northern Italy, League mayors are passing local laws banning the use of veils or other garb that conceal people's faces, a clear reference to burqas worn by some Muslim women. In one town, the "burkini," a bathing suit worn by some Muslim women, specifically has been banned.
"It's barbaric," says Nichi Vendola, a left-wing politician who is president of the southern Puglia region. "At a time when Europe should be bringing people together, they are trying to drive us apart."
Northern League officials deny the party is anti-Muslim and say its aim is simply to stop illegal immigration. "People were afraid. We had to stop the flood of illegal immigrants. People need to be here legally," Mr. Bossi said in an interview.
Italy's north and south have long been split economically and socially, but Europe's fiscal crisis has handed Mr. Bossi a powerful new lever. His northern supporters believe they shouldn't have to foot the bill for Italy's poorer south in the name of national unity.
That Mr. Bossi is still leading the Northern League is itself a remarkable feat. After suffering a stroke six years ago, he was "accosted by death and barely managed to pull away," as Mr. Bossi describes it. Today, he slurs his words and has trouble walking and moving his left arm. Yet he keeps a hectic schedule, shuttling between the League's shabby Milan headquarters, government offices in Rome and the myriad villages in northern Italy where he holds feisty speeches on the weekends.
He dines at Mr. Berlusconi's villa near Milan and is one of the premier's most trusted consiglieri, people close to the government say, though the two don't always see eye to eye. When Mr. Berlusconi came under fire earlier this year for his rambunctious lifestyle, Mr. Bossi was furious. "Silvio can f— whomever he wants," huffed Mr. Bossi at the Pecorara roadside canteen. "But he needs to be smarter about it, because people are out to get him."
A spokesman for Mr. Berlusconi declined to comment on Mr. Bossi's statement.
To Mr. Bossi, modern Italy is an artificial entity dreamed up by nation-builders—just like the European Union was dreamed up by technocrats. From the fall of the Roman Empire until reunification in 1861, the Italian boot was a patchwork of kingdoms and city-states with their own governments, languages and customs.
Mr. Bossi's central claim is that natives of Padania, an ambiguous area around the Po River valley that includes the cities of Milan, Turin and Venice, descend from the northern Celtic tribes. The Celts, Mr. Bossi regularly reminds his fans, were a hard-working people, unlike the Romans, warriors whose productivity was based on slave workers. His supporters often show up at rallies with Celtic-inspired swords and horned helmets.
With his tousled white mane and sporty attire, Mr. Bossi fashions himself as a modern-day Braveheart. At the event—which also commemorated the Celtic New Year—on Oct. 31 in Pecorara, Mr. Bossi took the stage and railed against "scandalous" southern Italians who steal jobs from Italy's industrious north. Nearby hung one of the League's manifestos showing a picture of a native American: "They suffered immigration. And now they live on Reserves," it said.
"Padania!" Mr. Bossi concluded, jabbing his right arm feebly into the air. "Freedom!" roared hundreds of people below, waving their swords.
Threading the crowd afterwards, Mr. Bossi shook hands, patted shoulders and kissed cheeks before settling down to a plate of pumpkin tortellini as supporters queued up to greet him. One, a former soldier, told Mr. Bossi about his lung problems. Another presented a €50 bill to be autographed: "He's a hero," said Giuseppe Cremona, hugging his bill afterwards.
Mr. Bossi has run the Northern League since the mid-1980s, when, at the age of 38 and after forays into music, poetry and photography, he abandoned an on-again-off-again 20-year effort to get a medical degree and devoted himself to politics. In 1987, he won a seat in Italy's Senate, earning the nickname "il Senatur," the northern Italian dialect for senator.
Since then, he has shown skill at capitalizing on moments of national upheaval. He burst on the national political scene in the early 1990s as a wave of so-called "Clean Hands" corruption trials swept away the country's ruling political class. And in the 1994 general elections, he jumped on the bandwagon of another successful populist—media mogul Silvio Berlusconi.
As allies, Messrs. Berlusconi and Bossi got off to a bumpy start. The Northern League didn't get along with the coalition government's other key ally, the southern-focused National Alliance party. Mr. Bossi eventually withdrew his support, bringing down Mr. Berlusconi's governing coalition just nine months after it had taken power.
