Scruton’s lesson that the left doesn’t like: be wary of the masses

When it comes to the recent protests, I read and listen to as little as possible: just the bare essentials, like the leaflets that come with painkillers. Whenever I encounter an editorial asserting ‘it’s all down to inequality’, or stumble upon a reel featuring a child protester denouncing the unfair price of a Prada handbag (it costs as much as two of my father’s monthly wages!), I experience a physical discomfort, a twinge rising from my stomach, the onset of unease: the tragic plight of those like me who somatise this nonsense. The situation is even more pronounced with the videos from Paris and the surrounding area, which I consume in small doses, as if they were a horror film – although this apparently does not trouble the Great Inclusive Editorialist to any great extent. Perhaps that is for the best; I shall request his guidance on how to approach it with optimism.

Like everyone else, however, I have asked myself a few questions. For example: when ‘our young people’ – those who are fighting against the high cost of living and the Great Inequalities on the streets of the big cities – become adults, or at least a little more grown-up, will they look back nostalgically on these turbulent and rowdy days? Will they be proud of having shaken up the system, as Paolo Crepet, Ghali and Marracash assure us? Or will they perhaps feel that vague sense of embarrassment that strikes everyone when looking at photos of themselves at seventeen: my God, that hair, those clothes, that metal bar in their hand. The good news is that we’ve all been there, even without the metal bar. The bad news is that sooner or later the day will come for them too when they have to fill in their first F24 tax return, and the ‘high cost of living’ will no longer be a slogan or an excuse for smashing things up and stealing from Decathlon. Then it gets even worse: along will come the 730 tax return, the ISEE, the SCIA, the DURC, the Chamber of Commerce certificate, the revenue stamp to apply for permission to apply for permission to apply for permission, and so on. They will discover that almost half of the cost of labour vanishes before it even reaches their pockets. That a street food van requires the same metaphysical rigmarole of permits as a tap factory in the Treviso area employing two hundred workers. That they’re still paying a pension to those who retired at forty, and that the RAI – which they don’t watch and never will – with its 12,000 employees, its executives sitting around with no specific role, and its splendid Venetian headquarters with a Tiepolo on the ceiling, is already included in their electricity bill, and that these are just a few of the many things in which capitalism has absolutely nothing to do with it; on the contrary: it would, if anything, be the antidote. Perhaps, then—who knows—a belated suspicion will arise: that the enemy wasn’t the Louis Vuitton shop window but something else? That the market—that treacherous entity conjured up as the Absolute Evil by stars on red carpets and rappers in podcasts—might actually have paid for your grandparents’ house, your parents’ university fees and the smartphone with which you capture that smashed Foot Locker on camera? They tell you across all media that ‘Great Inequalities’ are the scourge of the century. Apart from the fact that it isn’t true, and apart from the fact that it used to be much worse, the ‘Great Inequality’ you’ll have to get used to here is that between the civil service and the self-employed. On the one hand, there are boundless safeguards and the option—if one so wishes—to do the bare minimum without being bothered; on the other, there is the jungle, the desert of Mad Max: Fury Road, with the F24 chasing you and firing off forms in rapid succession. There are no verses by Marracash on this subject—but this is understandable. At seventeen, the enemy must be large, distant, abstract, and preferably Western.

America, capitalism, fascism. That is normal. What is less normal is that prominent adults, with their mortgages paid off and retirement on the horizon, are spinning this into lyrical editorials, emotional posts and podcasts. However, one must also understand the left-wing adult in Italy. They have grown up with history always told from the perspective of ‘movements’ and social protest: with revolutions that are always right, reforms that are tedious, Berlinguer who was better than De Gasperi, the state that’s always better than the market, and so on. Try growing up like that yourselves and then not getting carried away by ‘the streets’, ‘the masses’, ‘the uprising’. And so there he is, reciting the standard line: ‘Violence is always wrong!’ – even though, seasoned as he is, he knows full well that violence is part of it. It’s always part of it. The smashed shop window, the devastation, the kick to the policeman’s head – these aren’t the incident, but the inevitable moment, and sometimes the most eagerly awaited: the climax of every barricade-themed role-play. My Instagram feed is full of comments like “even the storming of the Bastille started like this!”, “even in Russia, in 1917!”, “you won’t get anywhere by being nice!”. And down come the tears – and the tear gas.

In this way they mislead you twice over. The first time, when they rile you up and wring their hands at the sight of France in flames, wondering why nothing is happening here – what on earth are our people up to? Are they asleep? The second time, because they make you believe this is your protest – new, unprecedented, generational. Yet it’s the same old story, for half a century now: the same slogans, the same enemies, the same ideas – Palestine in place of Vietnam, and Godard memes on TikTok in place of Godard with his mimeograph machine in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. There remains a pervasive notion that if you do not take to the streets, do not protest, and do not believe that it is the state’s responsibility to look after you and your future—from nursery to the grave—your dreams, needs, plans, and pension—then you are a suspect. Those applauding you today will never mention Roger Scruton by name (not least because Meloni likes him). In Paris, in May ’68, he looked down the street, saw students throwing stones at the police and had a sudden realisation: whatever they believed, he was on the other side. Having a few doubts when a crowd moves in unison in the same direction – with or without a crowbar – is one of the two or three useful things you learn in life. All the others, usually, are learnt when you’re faced with your first F24 tax return.