Worse than ignorance is subculture. And perhaps you are the ‘deplorable’ one

According to sociologists, Stefano Bonaccini, leader of the PD, is not wrong. Attributing the success of the right to ignorance is a sign of snobbery, a curse for the former class-conscious left, but in the opinion of Professor Giovanni Orsina it is “a reasonable and empirically sound argument”, albeit a cursed one. For Italy, this peculiar nation, one might not expect it, given that the well-documented homophobic, racist ‘deplorables’ – Hillary Clinton’s description of the Trump electorate prior to her election defeat – had to seek out a small Vannaccia-style enclave, their own ‘Decima Mas’, because the modus operandi of the victorious right so far – the governing right – did not meet the threshold of being ‘ugly and nasty’. Indeed, one could say that the former populists of the centre-right have functioned much like the Frattocchie party school of old: they have indoctrinated and politically regimented—by dint of voting for von der Leyen, running geopolitics courses, keeping the books in order, embracing Zelensky and denouncing anti-Semitism—masses that were once open to the worst excesses of character and intelligence. If we consider places where conservatism – which in Italy has made a comeback with Meloni’s right – has been, or risks being, defeated by nationalism, by the völkisch spirit, by the obtuse folklore of the MAGAs; in short, if we think of Germany and the United States, the conclusions may be different – very different. Yet these rambling but inevitable arguments, in order to be ‘empirically grounded’, lack something essential.

Ignorance is no worse than subculture. If you remain isolated with nothing but your resentment, if you passively rely on the myth of the nation—in a more or less sly way—if you neglect to cultivate an understanding of the significance of democratic institutions and their republican history, if you react to scientific discourse or philosophical complexity with a shrug, if you gorge yourself on football and light entertainment whilst neglecting the film club, if you follow influencers instead of reading good books, it is uncertain how you will vote or how you will develop even a mediocre sense of civic responsibility—as an uninformed individual—who knows. But if you soak up ideological prejudices, believe all the semi-educated nonsense circulating on the web and on sanctimonious TV, if your ethical ideal is the Ranucci type, if you treat Derrida’s deconstruction as though it were a bricklaying technique, if you instinctively anticipate every possible linear, democratic, mass-produced yet pretentious banality with your emotions, and on top of that throw in your pedantic judgement; if your way of seeing the world bears a dangerous resemblance to a programme on Raitre or Radiotre; if you allow yourself to be enchanted by novels – not like Don Quixote, who wanted to rescue Dulcinea, but like Madame Bovary, who wanted a quick fling in a carriage with her lover; if you experience your so-called relationship with another as if in a nursery school, if you live on bread and the Constitution from morning till night without knowing what they’re really about, if you’ve been tempted by the famous ‘woke’ movement and then suddenly gripped by fear of political correctness – phase 1, crazy – because AOC told you so, then your subculture begins to challenge ignorance, and in some cases wins. Bonaccini did not factor this in, but perhaps you are the ‘deplorable’ one.