Basic, but only to a certain extent

Demagogues and opinion predators are a constant, cross-cutting presence when it comes to security and rights, authority and freedom. Ideological dogmas are always contradictory, irrational and dangerous. A violent minority of radicalised individuals staged a guerrilla-style protest in Bologna following the tragic death in the Pilastro neighbourhood of a man who had lost his mind; in a video, he pleads for help and dies under the weight of two police officers carrying out a ‘restraint’ operation, in the presence of emergency personnel who stood by and watched despite his pleas for help – a scene in itself of appalling cynicism and cruelty that shocked and moved everyone and inflamed the activists from the social centres; the night-time guerrilla warfare caused considerable damage to members of the public, police officers and those who instigated it, and it could have been far worse. On the other hand, the incredible celebrations marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the devastation of Genoa had only just ended – a ferocious urban guerrilla conflict met with ruthless police repression that flouted the rule of law, even emergency regulations. And whilst voices were raised amongst the activists to criticise the celebratory focus on the victims of repression and revived the conflict with the police and the state as the essence of a true left-wing identity, not a single person has revisited the historical assessment of the violent attack on Genoa’s ‘red zone’ – not even amongst those, including alleged leaders of the anti-G8 march, who have since turned to volunteering, solidarity and Christian-inspired non-violence.

Within the Salvinian right in government – which is distinct from the governing right – a contradiction immediately arose between the vindictive extension of the right to self-defence, which they had campaigned for vociferously in the Roggero case, and the prejudicial exclusion of any possible police liability in the case of Fakir, a citizen who died at the hands of state police officers, having been handcuffed and shackled both before and after his death. Everyone is paying a hypocritical, albeit understandable, tribute to the judiciary, which will ascertain what actually happened in Pilastro and whether there is any criminal or professional liability that cannot be justified. The shield against the pre-emptive lynching of officers on public order duty is not a guarantee of impunity; it is intended as a safeguard or filter against ideological prejudice and the knee-jerk reactions of those who, in any case, cry out ‘murderous police’.

Amidst this general disaster, however, human and reasonable voices are also emerging – voices that do not resort to indifference, hatred or revenge. These range from Fakir’s niece, who spoke in the square in tones of dignified and humble grief and a call for justice, to public figures and commentators not blinded by partisanship or the barbaric pursuit of knee-jerk approval from the so-called ‘man in the street’, which is being deployed to strip the rules of coexistence of their democratic foundation – between the two constitutional facets of a liberal system: freedom and authority, norms and rights that are, so to speak, non-negotiable. It is not true that there is no alternative to the sinister clamour of the demagogues. Bologna is not Minneapolis. There is no witch-hunt in Italy against immigrants or citizens beyond the famous ‘colour line’, which in the United States gave rise to the extremist Black Lives Matter movement and the platform for disarming or weakening the police, with the political consequence of rampant ‘Trumpism’ of the law-and-order variety – a paracriminal phenomenon of state corruption in relation to civil rights that has its roots in the ignoble aspects of American history (slavery, racism, segregation). Watching the paralysing and repugnant video of Fakir’s death, assessing the absurdity of Salvini’s proposed ‘Roggero Bill’, and considering the idolatrous image of the state as a brute force—against which to hurl Molotov cocktails or in favour of which to unleash cheap, violent and inflammatory rhetoric— one might think we will never manage to free ourselves from mental primitivism. Yet something tells us that this is not the case.