Since I came back to Italy I don't know what I have to write about, actually I don't know what to write. I believe in the healthy principle that if you don't have nothing to say, should be better not to speak or write. So I didn't write since a long time. Actually I also worked a lot in Naples in the last 3 weeks, up to 14 hours a day. So there was no much to say. But this week I am in Rome and I don't have much to do.
And I am living on the roof of an old building in the center of the city in a guest room. So, as I had a lot of free time, I went to the cinema and in demonstrations. Both of these experiences gave me something to write about.
The movie I watched is "Noi credevamo" (= We were believing), a strong work directed by Mario Martone. The movie tells about the story of 3 guys from south of Italy in the 30 years preceding the unification of Italy occurred in 1861 (next year it will be 150th anniversary). So it gives the picture of a generation of Italians, who were yet not Italians as citizenship, but just as a natural-cultural-historical belonging. They speak Italian in order to understand each other, given that their own language was their own dialect (the language aspect is one of the most amazing ones in the movie). But even when they speak Italian with their strong regional accent, it doesn't seem that they are speaking a foreign language, but still their own language. If I have to make an example, I can say it should be like when an Algerian and an Iraqi speak classical Arabic in order to understand each other, so it is like they speak another language but still theirs. One thing anyway seems clear from this movie: those guys, these 3 main characters from the south and other guys from other part of Italy, they seem to believe in something common and they are ready to sacrifice their life for it. This is not propaganda, indeed the movie keeps far from propaganda, on the contrary it is something historically documented. Italians who left Italy and in the main cities of Europe like London, Paris, Geneve, they met to plan any insurrection against the pope or the kings of the several states which were placed in the italian peninsula at those times. What makes this movie peculiar is the time of the verb in the title. The past: "we were believing". On one hand it gives a thrill because it gives us, Italians of today, the chance to say these words like we still are those guys of 150 years ago. But this is the trick, very well thought. Because while we say "we were believing", we feel all the gravity of this sentence, because we feel all the time passed. Because it's not easy today to believe what they were believing. I mean it's not easy today to believe in something called Italy. Let's keep aside the usual rightist propaganda on the motherland, this is not what I want to speak about, I mean they feel as motherland anything that gives them an identity, even their floor-mates can be a motherland for them. I mean it's not a common social achievement that they pursue but the comfortable feeling to be on the side of the authority, which is absolutely not what I want to speak about. So, coming back to the movie, it's not easy today to believe in the idea of Italy, neither to consider Italy something worthy to be believed. But still, when I got out from the cinema, something was moving in my stomach. Because I felt to believe in their Italy, which was not what Italy is today. And today doesn't mean this year or this criminal government, but what Italy has been in these last 150 years. In fact those guys where definitively believing in a country which probably never existed. I can say that the ideal of Italy as a country born from the common feeling of all its citizens died with the end of the experience of the so called "Roman Republic of the 19th century" (during which the pope had to leave Rome) which lasted a few months in 1849 and then was defeated by the French army come in defense of the pope, who gained back his throne. The nation which was born in 1861 instead was a plan designed by the European powers and it was essentially the colonization of the kingdom of Savoy (north of Italy) on the south of Italy. The last episode of the movie shows one of these guys, already around 50 years of age, who decides to join Garibaldi (the hero of the birth of Italy, according to the national propaganda) in Calabria, not in 1860, but in 1862, which thing nobody tells about and nobody teaches at school. In fact, 2 years after the famous "Expedition of the Thousand", once the kingdom of Italy was already established, Garibaldi tried to march again from the south to Rome for showing that the people were not with the establishment and that the unification has not been made by the people but on their skin. So Garibaldi and his followers were then shot by the established Italian army and this time had to surrender. This was a so painful scene. If then we see how much the south of Italy paid (and it's still paying) for this so called "unification", you feel rage for what Italy has been and still is today.
The last words of the movie are said by the same character who was a survivor in Calabria (Garibaldi himself was injured by the Italian army in Calabria, by the way, despite he was the hero of the unification). He is giving something like a "not in my name" speech. Historically we can say he (and those like him in his generation) was the first one able to say something like "not in my name" in Italy. And he had all the reasons to say it. But the very last words of the movie are:
<<We, this sweet word, we... we were believing>>.
