The Democratic Party between moral superiority and identity crisis
Italics by Paola Sacchi
Their "moral superiority" remained, declared Claudio Velardi, after Matteo Renzi had opened the crisis. Velardi bitterly observed that his former comrades "are also good people", who, however, have not understood the profound changes in society, in politics, "accustomed as they are to being in the places that matter."
In reality, the problem of the Democratic Party, of what the Democratic Party is does not arise today, has its roots in 1992-1993. What is the official program of the Democratic Party? In words, to be the party of the modern, liberal, reformist left. And yet in Italy that political force was already there: Bettino Craxi's PSI, which the former PCI and former left-wing DC so opposed.
The Democratic Party is the final point of arrival of the long and tormented – even to the sound of secretaries jumped like skittles – wandering of these two souls between one acronym and another, between one botanical symbol and another, between the eternal research of a foreign federating Pope, yesterday Prodi, today Conte.
Many acronyms and trees, from the oak to the olive tree, but never come to terms with Craxi and his PSI with an advanced elaboration on "merits and needs". He was the reformist PSI, with courageous choices like the decree of St. Valentine. But there has never been talk of "starting over" from Hammamet off the Nazarene.
To the point of standing out together with the Five Stars for the absence of an official delegation last year in Tunisia for the twentieth anniversary of the disappearance of the socialist statesman in exile.
Only three exponents went on a personal basis. The heirs of the PCI, first PDS then DS and finally PD with the former leftist DC, thought of replacing Craxi. the PCI launched a merciless attack on the premier and socialist leader, the political offensive was intertwined with the judicial one, Craxi ended his days away from Italy.
The surprise resignation of the secretary Nicola Zingaretti, regardless of how it will end, regardless of whether it will remain or not, still sound like the final chapter of an unattained goal.
But the remnants of the so-called "moral superiority" remain.
In the same definition of "right" or "right", used with a contemptuous tone towards political opponents as a whole, as if it were an indistinct whole, there is already the limit of how the Democratic Party lives itself. As if detached from a world where everything has changed and, if anything, paradoxically, pieces of the "left", or those weaker and suffering categories, have ended up in the "right", because they feel more represented by Lega, Forza Italia, Fratelli d'Italia.
The Democratic Party in Rome, just to give an example, wins in the Parioli but not in the suburbs, instead frequented by the center-right for years. And can we define “right” that Craxian socialist component, reformist that has been an important part of Forza Italia since 1994, just as the culture of the former DC or former Pli is central? Or right as a whole is Matteo Salvini's League, which represents a large part of the world of small and medium entrepreneurship, VAT numbers, middle classes in search of pragmatic and not ideological solutions?
Right is Fratelli d'Italia, but Giorgia Meloni's is a modern right that has already made its turns. The former PCI, PDS, DS, finally PD, in all these years have experienced bipolarism and confrontation in general as the continuous search for an enemy, first "internal" on the left, namely Craxi, while now the "internal enemy" is Matteo Renzi with his Italia Viva, then there are the external "enemies": from Silvio Berlusconi ostracized for years, who is praised when he is considered weaker, to Matteo Salvini, sent to trial for immigration control . Meanwhile, another former Minister of the Interior, Marco Minniti, a man of the Democratic Party, with whom the landings decreased, a man far from Salvini in political history, resigned as a parliamentarian for a prestigious post at Leonardo .
The most mischievous saw in Minniti's gesture an objective intolerance for the politics or non-politics of his comrades in the "firm". Whatever the case may be, the "firm", self-definition of the former PCI, now appears as a party that is unable to deal with the glaring identity crisis that is shaking it.
If the same Zingaretti attacks his party accusing him of dealing with "seats" in tragic times like these, it clears that the Democratic Party appears to be "a soulless party", as written by the young Fabio Salamida, left-wing journalist for The General states .
The entry of Salvini's League in the Draghi government has sent the Democratic Party into crisis, which had focused on the narrative against the "right-wing" "populist and anti-European". It is clear that having insisted on "Count or elections" to the end was the final act of a crisis of representation that has lasted for decades.
The very fact that Conte is now preparing to become leader of the pentastellati has then definitively messed up the plans.
But if the real project is missing, a serious examination on representation, on the errors of the past, starting with the fatal one with Craxi, issues never really addressed, the risk for the Democratic Party, which still seems to cling to the alleged "moral superiority", is that then always comes a purer one who purifies you, as Nenni said.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/pd/ on Sat, 06 Mar 2021 07:34:13 +0000.