For the next seven years, Mr. Bossi worked to strengthen his Northern League. On Sept. 15, 1996, he declared Padania a sovereign state before thousands of supporters. It had no legal effect, although the region did later get its own soccer team and a "Miss Padania" beauty pageant.
But in the late 1990s Europe was about to be hit by a transformative event—formation of a single European currency—that would buoy Mr. Bossi's movement and other regional parties from the Catalans in Spain to the Corsicans in France. Mr. Bossi argued that northern Italy as a whole should secede because indebted southern Italy hurt the north's chances of joining the euro.
The League was also ratcheting up its attacks on the Catholic Church, which Mr. Bossi had long criticized for being too close to the center of power in Rome. At the time, the Vatican's official newspaper would often criticize the League for its anti-immigration stance. During a rally in 1997, Mr. Bossi railed against the Church, saying the League would push it "down the toilet bowl of history."
Mr. Bossi and the Church would eventually improve their relationship, however, as the League became a more mainstream party with increasing government roles. In particular, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the League also began seeing the Vatican as a partner in defense of Christian values, according to Alessandro Trocino, co-author of a recent book on the League's evolution.
The Northern League's rising influence overall brought Mr. Bossi back to the negotiating table with Mr. Berlusconi, who returned to power in 2001. The League, again part of the governing coalition, pushed through a controversial immigration law that allowed in foreigners only if they already had a working contract in hand—a move that excluded most aspiring entrants.
"First we give homes to locals, then to bingo-bongos," Mr. Bossi said during a radio interview in 2003.
Mr. Bossi says his inflammatory rhetoric in the field is a way to communicate with the masses that is different from his language in parliament. "Its different when you're out there with the people," he says. "They tell me their history, their life, their problems. It helps me interpret what they think."
In March 2004, Mr. Bossi suffered the stroke that threw his movement into deep crisis. Many people in Italy believed he, and the Northern League, were history.
"I was dead," Mr. Bossi said during an interview in his Milan office, puffing smoke from one of the two cigars he kept lit on his ashtray. "I couldn't remember anything, and when you lose a connection with your past, you lose your life," Mr. Bossi said, looking toward his 22-year-old son, Renzo, tapping on a smartphone nearby. "We feared the worst," said Renzo, looking up.
But Mr. Bossi said the Northern League saved him. "One day, I looked out of the window and saw League militants waving flags with the symbol of Padania. I began to remember."
The League's health has been on the upswing as well. The biggest coup of Mr. Bossi's career came two years ago during elections that brought Mr. Berlusconi to power a third time. The League claimed 60 of the 630 seats in Italy's lower house of parliament, and took four cabinet posts, including the key Interior Ministry—a springboard from which Mr. Bossi's party has influenced Italy's security and immigration policies.
As Mr. Bossi's party has become a mainstream force in Italian politics, his independence movement has taken a modified form. The League's "fiscal federalism" project, which was approved last year but will take years to implement, aims to give Italy's 20 regions more financial independence vis-à-vis the central government. It envisions transferring ownership of Italy's natural assets, such as beaches, from the central state to regions and giving cities more autonomy over taxes for basic services.
Controversially, it would also change how public health care is financed. In Italy, hospitals are run by regional governments, but most funding comes from the central government. The new plan would require regions to accept standard fees for their services—even if they say the fees don't cover their costs.
Supporters say the plan will bring about overall savings. Critics say hospitals in Italy's poorer southern regions will suffer disproportionately. "The message to the south is: You squander your money, you're not getting ours," says Renzo Bossi, who is a fixture in his father's entourage.
A question mark hangs over Mr. Bossi's federalism plan, however. If the center-right government loses Tuesday's no-confidence vote, several things could happen: Italy's president in coming weeks could ask Mr. Berlusconi to try to form a new government; could shepherd the formation of an interim government; or could call early elections, which wouldn't be likely before the spring.
Last month, Mr. Bossi visited Mr. Berlusconi's Milan mansion to discuss the political crisis. As the two sat down for a snack of bread and salami, Mr. Bossi asked Italy's leader whether he was prepared to resign, as opponents were demanding, according to a person present. When Mr. Berlusconi said "no," the two men mapped out the scenario for early elections.
Although Mr. Bossi is going on 70, he maintains a firm grip on the movement he has created. "We don't even discuss succession, because Bossi is indestructible," says Luca Zaia, governor of the Veneto region. "We have a very clear rule here in the League: He's the boss." (FONTE: Wall Street Journal)
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