The children’s racket

A vague memory of "Trainspotting", a film from thirty years ago that’s just been restored and re-released: heroin, individualism, consumerism, games, violence, Irvine Welsh – and for that matter, I can hardly remember anything about "A Clockwork Orange", from half a century ago, except for Kubrick, Burgess – obviously – games, grotesque youth violence, highbrow culture, and so on. A liquid society, childish outcomes. In the fashion district, it was a mad scramble in search of the lost shoe. Until the ‘Fantozzian’ truth takes hold – that the stylish shoe, the trainers, the aerodynamic super-shoe is utter nonsense – well, there’s no escaping it. The glittering shop window is an invitation to the looters.

Mephisto shoes are better – the shoes worn by fifth-tier German workers; sturdy stuff. In any case, Limoges Town Hall, which survived two wars in the twentieth century, was burnt down in two hours – a job done by professionals, very well organised. Nine kilometres away there is a ‘super-social centre’, a ZAD, ‘zone à défendre’ – a zone to be defended – those radical left-wing rural communities where idleness, which is the father of all vices, can inspire incendiary ways to pass the time, and not just amongst teenagers.

Meanwhile, over here, Langone alone is calling (here, yesterday) for truncheons to be used against the children’s racket, in France, when discussing the major European crisis that so interests Cacciari, they panicked and proceeded to make a couple of hundred arrests, whilst all-news commentators point out in astonishment that “these aren’t just overnight detentions; they’re actual handcuffing, sentences following summary trials, and months and months in prison – which is severely overcrowded, to boot”, against adults caught smashing and looting everything that could be smashed and looted – an extremely harsh criminal response for the first time. This is a far cry from the fashion district, where parents queue at the police station or Fatebenefratelli Hospital to collect their children, exclaiming, “I’d smash that idiot’s head in myself”. What was that about tragedy and farce? I wouldn’t worry too much about it. 

Those lads are certainly explosive, but they’re heavy spenders, covered by insurance, in a city – Milan – terrorised by a childish civil war. But when you’re always on the lookout for events, when you proclaim in the face of Covid that you never stop, when you act like a show-off, that’s when events come looking for you – and a bit of nightlife turns up. However, invoking the high cost of living would likely invite derision, while deploying tanks and soldiers would risk exacerbating the situation. Take comfort in the fact that, at last, a series of violent demonstrations are being staged for show, to be seen on TikTok (and the Cav. ingeniously added ‘Tak’), not for imaginary Palestine, not in the wake of Hamas flags – long live the image of the Quadrilatero, a commercial and moral value that is more serious and less exposed to the shame of anti-Semitism, at least one hopes.

It is striking, so many years after ’68, that instead of clashing with the police—perhaps for the freedom and lives of Iranian men and women—everything is resolved by going after Adidas. Nostalgia for Capanna? No, for heaven’s sake. But do not bomb the vertical forest. Let the Quadrilatero, if necessary, shut up shop for a few hours, until the parents have gone to collect their children – who, as Mattarella pointed out, are unaccustomed to such commotion. Just take it easy for a bit; the situation may well be serious, but…