Akademik

   In Italian, l’uomo qualunque is “the man in the street” or “the common man.” Qualunquismo in the vocabulary of Italian politics means promoting populist, intellectually discreditable policies by demagogic means. The term has its origin in the 1944 political party called the Fronte dell’Uomo Qualunque/The Common Man’s Front (UQ). Its founder was a playwright and journalist called Guglielmo Giannini. Well financed by wealthy businessmen who had enjoyed close ties with the Fascist regime, Giannini’s party fought the June 1946 election to the Constituent Assembly under the slogan (the translation sanitizes the mildly obscene original) “We’ve had our fill of people bossing us about” and polled 1.2 million votes. In local elections in November 1946, the party actually obtained more votes in Rome than the Democrazia Cristiana/ Christian Democracy Party (DC). This was the high point of its success. In 1947, when the DC ended its joint government with the Partito Socialista Italiano/Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and the Partito Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party (PCI), the UQ lost its main reason for being. The party fought the 1948 elections in the company of the Partito Liberale Italiano/Italian Liberal Party (PLI) but then declined in significance, with many of its members joining the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano/ Italian Social Movement (MSI) or the monarchists. Giannini died in Rome in 1960. In recent times, the politician most regularly accused of qualunquismo has been Umberto Bossi.