WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY SICILIA News Journal Update - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria, July: Editorial - Sotto democratura (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The political and electoral rise of the direct right heir to historic

fascism, which is more silent than denied by those directly concerned,
has rekindled the debate on fascism-anti-fascism and on the
authoritarian drift that the Meloni government has imprinted on
institutional politics. In the press there is a plethora of
interventions by illustrious personalities who denounce the risk of the
authoritarianism of a government that tends to occupy all political
spaces. There is no doubt that the measures passed by the government
since it has been in office contain a strongly authoritarian imprint. It
began with the so-called anti-rave decree, continued with the tightening
on immigration, always and conveniently clandestine, to finish, last in
chronological order, with the new Highway Code, approved by the Council
of Ministers last June 27, whose plant faithfully reflects the idea of
society that this government wants to pass: a society in the throes of
confusion, in which an unbridled freedom prevails, devoid of morals and
values, which requires a strong and determined intervention to regain
its orderly civilized living. All this can only be achieved through the
repression and punishment of all abnormal and deviant behavior. It is
not necessary to understand the phenomena, frame them in a context,
identify their causes, it is enough simply to control and condemn. A
striking example is the line adopted towards the young militants of the
Last Generation, the non-violent movement protagonist of symbolic
actions to draw attention to the serious climate and environmental
crisis. A condescending media campaign presents them as irresponsible
vandals, the government intervenes by presenting a bill that increases
penalties and introduces new types of crimes, the judiciary prosecutes
them as criminals. The circle thus closes, a culprit responsible for
disturbing the correct civil confrontation is fed to public opinion and
the reasons for the protest are completely obliterated: the inactivity
or rather the willingness of governments not to face the climate
catastrophe. Which is an old strategy of power, of any power.

As Andrea Turco pointed out in the May editorial of this newspaper, this
right wing in government is obsessed with the idea of wanting to conquer
a cultural and ideological space that legitimizes it in the liberal
democratic assembly, makes it accept the values that once again become
pronounceable and desirable: identity , nation, sovereignty. In other
words, this cultural hegemony is necessary since globalisation, economic
and political instability, threats from wars, migrations and climate
change require strong and determined governments and the right believes
it is better suited than the left to manage this phase.

However, beyond this, there are at least two aspects that we should
reflect on. First, the authoritarianism of this right is basically
grafted onto the trend, which has already been underway for some
decades, of centralizing decisions in the hands of governments which
makes the role of parliaments increasingly ornamental. Governments, not
only the Italian ones, essentially operate with decree-laws, provisions
made unassailable by the "question of trust" and on which there can be
no confrontation or discussion, not even of institutional etiquette. The
fact that this practice is occasionally censured, even by those who
practice it, is certainly not a symptom of democracy, if they then
continually emphasize government decision-making and the so-called
"stability of governments" has now become a value in itself. So it can
be said that the post or neo-fascist right in government has found a
well-ploughed field in which to plant its perennial creed:
determination, strength, order.

A second aspect pertains to the camp that most thinks of itself as
"democratic", the institutional left which, by denouncing the
authoritarianism of the right, believes it can save the virtues of a
representative democracy that has long been in crisis and emptied of
meaning. What kind of democracy is one that totally ignores the demands
that come from below, that is deaf to any form of protest, when it
doesn't repress it, that is subservient to the interests of lobbies and
potentates? Which government, right or left, has made any difference in
the recent past? Even on issues in which the distances appear more
clear-cut, from migrants to so-called civil rights, there are many
contiguities and the instances of a true liberation equally gather distrust.

A few years ago the historian Emilio Gentile coined the expression
"acting democracy" which he defined as follows in an interview: "It is
that democracy which has the State as its stage, the rulers as
protagonists and, as you know occasionally, the sovereign people, who
enter the stage only for the election scene.  However, now he begins to
desert the proscenium. And between one performance and another, the
oligarchies of government and party continue to prevail, corruption in
the political class, the demagoguery of the leaders, the degradation of
political culture to advertisements. I'm not just referring to Italy".
And he also added that the people has never been sovereign.

This does not mean, as Gentile points out, that there is no difference
between the explicit and claimed authoritarianism of the right and the
implicit and always impending authoritarianism of the left[even if in
the current conditions in which everyone proclaims themselves democratic
everything is more nuanced], however we should ask ourselves if there
isn't an alternative to the fierce face, to the arrogance, to the idea
of a hierarchical and submissive society of the right and to the
apparent reasonableness, mimicry, facade democracy of the institutional
left.

Our late David Graeber wrote in his seminal Critique of Western
Democracy: "Throughout the essay I have argued that democratic practices
- defined as egalitarian decision-making procedures or modes of
government based on public discussion - tend to emerge from situations
in which communities of various generally manage their affairs outside
the ambit of the state".

Therefore between right and left there is always an intrinsically
authoritarian coercive power involved. Whether or not you perceive
authoritarianism is the hallmark of our false democracies.

Angelo Barberi

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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