Plague

image from The Times

As you already know, here in Italy we are in quarantine as Coronavirus seems to prefer our land to any other country in Europe. How could it be otherwise after all? We have been enjoying the most incredible winter ever, more like spring than winter, trees are already sprouting, why should the virus head to some more uncomfortable place? In the meanwhile from North to South we are panicking. Supermarket have been assaulted to stock up on food, drinks, masks and above all bottles of Amuchina (Purell), which currently cost more than white truffle. Some schools in the North have been closed as a precautionary measure, school trips forbidden and worst of all, there is the most serious danger that football games might be played behind closed door, right this year that my team S.S.Lazio is that close to win the League (after 20 years).

But when I come across such articles as the following one, I cannot but change the tone of my words:

In the European Union, which prides itself on its open borders among member nations, new cases were recorded in Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Spain and Switzerland. Most were tied to Italy, where the authorities have been struggling to contain an outbreak that has infected at least 325 people, most of them in the north near Milan. ( The New York Times)

Hence, open borders are the problem according to the New York Times. I don’t know why we have become the epidemic centre, but one thing I can say for sure, it’s not because of open borders. People have always moved carrying in the lands they visited their kit of bacteria and viruses with the consequences everybody knows and they’ll keep moving with or without borders. It’s not because of immigration from North Africa too, as the virus comes straight from the civilized, rich and sovereigntist North. But what makes Coronavirus so dangerous to cause such a nervous breakdown in all the country? As far as I can see: mass media.

As you can imagine, we are flooded by updates, interviews to epidemiologists and commentators of any kind, thousands of fake news. Everybody seems to master the topic and has something to say about, but, eventually, the only result is that of increasing a sense of general insecurity generating panick, whose consequences, it’s not unlikely, might lead to an economic recession. And for what? Coronavirus is nothing but a flu. In Italy, which is currently the third country in the world for number of cases, 378 people have been infected and 12 have died. These latter, to be precise, were old and have not died for the virus itself, but for the serious pathologies they had been affected before, which had weakened their immune system. These are the facts plain and simple. Of course, we must take precautions and follow the health protocol, which is exactly the same for any other seasonal flu. Once again, we have another proof of how the excess of information cannot but generate misinformation, ignorance and pointless fear.

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Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

“Sex & drugs & rock & roll”  I remember Ian Dury sang some time ago. A mantra which has constituted for more than one generation the antidote to the homologation to middle class morality and values: family, a good job, a responsible life. Dull!! I am sure any of us has enjoyed a more or less long “sex & drugs & rock & roll ” phase in their life, the rebellious phase, when you want to break the world of OLD RULES, advocating one with NO RULES, till without even realizing it, you find yourself banging your head against the wall of NECESSARY RULES (better known as compromises), so the Hegelian phase of growing up comes to an end and you have become an adult, brand new middle class, of course.

This fight against the bourgeois system of values is nothing new and actually dates back to the time when the middle class world definitely imposed itself on the old aristocrat model of society. Profit, utilitarianism, success, respectability united to a massive dose of prudery and hypocrisy became the totems of the age of the triumph of the middle class: the Victorian Age. And you know what kind of lifestyle did the rebels of the time dream of? Sex & drugs an& rock & roll. Nineteenth century style, of course.

These peculiar kinds of rebels were called “dandies”. They were easily recognizable, as they exhibited a unique refinement, which was their way to express their contempt towards the triviality, hypocrisy, materialism, in a word, the ugliness of the Victorian bourgeoisie. Aesthetics was for them a religion and as they believed that the Victorian society was desperately in want of beauty, they defied it trying to make of their lives something different, just as beautiful as a work of art and if a prudish, respectable kind of behaviour was required, well, they chose to devote themselves to the god of pleasure. Dandies never followed fashion, they did not seek for homologation, for sure. They made it. They embodied such models of elegance and sophistication, which were to be seen unattainable by anybody and no amount of money could buy.

Hence, the dandies chose to fight the system creating an antithetical model, thus proving the mediocrity of the Victorian standards of behaviour. Did they succeed? Well, yes, of course, till they banged their heads against the above mentioned wall (sooner or later it happens). However, they were not the only voices against those standards, there were some others, who were called: Bohemians.  They were, as William Makepeace Thackeray said, “ artists or littérateur who, consciously or unconsciously, secedes from conventionality in life and in art” rejecting permanent residence and surviving on little material wealth. They were exactly like the hippies of the end of the nineteenth century. In Paris many of them lived at Montmartre, not far from the “Moulin Rouge”, while in London they could be seen at Chelsea or Soho. They lived solely for art and literature’s sake and their dissolute lives were often characterized by alcohol and drug abuse, as well as open sexual freedom.  The Bohemians, in fact, felt the need to express and assert themselves, being at such a social and economic disadvantage. They aimed at defying the system, flaunting their marginality. They were actually sex and drugs & rock & roll.

