Scanzi, 1920s and the lightweight leaders
By dint of speaking lightly, leaders deprive themselves of all credibility and do not realize it because they drink from the source of mainstream information to which they are linked, which gives the leaders the same public image packaged by their offices. The italics of Dalavecuras
It will be spring, but in recent weeks it is an embarrassing choice between the storms in a glass of water that run through the media square (I was about to write the media agora, the fear of a copyright claim by the guru stopped me Pd Goffredo Bettini: you never know).
The most assiduous habitué of Lilli Gruber's living room ruled (I say this in my own words, apologizing to Andrea Scanzi and his fans), in front of the impressive audience of the broadcast, that the history of the last three hundred years has not registered any right-wing intellectual , which among other things implies that the author of this sensational revelation considers himself, and most likely is considered by a few million followers, to be a left-wing intellectual. There was hardly any comment not even sarcastic but only slightly ironic about the stupidity now reported in openly right-wing newspapers.
I'll be wrong, but also the Espresso 's attempt to revive past glories by shooting on the cover the drawn image of a man whose (male) sex is attested by the beard and the (pregnant) condition with a swollen belly on which the words "the diversity is richness ”, I don't think it gave a huge shock to public opinion.
But the most interesting case, which is also the most recent, is due to Michele Anzaldi, a member of parliament from Italia Viva and secretary of the Rai Supervisory Commission. I confess that I do not know what the attributions of this secretary are but I suppose they are not extraneous to the subject of communication which – even if less and less – still has to do with language. Stone of the scandal a Rai 2 program ( 1920s ) which, starting from Nutri-Score, a food product labeling scheme developed by the European Union, at the time opposed by Italy, made a bit of satire on the regulation of products intended for human consumption. I leave the floor to Anzaldi (who in the heat must have forgotten that the Italian one, in 1957, when Mario Draghi was still wearing shorts, was one of the six founding parliaments of the EEC that would later become the European Union): "Disinformation, falsehood, unfounded attack on Europe just when there are high Italian personalities at the top and Europeanism thanks to the Draghi government is now shared by everyone in Parliament. I will ask the comm. to deal with the service broadcast from Anni 20 ". Finally, the secretary of the Democratic Party arrives to point out authoritatively: "… such vulgar, sinister and false propaganda against Europe is intolerable". The words, obviously, were not followed by any facts for the simple reason that there was no reason and also because in Italy you almost always find, in a secluded position, those who keep their feet on the ground and save the worst gaffes: almost always, unfortunately, not always.
This of Rai Due, however, remains the most interesting case for two reasons. Of the cumbersome genesis, of the slalom between the thousand lobbies that conditions the regulation of consumer goods and in particular of food products, the Eurocrats of Brussels are first and foremost fully aware, the first to make self-irony on the abstruse elaborations that the mass the drafting of legislation, especially on trivial matters, requires; the most authoritative Anglo-Saxon press then, what Anzaldi would probably define as “pro-European”, likes to describe Brussels as the place where they can't even agree on the diameter of the peas. In this situation, the "reactions" referred to above have more the scent of the kindergarten than the sour smell of the arena where the destinies of the nation are debated. But here we are still in the field of lightness, where our people can invoke the precedent of the current "master of the world" Joe Biden, albeit with some contortion (he made the interviewer say this and agreed). given the killer to Putin as any protester could do for or against something in any capital of the West.
The second, more serious aspect is that by dint of speaking lightly the leaders (those we can afford, of course, but these are) deprive themselves of all credibility and, worse still, they do not realize it because they drink from the source of mainstream information to which they are inextricably linked, which gives leaders the same public image packaged by their offices.
This vicious circle produces a biased rhetoric that wants to “mobilize” more with tones than with contents. The factious model, however, makes sense, it can create interest, if there is a minimum of public debate on real dilemmas, but when, as is happening in Italy, everything that does not fall within the progressive paradigm of the politically correct (example: the Europe is not discussed, thanks are given; Erdogan the sinister male chauvinist has denied the chair to the president of the EU Commission because he is female; whoever does not support the Zan Bill is homophobic or, if it cannot be said, avoids interviewing him) and when any deviation from progressive orthodoxy it is discarded as an expression of the absolute evil that is called sovereignism (a word certainly euphonic sovereignty, but in comparison populism has the precision of a chemical formula), the interest of the public debate inevitably tends to diminish, whatever the degree of excitement that the protagonists try to give to their words, always dramatically predictable.
The result of this self-fueled dynamic is that to arouse I do not say the longed-for mobilization but at least a minimum of reaction, it is necessary to continuously increase the level of absurdity or expected offensiveness of the words used. If last week the broadcast of Rai Due was "sinister" and "boorish", even "an unfounded attack on Europe", I wonder which adjectives, adverbs and terms of reference the next time leaders will have to use. It is not a reassuring climate.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/scanzi-anni-20-e-i-leader-leggerini/ on Mon, 17 May 2021 07:43:25 +0000.