Probably this is the biggest teaching that the scriptwriters wanted to send. In fact I think we lost the hope to think "we" as a sweet word.
In a crucial scene of the movie, Cristina di Belgioioso, a reach italian woman from Milan living in Paris supporting by money and by logistics the italian revolutionaries, says to one of the 3 guys:
<<You are like fools, because democracy is not just voting, it is a long process after which the people must first become aware of the society. Today most of the Italians would not understand what you are talking about>>.
This is a crucial point, not only in Italy. It reminds me a professor I met one day in Syria, in 2005. At that time US were talking about attacking Syria too. And the excuse was to export democracy, as usual. This professor is still now a dissident, but he was warning US about an attack on the country. He said:
<<For sure we would like to have democracy in Syria since our party is not allowed to take part in the elections, but democracy is not just voting, it is rather a long process, so this is why we don't believe in the US way to democracy, we know that we must first make our people aware of what democracy should mean, and then together go and claim democracy from the president>>.
I had these words in my mind yesterday when I took part in the demonstration held here in Rome by the university students who were protesting for the upcoming (but maybe not) reform on the university system. Reform that first means cuts for the study like never seen in Italy. And then from a person like the italian ministry of education I will never expect anything good. So my solidarity to these students is full. However I was surprised seeing that the number of them was not so high. They said 2 thousands, but I think they were less. In a big city like Rome and for a such terrible reform, I should expect to see many more students in the street. I have to say that they are determined and noisy, and then in these weeks it suites also the moderate leftists to ride this protest, so now they became the first news today on the italian leftist press, anyway. But I was wondering why this situation was not enough to call many more people in the street. We are losing our future, losing our best researchers who are all leaving Italy to study and survive abroad. It's a terrifying situation.
So I thought of the words of Cristina di Belgioioso. And I thought why I can't find sweet the word "we" anymore. I found 2 answers, but maybe there can be many more. The first is that I can't feel to be like "we" when I am in the street, in a demonstration. It seems to me that when people are in the street they are fighting for a brand and not for an ideal. It seems to me like if you have your own opinion out of the brand stream, it is not an opinion anymore, but a betrayal. It seems to me like everybody is pursuing the idea of prevailing on the others more than to find common solutions, so far that it is common to find who uses ideas as weapons in the debate-match more than as aims of his practice. That's why to change idea is common, because it is considered a wise and smart strategy rather than a sign of confusion. It seems to me like Italy is a vertical State and you can go up not by the beating of your wings, not for your quality, but only if you meet a vertical updraft and this can happen only if you lend your brain (and your vote and your life) to the owners of these updrafts, on the right side as much as on the left side. This is a kind of feudalism. The lord and the club, no space for individuals. That's why today I can hardly feel to be together with others while I am in the street in Italy.
Then there is a second reason. It is that nowadays Italians are under a heavy long brain washing and they are absolutely not aware of what is happening in the history of the country. So today I heard in my ears while I was in the street the words of Cristina di Belgioioso:
"Today most of the Italians would not understand what you are talking about".
But how can be the same situation like 170 years ago? At that time people were not going to school, they could not read books or newspapers, not to speak about tv and internet.
But the tool in this case is not ensuring the success, on the contrary, it can be used reversely. I mean that what we faced in Italy it is an aimed miseducation of the social life, that's why it can happen that a few students in the street protesting for the cuts of researchers don't shake and don't scandalize the country. And somebody in the tv could say that this is what they deserved, because they are extremists and they must be beaten. And no institution went to close this tv programme for incitement to violence. In other words italian citizens are no more ready for democracy. We went backward instead of forward. So we should not call "democratically elected" this premier and neither the next one and all those who will come before a new education of the people will be completed.
<<We must first make our people aware of what democracy should mean, and then together go and claim democracy>>.
In Italy we are watching the sunset of the civilization. It's an impressive show. That's why I can't feel to say "we" anymore.
The students occupied some symbols of Italy yesterday: the Coliseum in Rome, the Tower of Pisa, the Mole in Turin. Some others climbed on the roofs to protest. I was already on the roof of this guest house and I took some picture of Rome seen from the roof. If I will get down one day, I think it will be not to protest or to "fight", but to meet those who are victims of the brain washing trying to learn together again what democracy is.
The Coliseum seen from a Rome's roof.
