Base expansion plans united a remarkably diverse Italian opposition coalition

Evidence

The army garrison in Vicenza, Italy, is another place where vehement antibase protests have surprised many. Opposition in Italy had long been restricted to small, scattered protests in places such as Naples and Pisa, and a movement against a missile base in Sicily in the 1980s. U.S. officials had long thought of Italy’s wealthy and strongly conservative northeast as a particularly supportive host. But the plans to build a new base at Vicenza’s Dal Molin airport unexpectedly provoked a widespread surge of protest. Equally surprising, the opposition movement was remarkably diverse: it joined self-identified housewives and businessmen, former 1960s radicals and young anarchists, university students and religious organizations, pacifists and disaffected members of the openly racist anti-immigrant Northern League. They formed a sometimes rocky but effective and unusually creative coalition. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 897

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the coalition-building dynamics seen in other protest literatures, e.g. moral panic and social movement theory.