When schools turn a protest march into a moral and automatic obligation. The case of the sixth-form college in Novi Ligure

At a secondary school in Novi Ligure, an invitation to take part in the ‘Sudario di Gaza’ march appeared on the electronic register, along with a sign-up form and travel instructions. In universities, for months, attempts were made to push through pro-Palestinian motions using the ‘silence-implies-consent’ system: anyone who disagreed had to state so; otherwise, they were automatically deemed to have agreed. This represents a significant shift for the Left, which in the 1970s hammered home the slogan ‘everything is political’. Even smoking a cigarette. Even kissing or cleaning one’s nails. Today, the most politicised causes are taking the opposite tack and are presented as humanitarian and ethical. Under certain conditions.

If the school register were to mobilise pupils and teachers to support remigration, the abolition of civil partnerships, or the reintroduction of compulsory military service, the paradox would be glaringly obvious. Because politics, by definition, divides. It means choosing one thing over another. To claim that any political initiative can be stripped of its conflictual nature and imposed as if it were a moral duty is a colossal and dangerous naivety. This is precisely what is happening in schools and universities. Whether a motion is passed by tacit consent or an institutional document calls for a demonstration, it is being taken for granted that this is not a stance but a fundamental truth. A partisan argument is transformed into a universal premise. Those who dissent must raise their hands and denounce themselves.

Schools and universities, in these cases, do not gauge public opinion. They manufacture it. They do not say outright: ‘We all think this way here, and anyone who disagrees should speak up’, but that is the message. However, it is filtered through the bureaucratic and administrative machine, the perfect refuge for those who throw stones and then play it coy. Instead of organising ranks of students marching in formation behind some Middle Eastern banner, schools should teach pupils to slow down, perhaps even stumble, and to question the unshakeable certainties peddled by everyday chatter.

Fifty years ago, progressive intellectuals were compulsively suspicious of anything that claimed to be neutral. In the family, at the football ground, in the pub, between the sheets, in the way people dressed, on Sundays at the seaside, in their children’s school reports – politics had to be flushed out even when it seemed not to be there. Today, those same individuals no longer seek to uncover it where it is concealed, but to mask it where it is glaringly apparent. A demonstration about Gaza can thus appear to be the simple consequence of an indisputable principle. In Novi Ligure, the old adage ‘everything is political’ has been turned on its head. The left has given up on exposing this false neutrality, and takes to the streets with the mask of universality firmly in place.