The ridiculous spectacle of a PSI member with Ingroia

To the editor – “He is implementing with great effectiveness the plan I had devised in 2013 with Rivoluzione Civile”. The speaker is Antonio Ingroia, a former magistrate and mid-level politician; the person putting his idea into practice is Onorato, a councillor for Rome City Council and leader of Progetto Civico Italia. I delve into my memory and recall that the Rivoluzione Civile lists were made up of Rifondazione Comunista, the Italian Communist Party, Italia dei Valori, De Magistris’s movement – in short, groups representing the maximalist left. The reformist left of the time – the PD, SEL and PSI, of which I was the secretary – avoided forming an alliance with the party led by Ingroia: their ideas were in total conflict, their visions of Italy were completely different, and their views on the role of Europe were worlds apart. I wonder, if Ingroia and his movement are joining a project of which the Socialists and Più Europa are founding members, who has changed their mind. There is little doubt that someone will feel out of place. As a man of the Left, however, I am more concerned about a tendency evident among some leaders of the broad coalition: the notion that joining the fray will increase support, when in fact it fuels squabbles that make you even more vulnerable – because you are less credible – in the eyes of the electorate, who, as they say on the Arno, ‘aren’t fools’. Politics is gut feeling, passion, then reason; it is not a job for accountants or the emotionally illiterate. For socialists, and therefore for me too, there is finally a third problem. William Faulkner wrote: ‘The past is never dead; it’s not even past.’ The Nobel laureate is absolutely right. So here’s the thing: with a past that has made Italy a more civilised and freer country, with a pro-European stance and support for the market economy, with a political identity in which the ‘open society’ reigns supreme and where direct appeals to the people have always been regarded as the precursor to populism, what on earth do the Socialists have to do with the arguments put forward by Ingroia?