Did they succeed? You know the answer. Rebellions bring new lymph to any society but their life is short and their fate is inevitably homologation. Therefore, once the disuptive impetus has gone, what remains is a sort of quietness, better known as adulthood, and in this new land only the memory of a refrain remains: “sex & drugs & rock & roll”.

 

Freedom is……….

Think about a region, a very productive one, where there is the best education system, the most advanced health system, excellent manufacture, a place where ingenious, hard working people have succeeded in making profit even out of one of the less quaint stretch of coastline of the Adriatic sea, creating well organized bathing resorts, a mix of good quality facilities and places to have fun, which attract thousands of tourists from all over the world. In this region poverty rate is very low, welfare truly works, good food is popular cult and lively music part of the cultural heritage. A paradise. Does such a place really exist in Italy? Yes, it does. It’s Emilia Romagna, 1 of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, the place where lasagne, tortellini and piadina, just to mention some of their worldwide most famous delicatessen, were born. This region has been ruled by the same party for 72 years.

Now, imagine that on occasion of the administrative elections to choose the new president of this region, another political entity would decide to defy the ruling party. With such history and such outcomes it would seem a desperate attempt to anybody. Emilia Romagna has always been the most powerful stronghold of the left wing, doing better would be very unlikely. Another scenario had to be found to have a chance of victory. Something that could mine the certainties of those lucky citizens and convince them that they were not safe at all, that there was a real danger, despite all the good that had been done in years, right behind their doors which could reduce them to poverty: immigrants, thousands of immigrants, ready to replace them at work and strip them of their wealth.

What did the leader of the new political entity say to persuade them? Well, not much. Apart from the same refrain about immigrants, his political campaign was mostly based on the kissing of rosaries, on calling the name of the Virgin Mary and all the Saints in any possible occasion and taking selfies with all the fans who wished it. Fans ? You would say. Yes, fans. He has got millions of fans, who worship him from North to South in any social media, who believe he is just like one of them as he speaks their language and are ready to support him in his holy mission, which,  he seems sometimes to imply, was given him by God himself ( this must be when he is under the effect of a mojito): defend us from any invader and unify the country under one motto “Italians first “(the fact that only 2 seconds before, as the  leader of lega, he had claimed the secession of other two rich regions Lombardia and Veneto, was only a little detail). About Emilia Romagna he never said much. It was not important. If you think, I am just joking, you can have evidence of this in any Italian paper ( but if you do, I’ll be offended).

One thing I forgot to say, this leader, who is former Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, was not the candidate for the presidence of Emilia Romagna, the candidate was a woman, of whom we had only seen a picture of her, I can’t remember her name, actually, and only few have ever heard her say a word (and those who have, refer that those words had the power of breaking the spell had won their brains and went back soon to normality). Salvini did the campaign on her behalf, in fact, as he had planned to make of those administrative elections a test on him and the government stability. Winning Emilia, even with no strong candidate but himself as enchanter, would have smashed the last fortress of the left wing, thus opening the way to new elections and god knows what else .

Did it work? Well, you know well, particularly if some British readers have ventured to read this post so far, that a good dose of populism, nationalism, dreams, inconsistencies rather proven fact and fears, make the infallible potion to win any political test these days, in fact, in November Salvini’s candidate, or better the bill of the candidate, was 7 points before the candidate of the left wing and former president of the region, whose work had been esteemed incontrovertibly good till then.

Something had to be done to stem the losses but what and how? The political forces of the left wing were under shock and did not seem capable of planning an effective counter attack, so as citizens, what can we do in these cases? Well, we can stay at home and pray that something happens or make it happen. Matteo Salvini had planned to open the political campaign with a rally in Bologna and about 5.000 people were expected there. It could be the beginning of the end. Mattia Santori, Giulia Trappoloni, Andrea Garreffa and Roberto Morotti, all around their thirties, thought they could not just watch in silence. Something had to be done. So in few days they organized a counter-rally at Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore the very day Salvini would start his campaign at the sports arena. They hoped to be at least 6.000. More than 15.000 thousand people gathered at Piazza Maggiore.

They call themselves “Sardines”, as they aim at filling squares packed together like sardines in a tin box. And this is what they did: wherever Salvini held a rally, the “Sardines” followed him, organizing another one and attracting more people than he did, thus demostrating that the voices of many people together can make a very powerful one that can silence any threat. Bologna, Modena, Ferrara, Parma first and then the movement spread all over Italy from North to South. A week ago Salvini was defeated at the regional administrative elections, and the candidate of the left wing won with a 9 point margin. As an Italian singer once said: “freedom is not standing on a tree, it is not even the flight of a fly, freedom is not an open space, freedom is participation.

La libertà non è star sopra un albero
Non è neanche il volo di un moscone
La libertà non è uno spazio libero
Libertà è partecipazione…(Giorgio Gaber)