Manifesto against the “new normal”
From an idea of Marco Proietti and Andrea Venanzoni
In the beginning it was the virus as an opportunity.
Tweets and statements of vague and vacuous social engineering, foreshadowing scenarios of a new world: some politicians, some pop stars, intellectuals in permanent service, those who gave and give with their very existence full reason to Nicolas Gomez Davila when he liquidated the civil engagement like prostitute stuff.
All committed to prefiguring the elliptical horizon of a near future society, in which, all attentive, shrewd, sensitive, limited in movement and freedom but happy to be, subsidized by the generous paternal and stepfather State, we will finally (re) discover the beauty of the future sun, between an annual vaccine and a tampon.
Then, having exhausted the semantic and smoky verve of the "opportunity", given that no one had understood what it consisted of, the geniuses of institutionalizing communication moved on to a new lemma, that of the "new normal": it can be found in spernacchiati conspiracy internet sites as well as serious reports by international organizations, such as UNICEF, about the condition of children in the post-pandemic future, and in the political, economic, sociological and psychological debate.
The concept of a new normal is apparently less disturbing than that of the virus as an opportunity but no less dangerous, indeed: because it underlies the definition of an epochal watershed, of a world before and a world after the pandemic, and above all it ends up integrating that The painstaking practice of self-deception that Carmelo Bene saw as the backbone of democratic practice. A leveled, measured, hyper-controlled society, where every slightest leap of self-determination is inevitably destined to end up in the notebook of the bad guys.
A happy and obsequious beating, precisely in the name of normality. Which, in hindsight, is actually a normalization, a redde rationem , a Night of the long knives to crumple any deviation from the path of building the new pandemically correct world.
After all, even a well-known minister in one of his troubled book, first published, then hastily withdrawn from the trade when it was realized that he had sung victory too soon, then forgotten again and finally re-emerged or rather to say he was risen semi-Easter to a new life editorial, had launched into advocating the cause of the new post-pandemic world, as a potential triumph of leftist values.
The idea that a new world should arise from the supposedly smoking rubble of a virus is dangerous as well as fallacious.
Dangerous because it inserts a general and misunderstood precautionary principle into the social body, as if zero risk were a viable hypothesis: and we know, we well know, that risk is on the contrary an essential and integral part of human existence and being in society. "Covid zero" as "zero risk" are formulas at best completely senseless and empty, at worst on the contrary they imply dynamics and devices that limit sociality and widespread control.
In this perspective, the aim is to present the remodeling of the triumph of the state, and it is no coincidence that we already hear about the end of globalization, the end of the market, an increasingly "friendly", pervasive, innervated public power is envisaged deep of our existence.
The new normal is an everyday life interwoven with concessions, authorizations, visas, controls, informations, reports, an epochal return to past centuries, not a leap forward.
The new normal is not an opportunity but a tyranny, with a state that tells us what to do, how to behave, where to go and where on the contrary we cannot go.
The new normal is total lack of transparency in deliberative processes, arcana imperii , managerial opacity, shattering of the sources of law and pulverization of decision-making centers.
The new normal is the neighbor who stands as a censor of our customs and a willing signal to the police authorities of behaviors deemed exorbitant by the canons of the new normal itself.
There is no new normal, if not in the trivial progressivism of those who look to the future as a way to coerce free thought within ideological fences (and divisions).
For this reason, as free men, we felt the need to draft this Manifesto against the new normality, to reaffirm individual and collective freedom, the primacy of the person over the State, and to remind the improvised social engineers who aspire to reshape everyday life that however many glittering neon lights, how much digitization, how many high-sounding words they can use in their narratives, a tyranny still remains a tyranny.
- As free men, we totally reject any vision of the pandemic that aims to create opportunities and to generate alleged "new norms". The pandemic is a tragedy, but tragedy is also the management of the public powers of the virus, the attempts to make an authoritarian and ideologizing twist take on the fight against the virus and the emerging society. There is no before and no after virus.
- As free men, we claim individual and collective freedom, in the name and respecting natural and constitutional principles. We reject exceptionality, structural and permanent emergency, returns to systems involving authorization, concession and visa regimes.
- As free men, we are aware that freedom is above all individual responsibility. This is why we reject the vision of a state that can take the place of individual will and that can ethically stand up as a good father capable of "protecting us" from risks and related responsibilities.
- As free men, we know that risk is an integral and essential part of human life. The idea of a "zero risk" is completely to be rejected, since its result would be the perennial abdication to any form of freedom.
- As free men, we want the State to return to its perimeter, without overflowing and without realizing the eye that scrutinizes everything, often through the intermediary of a misunderstood sense of active citizenship. For this reason, we ask for the return of the transparency of the data underlying the deliberative processes, the guarantees of inviolability of private property and domicile, the presumption of innocence.
- As free men, we know that every "new world" is always built on the basis of new narratives and new words. This is why we demand a public debate free from moral blackmail and convenient semantic alibis: we reject in the clearest way the de-individuation inherent in a certain language which, outrageously, feeds on "denial", on citizens transformed into terrorists and on other terms that when used cut short, new ipse dixit , any speech. We want respect and symmetry in public speech.
- As free men, we want politics to return to the service of the citizen and stop using the pandemic as a convenient mirror to conceal and deflect their own distortions. There is no room for pandemic correctness, and the tragic events experienced should not be seen as an occasion or an opportunity for change, but as the normal flow of history.
- As free men, we want digital to be an opportunity and not a new functional tyranny to permanently limit travel, desertifying the social landscape of our cities. As recognized in the main normative texts and in the European and supranational charters concerning technology, there must always be an underlying purpose and human control.
- As free men, we want the canon of democratization to return to rule science, clearing the field of the overflow of virology narcissism.
- As free men, we want to go back to being free, to love, to travel, to shake hands, to consider a public service a service and not a graceful sovereign concession.
Promoting Committee:
Pietrangelo Buttafuoco
Daniele Capezzone
Luigi Curini
Corrado Ocone
Marco Proietti
Federico Punzi
Andrea Venanzoni
By subscription:
[email protected]
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/manifesto-contro-la-nuova-normalita/ on Wed, 05 May 2021 04:00:00 +0000.