Alarm Clock: The Twentieth Century is over!

(To Giampiero Venturi)
08/05/17

"To the stupid revenge that the rivers are full, you can stay afloat ..." he sang Battiato in the 80 years. More than elitist or provocative, the quote was very current for the time and at the same time a forerunner.

If in these days more stupidity or bad information prevails it is hard to say. From the first, none of us is immune to millennia; on the second it would be worthwhile to reflect, especially in an age that makes mass communication its essence.

The presidential French offer us an opportunity, arriving at the epilogue already planned. After a year of symptomatic discussions of how things are spread and perceived, the air you breathe knows about recycling. Everything seems already seen or to say it on the subject, deja vu.

Let's start from the facts. Vince Macron wins the system, wins the "so is" Europe. Nothing new, nothing strange, especially nothing surprising. The victory of a semi-unknown character but designed to keep things as they are, was a page already read but necessary to the great system that feeds itself. We do not enter into the ideological merit of the dispute, but we take the opportunity to look in the mirror and consider the fragility from which we are afflicted Europeans.

The wait for the French results rhymes with that for the American presidential elections and for the Brexit referendum. Same importance, same alarms, same reactions. In all three competitions, albeit different in terms of content and contexts, the agitated bogeymen were the same and similar was the way in which public opinion divided up to wait and judge the outcomes. The Le Pen has lost (in fact it has won) but like Trump and the front leave he had from his, everything that the world of good and good refuses.

While the official ballots arrived from London, the plethora of regime analysts, between one catastrophism and another, cut out the social profile of the voters. Those who had voted in favor of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union must have tended to be elderly, ignorant and provincial. Similar speech for November 9: to hear the gurus of the politician, on the educated educated of New England and on the open minds of California, the crudeness annihilated by the populism of deep America prevailed. Yes populism, that phenomenon that has entered the glossary of "right or wrong" written by the demiurges of politically correct. Typical term that for semantics would not be orribilis, but which ended up becoming so.

Another example: "multi-ethnic is beautiful": nobody knows why, but everyone takes it for granted.

In the Manichean view of our times of democracy dropped from above, we need precisely this: a mass simplification that allows us to orient ourselves without worries between good and evil, without worrying about who is to establish the ethical parameters. We need to be right, without understanding too much the mechanisms that contribute to establishing it.

With populism we define what is basically rhetorical, which riding on demagogic themes, manages to obtain an easy consensus. Although the definition seems to have been sewn just for the leaders of politically correct political parties, populism is labeled all the movements that in some way and with different horizons, try to dismantle the political and social systems that everyone complains about but in which we continue to live. It seems strange, but the impression is that there is a great collective confusion.

Let's get to the merit.

If Brexit's victory was really due to the worker, peasant and provincial ignorance far from the lights of the limelight and the City, why were the intellectual elites historically close to social and weak themes to regret? Similar speech for the USA. Among the Clinton fans, gray expression of a Deep State ruthless, whose electoral campaign was financed by Saudi Arabia, has really stood out ultraliberal Hollywood.

As we write, to shake hands for the socialliberale (definition from the archive of contradictions) Macron, it is precisely the intellectuals, the new right-thinking bourgeois, that secular-progressive class-open minded that perhaps more than others should be indignant about the austerity policies and the shadows that have loomed for years on the lobbies in power in Brussels.

What happens then, we all became crazy? Not at all. Although someone tries to hide the calendars, the twentieth century is long over. Hostages of a monochromatic media umbrella, we are still lost in peripheral clashes, convinced that the ideological contrasts in which we grew up still exist.

To remain in the Italian example, the 25 April has just passed, a striking example of how to avoid updating is comfortable for many. In the 2017, the fascism-anti-fascist contraposition makes you laugh. Who has been pushing us for decades, however, has every interest in maintaining it. Time passes and with it the global geopolitical balances change: it would be perhaps now to look at reality for what it is.

A striking example of how things change but not everyone is aware of it, comes from Eastern Europe. Up to two years ago, dozens of volunteers left for Ukraine to fight Russian Bolshevism alongside the nationalists of Kiev. The flow is over when someone has turned on the light bulb. Bolshevism has been buried by History and with it the struggle between Charlemagne and Soviets in the Berlin of the '45. Some people like to believe it's all like 70 years ago. Fortunately it is not true.

Who fights what then? Do opposing fronts still exist today?

Of course, yes, but they include social groups and transversal political flags in their ranks. If we simplify saying that the clash between identity e globalization it could be a good summary of today's political debates, it is good to try to understand where to position oneself. At least to avoid macroscopic contradictions.

To stay in the French presidential elections, the system sided compactly with Macron. The socialist Hollande also made us converge the (few) votes, forgetting that the Le Pen of the new young president would have been closer to any elementary draft of socialism. We are not surprised that the internal political apparatuses in power do everything to stay there. It matters little that today's conservatives are yesterday's progressives or that liberal thinking is widespread more in the rich classes than in the critical peripheries. What matters is the awareness or unawareness of us citizens.

The homogeneity of judgment through simple categories and easy bogeymen, is a goal at hand for the great manipulators. We talk about political lobbies, financial interest groups, multinationals. Shaping public opinion through the systematic occupation of all means of spreading thought is the first step. Newspapers, radio, TV, news agencies, publishing houses, record companies, communication agencies, cinemas, author categories, entertainment formats ... Everything goes in one direction.

The "single thought" is not a commonplace but the flattening towards a common form of values, induced as a necessity by the global media. The lack of access to the sources, the ignorance, the lack of interest, the spirit of emulation (the stronger the greater the coverage of information) are multiplying factors of this Orwellian drama.

Today in France there is a president wanted by the 65% of citizens, a plebiscitary percentage. Less than half of those who voted for it, however, know who it is and how you think it. On this it is necessary to reflect. The twentieth century is over: wake up!

(photo: web)