WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
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Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
Social democracy in peril.
The new fascism.
Coming Together at the Seams
The view from Porto Alegre ...
... and direct action in New York.
Not Just Black and White
LOCAL MOTION: Oak Park, Illinois
A Scandal Bigger than Enron.
An Open Letter to George W. Bush
Kenny Boy? Never heard of him.
Backtalk
McCarthyism redux.
Appall-o-Meter
The military busts the 2003 budget.
Word Games
Bush stealth-attacks reproductive rights.
Hard-liners
Bush hands AIDS policy to the Christian right.
Chechnya remains mired in misery.
Ann Pettifor: Discrediting the Creditors.
Party Animals
BOOKS: Micah Sifry follows the third way.
BOOKS: Randall Kennedy's Nigger.
MUSIC: Something is in the water.
FILM: Let's play Rollerball.
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February 19, 2002
Mussolini’s Ghost
Add to that what we call a “conflict of interest.” Mussolini himself
did not have the system of political privilege that Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s
prime minister, has. On the other side, there’s an eerie absence of opposition.
It’s true. It’s a reality that can be felt: Our role has become one
of mere dissidents trying to fill the void of political opposition. I attended
the convention of the Democratici di Sinistra [Democratic Left Party]:
They seemed paralyzed. “We must change, or we will die,” they exclaimed.
And having said that, they remained on the podium like statues of salt. When someone like Pier Ferdinando Casini, president of the Parliament and member
of the Union of Catholic Democrats, says things that sound like they should
come from the left, such as, “Before changing anything at the RAI [Italian
State TV], we need to resolve issues involving conflict of interest,” then
we are in the midst of madness. This is someone on the right parroting the critical
voice of a left that no longer exists, at a time when the right’s efforts
should be protested with important debates, meetings, demonstrations—in
other words, any kind of presence. It’s absurd that Casini tells his party
members: “Wait, let’s not overdo it.” Even if this situation
ends as a travesty or in nothing at all, the right will still have succeeded
in speaking in the place of the opposition. But one also sees new movements on the rise, especially among students, young
workers and the elderly, who, through great and generous participation, seem
to restore the waters of the resurrection. And I say, even, in the Catholic
sense of the term, the waters of purification. These movements testify to an
awe-inspiring resurgence. However, instead of going along with these new movements, supporting them and
applauding them, the left runs from them, as if disgusted. These are the same
leftists, we should note, who are responsible for selling off our public schools,
a plan young people, teachers and democratic-oriented families have made clear
with the slogan: “Don’t turn our schools into businesses.” Before
creating a private school system, we should concern ourselves with putting the
one that already exists—the public school system—back together. The same goes for their position on the war. Representatives of the center-left,
in order to mitigate their position, plead: “Let’s be careful not
to upset the people. Let’s not turn innocent people into victims.”
Let’s be careful? Is that a joke? By now we know that 90 percent of victims
are innocent, as Gino Strada, the author and founder of Emergency, an Italian
organization that provides medical aid to war-torn regions, has explained to
us. But, of course, we already knew that.
And all this for what? For a Pashtun victory that takes opium production back
from the Taliban, opium that will still be sent to Pakistan to be refined and
transformed into heroin. In the end, this means everything is put back into
circulation with great force—the profits of the drug traffic recycled through
American and European banks in a vicious circle of terrorist financing. As a
journalist asked an official of the American government, “Given the financial
trail of money-laundering that Swiss banks are involved in, when do you plan
to bomb Switzerland?” The reply: dead silence. But to return to Italy and to the decline of democracy that manifests itself
there daily, I would not want this moment to become similar to what occurred
when that other absolutist government was born, the one my father used to tell
me about—he who, when very young, was a political refugee in France. I’m
struck when I listen to those who witnessed that era firsthand say that they
feel like they are reliving the ’20s, the years of the birth of fascism. Furthermore, we read the newspaper and see that Berlusconi’s attorney,
when presenting himself to the court for the first time after being charged
with corruption, leaves the courtroom shouting: “There’s no more justice!”
His lawyers are there alongside Berlusconi’s lawyers to demand the intervention
of the minister of justice, a member of the Northern League, and chosen, conveniently,
by Berlusconi’s government. We have before us the most irrational paradoxes, like something out of Alfred
Jarry’s King Ubu, the farce of the impossible: Laws are made expressly
for the king, ministers are elected from his court to defend only his own interests,
and the public applauds. At most, someone delivers a minor burp of indignation.
With a clear conscience, the Cavalier and his men take every power in hand and
enjoy total impunity. It is the logic of, “We will never go to prison.” I heard someone from Berlusconi’s government say that they will meet with
the center-left. “In one hand,” he said, “we’ll hold an
olive branch and, in the other, a gun.” Those were his exact words. It’s
true. The new fascism is there in their language and in their expressions. Beginning
with “Business Italy” and moving to the “Business Party,”
we are all made into employees of the government, with the Big Boss at the center.
“Losers Beware!” was another fascist slogan. Today, it is enough
to see the gestures, words, attitudes and the arrogance of these politicians,
who beat their fists on the table, shouting “You’re busting my balls”
or “Get the hell out of my business” (like the Minister of Communications).
We also hear “Arabs get out,” “They can build their fleabag mosques
somewhere else,” and “They should stay in their ghetto.” There’s
a new idea: a ghetto for those who are different, for those who are not willing
to conform. At times I feel anguished by this whole situation, a mute kind of melancholy.
I continue to work in the theater, of course, and in parts of our performances
we deal with these topics. And the public responds, but of course we’re
preaching to the converted. The best thing today is this fantastic breeze and sun––these young
people who are organizing themselves across the world. They need our help, information
and the truth. But today we have no Jean-Paul Sartre who goes to speak at universities.
In 1968 he held a conference on the theater of circumstance—political,
popular theater. He opened the conference with a quote from Alberto Savinio:
“Oh men, narrate our story.” Today, it is no longer a question of giving a history of the present, a sense
of l’esprit du temps. Today theater directors and directors of theaters
are on the right (some more recent converts than others) and have acquired a
flair for flag-waving. Most intellectuals, in the meantime, are sleeping or
simply pretending the warning signs don’t exist—pretending that they
have better things to think about. Dario Fo, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in literature, is an Italian
anarchist playwright and actor. The following text is taken from a speech about
the decline of democracy in Italy given on January 12 in Paris. Translated
by William Finley Green. |
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WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
e are witnessing in Italy a never-ending series of aberrations and hypocrisies
by various political groups that are invoking—almost to the point of reclaiming
the same words and gestures—a fascist climate. They use the same repertoire
and shout the same slogans: freedom, effort, fatherland, Italy, defense of the
race, culture of our civilization, original civilization. …
t has been calculated that the past three months of bombings [in Afghanistan]
have claimed more than 3,000 civilian victims, equivalent to the victims of
the Twin Towers. This does not count the victims of the devastated cities, who
live with atrocious hardships, or the invisible victims—“the invisible
dead,” as Strada once called them—whose numbers are frightening: thousands
of orphans, whose parents were blown to bits by bombs and land mines. In this
immense war-torn territory, it will take an estimated 200 years to clear the
millions of land mines.