Democracy between Trump and Biden. Editorial by Funiciello on Civilization of machines
Extract from the editorial "The word democracy" by Antonio Funiciello – chief of staff of Prime Minister Mario Draghi – on the February issue of the Leonardo foundation's magazine "Civilization of machines" (directed so far by Funiciello)
The word democracy contains many words. If we want to be zealous, the word democracy takes on its full meaning only when it accepts the words of everyone, even those who contest its functioning or outcome. Thus the polis, ancient and modern, is the place of dialogue between different words. Thus Parliament is the space in which we speak and the words of all are hosted, so that the democratic life of a people develops its own physique in the daily exercise of dialectics.
Democracy is founded on an act of trust in the word. While non-democratic regimes (whether democracies or totalitarianisms) are all built, without exception, on the systematic and normalized use of lies, democracy values freedom of speech, protecting it with laws. We think, pray, dream with words, and our social and associative life is based on the right to be able to freely exchange words. In principle, listening to the words of others precedes the pronouncement of our own, also because on the contrary the world would be full of people talking to themselves. So that truly in a democracy, to say it with Guido Calogero, the duty to listen to the words of others precedes the right to pronounce one's own.
The barbarism of social life always moves through the corruption of language. In the last century, the first sign of the crisis of some democratic regimes coincided, in Italy and Germany for example, with the linguistic pollution of confrontation. Giolitti's Italy, which, albeit slowly, was moving on the path of the democratization of the liberal state, became the Italietta in the typefaces of books and newspapers. From the contempt of language to its brutality it was less than a moment, the same fraction of a second that passed from the violence of words to that of the fascist squads that prepared Mussolini's Italiaccia.
Covid-19 (and 20 and 21), if it has denied us social proximity, has not won over words. For months now, our days have been full of remote calls, during which, if we want to make ourselves understood, a new clarity is required of us, because it is not supported by that body language so essential in human relationships. While on social networks the languages of the world continue to tribalize, we are called to manage the absence of physical presence with video meetings entrusted to our ability to understand each other through language: it is one of the many paradoxes of our age.
President Joe Biden in his Inaugural Address began by saying: “This is America's day. This is democracy's day ". His predecessor, a few days earlier, had incited his most fanatical supporters to reach Capitol Hill and deny the American Parliament to speak the language of democracy which is always the language of laws. Denying the validity of last November's elections for weeks, disregarding any formal response that certified their legal regularity, was only possible at the cost of rape, once again, of language.
Previously, President Donald Trump had entertained a permanent conflict with the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci (paternal grandparents of Sciacca, maternal grandmother of Naples), centered precisely on the use of language in the health emergency. A rather classic conflict between politics and science which, through the Trumpian use of social networks, has also assumed disturbing connotations.
The language that unites, in its possibility of understanding, the members of a community is like the water that circulates in a complex system of pipes, from aqueducts to house taps. Corrupting language is like polluting the water we drink: even if the action of pollution is directed by a few, even by only one, the toxicity introduced, once in circulation, affects everyone. And everyone has the duty to purify it.
Antonio Funiciello
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/la-democrazia-fra-trump-e-biden-editoriale-di-funiciello-su-civilta-delle-macchine/ on Thu, 18 Feb 2021 14:06:32 +0000.