Elly Schlein, Giuseppe Conte, war and peace (and other digressions)
Michael the Great's Notepad
Opus iustitiae, pax (Isaiah 32:17) was the episcopal motto of John Paul II. And, since peace can only arise from justice, Pope Wojtyla went so far as to say that "there are cases in which armed struggle is an inevitable evil from which, in tragic circumstances, not even Christians can escape (Homily on the Heldenplatz in Vienna, September 10, 1983). For his part, a champion of secular thought such as Norberto Bobbio observed that "the surest way to eliminate war is to destroy weapons", i.e. worldwide disarmament. However, it is enough to wonder who should destroy the weapons for the matter to get tangled. In fact, they should be destroyed by the very people who manufacture and use them, i.e. the sovereign states. It would be – he concluded – like entrusting "to a congress of drunkards the decision to enact a law against the use of alcoholic beverages" (Philosophy of war in the atomic age, now in Ethics and Politics, Mondadori, 2009).
Alongside the ethical pacifism of Lev Tolstoy's disciples, hostile to military aid to Kyiv, there is then the "political" pacifism of which Elly Schlein has become an interpreter in recent days. He is not against supporting Zelensky's war effort, but calls for Europe's "autonomous diplomatic protagonism" for the cessation of hostilities. Does that mean more autonomous from the US? It is not clear. Apart from the small detail that the Baltic countries, the Scandinavian countries and Poland would not agree, it is seriously thought that China – the only one capable of doing so – would agree to put the chin on Putin because it was pressed by Berlin, Paris and Rome without the consent of Washington?
But let's also imagine that a ceasefire is reached, perhaps thanks to a tug of the ear from Xi Jinping at the tyrant of the Kremlin, which never ceases to raise the specter of a global conflict. Ukraine would be left with its urban and industrial ruins, its destroyed civil infrastructure, its devastated territory, its thousands of dead, its dismembered families, its gigantic reconstruction problems. In this context, what should be the conditions and objectives of a diplomatic initiative (in recent months attempted several times at the price of searing personal humiliations inflicted by Putin on Macron and even on the Pope) I am not saying for a just peace, but for a credible and an honorable truce? I can understand that Giuseppe Conte's "neo-Gandhian" movement doesn't care, but some precise proposals on this point from the secretary of the Democratic Party would be dutiful. In short, put some ideas in the pacifist marches, Mrs. Schlein. If not now, when?
* Italy Today
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“You can only have peace if you give it” (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms, 1880).
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Paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, there are six categories of lies: the simple lie, the diplomatic lie, weather forecasts, polls, the official statement, Conte's pacifism.
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“There is something wrong with Meloni's reasoning. I never said that the superbonus was a measure that cost the state nothing: it is free for families, not for the state” (Declaration by Giuseppe Conte taken from Ultimaora.net.). Even ignorance is free. That's why it's so widespread (even among university professors).
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“In Italy every act of public life has two sides, one apparent and another hidden: there is the scene and the counter-scene, because the traditions of secular tyranny have accustomed us to conspiracy. Hence we are unable to think of something that should by itself be produced in the light of day without preparing it with conspiracy" (Francesco De Sanctis, "Sopra Niccolò Machiavelli", 1869).
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“La majorité a toujours raison, mais la raison a bien rarement la majorité aux élections” (Jean Mistler, “Bon Poids”, 1976).
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Demagogues and laxatives have this in common: they move the belly of the masses.
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In his latest booklet (Post-Coronial Studies, Einaudi, 2021), the philosopher Maurizio Ferraris, after having masterfully deconstructed the fable of the "human slaves of technology" (if anything, they are slaves of other men who use technology), observes that democracy is also exercised through the growth of documents, which corresponds to a growth of rights. The identity card, the health card, the driving licence, the credit card, the electoral certificate, and today the green pass, are "first of all enabling tools: they allow, much before and much more than forbidding".
In other words, documents are the manifestation of a right, which obviously entails the birth of a duty, but the game is worth the candle. Ferraris cites the example of medieval servants who had no papers, they were sans papiers. When they began to flee, finding asylum in the free Communes, the first act they had to submit to was to register in the parish registers. An act that had a price, since it would have forced them to pay taxes, but in return no lord would have been able to get their hands on them. In this way, the right of habeas corpus that the king, in England, had granted to the barons (with a document, in fact, called Magna Charta) was also extended to the servants.
Now, I can also understand that this discourse does not even touch the antechamber of the brain of the picturesque Don Ferrante characters who make noise on television talk shows. But that it is dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders by illustrious thinkers, theorists of the conspiracy and biopolitical virus, says a lot about the sleep of reason at the time of the pandemic.
It is not by chance that Massimo Introvigne, one of the most eminent scholars of secret societies and minor religions, has defined “metaphysical” conspiracies whose aims are so abstruse and vague as to escape any understanding, sometimes even that of the conspiracy theorists themselves (The Illuminati and the Priory of Sion, Piemme, 2005). This means that where reason fails, we rely on a will as imponderable as the facts it intends to determine.
* Italy Today
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/elly-schlein-giuseppe-conte-la-guerra-e-la-pace-e-altre-divagazioni/ on Sat, 11 Mar 2023 06:04:32 +0000.