ROMA - Un algerino di 31 anni ha tentato di sequestrare una bambina di tre anni ad Ostia, sul litorale romano. Si e' avvicinato alla piccola e ha cercato di portarla via. Le sue grida di aiuto e quelle della madre hanno attirato l'attenzione degli altri bagnanti che hanno bloccato e picchiato l'uomo. Solo l'intervento della polizia gli ha evitato il linciaggio. Il nordafricano e' finito in manette. (Agr)

The word "linciaggio" in Italian does not mean "lynching" in the American sense. Hanging is not required, and in Italy hardly the modus operandi. It is a word used to describe the fury, and beating inflicted by, a suddenly-formed crowd, in response to a crime that has just been committed or has been attempted.

Italian citizens are fed up with various kinds of illegal immigrants. Despite all kinds of sympathetic treatment, the Gypsies are not winning friends, especially when they have been caught attempting to steal very young non-Gypsy children (yes, it sounds fantastic, sounds like a medieval charge -- but it happens to be true) in order to train them up to be part of an alms-for-the-poor routine -- one would-be kidnapper was caught in the act in Naples a month ago, by the mother who ran hysterically after him, and others joined in, and as in the case at hand, only the intervention of the police prevented a life-threatening beating.

And then there are the Arabs, from North Africa in the main, so few of whom live by honest work, (there are one or two cases of successes, much ballyhooed, of Arab chefs and pizzaioli) so many of whom are involved as spacciatori, drug-dealers, and in all kinds of other criminal activities, including the street muggings that are now taken for granted.

Whatever the bomfoggery of some (not all) of the Catholic clergy, many Italians are at the end of their tether. They are tired of this, they are tired of the Rumanian killers, and the Albanians, and they do not mince words, in the American and English manner, in the Italian press about the identities of these offenders. They are tired of the vu cumpra, selling their shoddy fakes to tourists whom they accost at every streetcorner. They are tired of the Muslims squatting in their churches and urinating on the Gates of Paradise of Ghiberti (see Orianna Fallaci) or on similar works of art. They are tired of the boatloads of illegal immigrants,  that leave from Libyan shores -- the very phrase contains shades of the Cumaean Sibyl -- and that must be interdicted, and then taken to the island of Lampedusa, half-way between Africa and Italy, where the human cargo -- so unfit for life in an advanced Western society, and spelling all kinds of potential trouble and danger and expense for the Italians -- is placed in camps, with only a few  immediately sent right back, and so many of those who do manage to get to Lampedusa, no matter what the authorities try to do, end up by hook or by crook on the Italian mainland, with the inexorable results -- the certain degradation in the quality of Italian life -- that is becoming obvious to all.

And that is why even the sweetest kindest mildest people in Italy are becoming fed up, all of them. Or rather, all but  those of the comical and heedless type embodied by that correspondent for Il Manifesto who was captured in Iraq, and for whom Italy is not a place with a history and a civilization to protect, but rather, merely a boot-shaped peninsula that (since All Men Are Created And Are Forever Equal In Everything That Counts)  should be permanently open to anyone who manages to reach its shores.

The word "linciaggio" is appearing more and more in the Italian press. People are at the end of their tethers, more and more and more enraged, and capable of anything.