Making Italy look ugly is not a good political programme

Democracy, despite its increasingly obvious flaws, is a thing of beauty. The warning issued by Alfonso Berardinelli, a distinguished figure of this newspaper, is far from unfounded. Perverse social behaviour corrupts hearts, stirs up the worst instincts, foremost among which is the search for authoritarian protection or a conformism that safeguards only the least respectable prejudices. However, given the alternative, democracy must be celebrated for what it is: if it is liberal democracy, the famously worst system except for all the others.

It is certainly true, however, that general elections are a tough test to pass. Months of election campaigning, with the small, verbose right-wing faction undermining the governing right’s chances of victory and pushing it down the slippery slope of verbose stupidity and the exploitation of social fears, whilst the small, rowdy and often violent left-wing faction drives the opposition coalition into a demagogic, repetitive and needlessly anxiety-inducing, can, however, considerably mar the Italian – and, for that matter, European – landscape. Then there are those global dimwits, the American MAGAs, with their money and their anti-Europeanism, with their penchant for unjust wars – such as the war against foreigners – and their aversion to just wars, in defence of the Jews of Israel and the Ukrainians massacred by the tyrant Putin. From winking at that idiot from the MAGA movement, to the ridiculous idea of a ‘Fortress Europe’, to the caricature of the values of ‘God, Country and Family’, from leading the charge for Italian Putinism disguised as an anti-militarist spirit, or supporting Askatasuna, or raving about anti-Semitism, it is but a short step to intellectual and moral collapse.

We need something of an antidote, on both the right and the left – though who knows what exactly. One might think of a politically savvy – and even shrewd – centre, free from internal power struggles, an ambitious heir to the culture of the First Republic’s party system, but it doesn’t exist. There are fragments of seriousness and small pockets of a ‘reservation’, perhaps worth nurturing and supporting, yet lacking the backdrop of cynicism and adventurism without which effective politics cannot be practised. It’s a real shame, all of this. We ought to be proud of having brought about a successful institutional and constitutional realisation of republican democracy, integrating all that could be integrated and finding, in people who are serious and capable enough, a glimmer of a ruling class where no one (or very few) expected to find it. Gone are the dark days of the coalition government between opposing demagogues, of closed ports, of full powers wielded in swimming trunks. A government and a majority that were unimaginable until yesterday – the final gift to politics from the unpolitical and deeply private statesman known as Berlusconi – have done their job without handcuffs; on the contrary, without erecting barricades against Brussels; on the contrary, without pitting the rhetoric of ‘the beautiful death’ and the ‘Decima’ against constitutional anti-fascism; on the contrary, without wrecking the public finances and isolating Italy; on the contrary. Is this not an achievement for us all?

To become a genuine alternative – obviously with clear electoral legitimacy – the opposition is seeking a unified platform for leadership and policy, which is in line with institutional logic, whatever the final law governing general elections may be. Elly Schlein’s interview with this newspaper should form the basis of this platform, yet the pitfalls of internal rivalry and the perverse pursuit of consensus at any cost are endless, and not only on the left. The result is that we risk leaving behind a normalised, stable and rather shrewd Italy – though by no means indecent – only to create, tailored to marginal support and in homage to the most grotesque follies of extremism (which always enjoys relative success), a masterpiece: a country uglier, more resentful and less civilised than the one currently facing the general election.