That’s how it happens …
I don't like anniversaries, "world days", or those of, of, of or of. I cannot escape the unpleasant impression that the stale taste of certain liturgies hides the stubborn desire to use the remaining 364 (or 365) days of the year to deal with other things.
This is especially true of memory, which is in so far as it is perennial.
I fear the risk of celebrating it in one day and neglecting it in the rest, and I would like to talk to you about this. But first I remind you that in this blog we have dedicated a lot of space to the horrors of the Second World War, if only because, on the basis of an analysis of the objective dynamics in progress, we saw in such abominations an asymptote to which our system risked, and my opinion still runs the risk of tending. "Never again!" it is not a political category, it is not a historical category, it is not a useful category, and therefore it risks being a harmful category …
We only happened in 2012 to honor this memory exactly on the day that others do it, but we also happened to do it in more prestigious locations and with the involvement of illustrious personalities:
This year the fourth ballot of the election of the President of the Republic will most likely fall on the day of the deputy, and it is therefore likely that he will not have the opportunity to talk to you or that he has anything else to talk about. So I go ahead with my work by pointing out a memory exercise that in my opinion deserves all your attention and that I have already reported to you on my other social channels (Telegram, Twitter): the article by Ziona Greenwald (of which I only know what I see on the web: a young woman with a beautiful smile and an excellent pen, who knows more let us know …) published by The Times of Israel , entitled: This is how it happens , that's how it happens.
The article is important because in my opinion it sets the correct conceptual and communicative framework for doing what here in Italy you don't want to do, or at least you don't want to do in the appointed institutional offices, such as the so-called Anti-Discrimination Commission : reflect deeply on discriminatory violence inherent in the recent regulatory framework for the containment of the pandemic, a framework that clearly violates, without any judge in Berlin intervening, the precise indications of the EU Regulation 2021/953 of the European Parliament and of the Council , where it speaks repeatedly of non-discrimination and proportionality . But we understand that for the PD the European Regulations are subject to a sort of "most disadvantaged nation clause": they apply in so far as they can oppress or harm Italian citizens. If ever, by chance or by distraction, the opposite happens, they disapply (while in this case a careful judiciary should disapply the Italian law: but it is not entirely a bad thing that a precedent is created in which, involuntarily and by mere chance, jurisprudence re-establishes a correct hierarchy among the sources of law).
The inertia of institutional settings is compounded by activism raucous and broken many citizens on social do something that, as pointed out in the beginning of the article, Greenwald, you can not do: establish purely and simply a parallel between COVID policies also extreme, such as the violation of the right to work, and the destination of an entire population to the gas chambers.
"There is no equation, period".
I totally agree, and I frame this observation in the principle set out here several times of not letting the opponent choose the field: putting oneself in the wrong with unacceptable statements does not serve us, but our opponents, and since I do not know certain characters looking for a publisher who indulge in similar behaviors, I don't know how to evaluate greater or lesser good faith, and above all I am not interested in evaluating it, I certainly consider them enemies, as we must objectively consider anyone who damages us, anyone who damages the battle of freedom that we carry on, regardless of what their motivations may be (I simplify: regardless of whether they are unintelligent or are agents provocateurs).
Here ends what can also be said in Italy, and begins what, as far as I can understand, can only be said in a state like Israel, whose refined civilization has been tempered by so many dramatic historical vicissitudes. Because Greenwald, having made the shareable premise that I have exposed to you, affirms two other principles without frills and resoluteness that I share and that however here I do not see expressed except by unnecessarily (therefore harmful) folkloric characters:
- "what began as a war on a virus … quickly turned into a war on human rights and freedom": what began as a war on a virus quickly turned into a war on human rights and freedom;
- the Holocaust tragedy was preceded by a series of warning signs ("those unfathomable horrors did not arise in a vacuum"), and then "Those who pledge their commitment to" Never Again "but forget the graduated steps that led to that greatest human atrocity are liable to enable, and perhaps even commit, grave moral wrongs" great human atrocities are are likely to allow, and perhaps even to commit, grave wrongs ".
It happened to me, as it will have happened to you too, to speak with direct witnesses of those horrors. Many remember the gradualness with which they introduced themselves: it began with caricatures like this:
maybe even witty or amusing (for some, including victims) and yet all tending to the dehumanization of a group, and then, step by step, in accordance with the well-known principle: motus in fine velocior . The point therefore is not, nor can it be, that of a static comparison between two unmistakable realities, but of a dynamic comparison between two trajectories that could prove to be comparable, given that their beginning is marked by substantially equivalent epiphenomena, and the current one "could lead to even darker places if it is not called out ".
In short, this time it will certainly be different, but are we sure that letting your guard down is a good idea? And because precisely those who lowered it for the first time, return today to lower it (among the visible exceptions, that of the courageous Ziona, to whom we hope does not understand what happened to other courageous intellectuals ).
I think it depends on something we talked about a few articles ago, talking about charity , which we defined as "noticing things before they happen to you", and why this virtue is so rare. It could be said like this: "never again!" it is a negation, and it is a short step from negation to repression. Short, but very slippery: the abyss is at our side. I have happened to solicit the attention of intellectuals who in principle had more than one reason for wanting to preserve their memory, producing evidence of certain current trends. I expected if not solidarity, at least interest. I was always surprised by their de minimis attitude, which left inside me an unsolved, an unspoken one, finally dissolved by the title of Greenwald: "this is how it happens"!
Now I know.
Someone said that there are two ways of not being charitable, that is, as Greenwald would say, of "losing one's moral compass": thinking that it will never touch you, and thinking only of what has gone to you.
Please do not fall into either of these two horrors.
(… and now I return to the day by day, which today includes … )
(… -14 … )
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2022/01/e-cosi-che-succede.html on Mon, 10 Jan 2022 14:09:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.