Twelve years ago, Mark Steyn in his book “America Alone” predicted their problems perfectly. Below replacement fertility rate and the Italians would disappear replaced by immigrants.
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Whoduathunkit... two millennia after the Romans had to beat back Hannibal, now is the time.
Allthough it’s not that black and white (no pun intended) as the Italian peninsula has changed in cultural and ethnic ways since then, so it’s all a gray area shift rather than a singular historical even, but really, what has truly changed in over 2000 years to explain it. Would anyone like to blame the EU and the globalists? Figured I’d get in before
I think the two world wars were bigger events (Steyn’s thesis, IIRC). You had “lost generations” twice only 25 years apart. There was a huge “hole” in men available to start traditional families. The wars ushered in a hedonistic lifestyle centered around “me and now,” not focused on God and the future of your progeny. There were a lot of concentration camps throughout Italy and they shipped many Jews out, so there is lingering national angst and guilt over that. Toss all that in the salad bowl of life and you don’t get a tasty meal.