Keywords

• In the early 1950â€
• ™
• s
• after the beginning of the Korean War
• a debate about the possibility of establishing a â€
• œ
• protected democracyâ€
• 
• took place in Italy. It was justified by the need to fight off the â€
• œ
• communist threatâ€
• 
• . The attempt to â€
• œ
• protect democracyâ€
• 
• is expressed mainly by the presentation of some bills which were to limit the influence of left-wing parties (the civil defense law
• some economic laws
• the law against military and economic sabotage
• the labor law
• the so-called â€
• œ
• Polivalente lawâ€
• 
• that would have suppressed all political parties with anti-democratic purposes and
• in particular
• the Communist Party
• the law for the regulation of the press) and by the electoral law (the so-called â€
• œ
• swindle lawâ€
• 
• ) in 1953. These measures constitute a homogeneous series because of their processing mode and of the purposes that the government attributed to them. This article analyses the political debate about these bills
• both in newspapers and in Parliament. Most of these bills were never passed (and often not even discussed) in Parliament and lapsed at the end of the term of office of the legislature: their presentation
• in fact
• responded to the need to face pressures on several fronts (usa
• Catholic Church
• right wing of the Christian Democracy Party) more than to counter a real communist threat. The debate about the â€
• œ
• protected democracyâ€
• 
• however
• left an important legacy in the Italian political culture: the Communists began to represent themselves as persecuted people and the idea of a threat coming from them was credited in public opinion. Thus
• it legitimized various attempts to marginalize Pci and Cgil activists and to suppress their struggles