ABSTRACT
There has been no “Vietnam Summer” in Italy. Europe's largest communist party dispersed itself to the beaches or the mountains, with the party big-shots getting their reward-holidays among the baroque comforts of Marienbad or Yalta. This was fortunate for the Italian police, who then were able to devote their full attention to the growing summer menace of teenage subversion, whose agents they have learned to recognise by their long hair and extravagant attire. The right-wing press campaign in Italy against the capelloni (the long-haired), which began about two years ago with the first beatnik arrivals from over the Alps, has finally paid off. In Milan, Florence and Rome, Italian security police this summer made daily raids on the beatniks, mostly the home-grown variety, kids of the new Italian middle class, who have left the provinces for the brighter lights and tighter pants of the big city. Once it was Rome's right-wing daily, Il Tempo, which urged the city's wholesome youth to rise up and rid the city of its beatnik cluster (a fascist youth club obediently tried a punitive expedition and was properly clobbered by their seemingly effeminate prey). Now the job of harassment has been taken over by the police. (In Sardinia this year: 19 murders, 11 kidnappings—but that is another story.)
