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France's New Parochial Nationalism:
Isolationism Rallies Under the Red Banner
- Abstract
In August 1952, in the rudest, remotest corner of Provence, a whole family of English tourists was murdered, and the solution of the crime was blocked for over a year by the local and family solidarity of the murderer’s neighbors. The murder, when finally solved, brought out into the spotlight a human type incomprehensible to Western ideologues, but one that has become important lately in many “backward areas,” including those of Italy as well as France.
A rich old peasant, one Dominici, lived on his remote estate in Stone Age style, patriarchal ruler of his family; his grownup sons bowed fearfully before him; his wife and daughters-in-law could not eat at his table, but only in the kitchen. He was tyrant of his village, and lord over life and death on his own soil. Nightly he patrolled his wide domains with dog and gun. Finding one night three strangers camped in a tent by the roadside, he shot them dead, man, wife, and child, as if they were wild animals.
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