Almost a year has passed since the Online Defense project was born. Not the hope of founding yet another defense magazine, the goal was and is to be able to fill a huge gap in Italian popular culture: to accept and know what the military is for and what it should serve.
Recipe?
Talk about it, freely.
When the first month the headline recorded 30.000 displayed pages we set the target at ten times the value for the end of the year.
It was an optimistic, ambitious, almost a shot.
Today, a month in advance, we passed it (November 2014: 331.379 pages visited!).
There are many people who, with passion and sharing of purpose, work together to ensure that one day, as has long been the case in other countries, we can tell the reality without fear. Every month new volunteers ask to contribute with their own ideas, experiences, skills. The greatest praise goes to them.
Every time an Italian soldier must do his duty he must wear a camouflage camouflage. One is for the enemies, the other is for the much more dangerous and infamous friendly fire.
There are many who do not respect the armed forces and the related costs. As they have been presented for decades, are they to blame?
The way of online defense is to tell the reality to make people understand - first of all to ourselves! - what is defense, in Italy and abroad.
The newspaper is an arena where we can talk about everything. Among us there are experts in uniform and in bourgeois, passionate and simple curious; everyone, from the veteran, to the recruiter, to the modeller, to the journalist, to the objector, can contribute by sharing his knowledge or experience with everyone.
We were only a team at the beginning and now we are a small army.
How to participate?
We use the tools available:
Tales of military life (racconti@difesaonline.it) is the column that collects episodes (from the most hilarious to the saddest) experienced wearing a uniform. The guarantee of anonymity (if requested) and the non-publication of "sensitive" information (always) meant that dozens of readers sent their own writing. When in Racconti a reader recounted her homosexuality in uniform with courage, I realized the importance of Online Defense: where else could she have been!
Le letters to the director (direttore@difesaonline.it) then gave space to reports, analyzes, reports or even simple outbursts.
I comments on facebook they are finally the most obvious place for exchange of opinions. Above all, an exam for those who publish: there have been numerous criticisms for a title or content that is out of place or an inaccurate photograph (perhaps taken from an armed press release ...). It is the price you pay to have prepared and careful adventure companions.
The writer is not afraid to make mistakes, but a wish concerns the interventions: the purpose of our magazine is to inform about topics that are unknown to most people, we respect every objection or disagreement. We respond to comments with education and - if possible among fellow citizens - affection. We are all victims of decades of silence and lies. We try to be tolerant, also because we could be the one to take a corner sooner or later. And if we really have to get angry, we always motivate our answers.
Therefore, comments on the limits of legality will no longer be tolerated. We can say everything with the right, ironic or even sarcastic form.
Well, what are you waiting for now?
You can tell an episode in uniform, write to the newspaper or let everyone read a piece that enriches us.
The solution to the non-culture of Italian defense is neither in propaganda nor in the blind search for scandals.
And I recommend, if you share, "share".
With estimates.
Andrea Cucco
