The simple psychology behind every self-proclaimed expert worth their salt

The incident at the Observatoire in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, was more of a scandal than a mere story. The suspicion was – and it proved to be enduring – that the late François Mitterrand, France’s Florentine, yet another one, had orchestrated it himself to revive his political fortunes a year after de Gaulle had seized power (October 1959). The controversial and brilliant Lino Jannuzzi put together a short documentary for one of my programmes, "Il Testimone", almost forty years ago, in which the machine-gun attack on the Peugeot of the MP for Nièvre – who had, in the meantime, taken refuge in the park adjacent to the Avenue de l’Observatoire – was reconstructed in the style of a crime thriller. At the time of the programme, the election campaign for his second term was underway, seven years after the great victory of the Union de la Gauche in 1981. Mitterrand was interviewed by my dear friend Giovanni Russo at the Élysée Palace; the occasion was marked by sublime pomp and ceremony, and he spoke to Italian viewers with gentle dedication about Machiavelli. Once the programme had been broadcast, his staff showed signs of deep unease at that somewhat sacrilegious account; they felt betrayed by the narrative – full of doubt and mystery – concerning that part of the biography of the first socialist to lead the Fifth Republic, which had never been definitively clarified and was, at the time, thirty years old.

The psychology behind a self-inflicted attack is very simple. If you are not loved or valued enough, if you have ambitions that are currently faltering but could swell like a hot-air balloon or a balloon, an explosion of murderous hatred directed at yourself can redeem you from mediocrity or distress and give you a tremendous boost. Crafting it with your own hands, or with the help of some unsavoury accomplices, is one possible solution. The rest will be taken care of by the ever-shifting and naive game of public opinion. Adriano Cappellari, according to the Carabinieri in Bassano del Grappa and the Vicenza Public Prosecutor’s Office, procured everything he needed for a homemade blast and the resulting police escort. Those who saw him at the ‘Match of the Heart’ in L’Aquila – a spectacle organised by and for journalists in the mood for a spot of five-a-side football – describe him as the classic ‘good bloke’, who was, of course, under police escort at that point, and remains so in our eyes, naturally. It is not known whether he did anything wrong, or whether he was the victim of his own charade; we shall see. What is known is that the parish priest of Caivano, Don Patriciello, and Giorgia Meloni herself had been concerned about the threatening circumstances that had disrupted the innocent life of a very young journalist committed to reporting on the fight against the Camorra in Caivano, a town symbolically held up as a triumph of the government’s social regeneration programme in the Neapolitan hinterland. The parish priest’s tender and selfless forgiveness was well-placed, immediately extended to a very young colleague who may have had nothing to do with it and may simply have succumbed to the instinct to cultivate a victimised image for his own benefit; investigations and court rulings will reveal this, or he himself may admit it – though, in both a legal and moral sense, he remains the very picture of innocence.

Playing the victim is a great temptation, not for us – who are by definition the bad guys and contrarians by profession – but for all those who wish to do good and have been brought up to pander to it, perhaps in some cases to use it for career advancement, to put themselves in the spotlight – even in a good-natured, understandable way – at the expense of journalism, our own brand of journalism, which thrives on the shadows and a touch of cynical suspicion. I am informed that the affair alludes – without insinuating anything, for heaven’s sake – to another ambiguous story of opinion polls and attacks of significant symbolic value; in this case, not a suspicious solo act but a well-orchestrated little Italian-style farce, benevolent and friendly but not innocent, as in the case of the ever-so-likeable Cappellari. I am told, but I do not know; I am tired of dealing with it.