The language of the empire, the voice of populism

As the 21st century has progressed, many political passions have become so irrational as to revive old psychopathological analyses of society: public debates that marked the 20th century, such as Jung’s diagnoses of the minds of dictators or the Freud–Einstein correspondence on war. In the last century, however, these discussions took place within clear frameworks: in the Second World War, the anti-fascists against the Fascist Axis; in the Cold War, the liberal-capitalists against the communists. Today, the ‘populists’ are triumphing. But who are they, and against whom are they fighting? Do they represent a new far right? No: in the United States, they comprise the poorest and least educated sections of society who support Trump – a man who favours the rich and cuts aid to the poor on a scale never seen before. The fascist system sought a strongman; the Soviet system sought equality. The ideal of populism, however, remains elusive. Perhaps because it does not exist. Its agenda is purely negative: a critique of the democratic system, or at best, a eulogy to a strongman like Putin.

The best media outlets analyse not only political proclamations but also populist language. In light of the successes of the AfD, the German party considered to be almost neo-Nazi, Der Spiegel has rediscovered a great German philologist. Victor Klemperer had achieved incredible success with "LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii. Notizbuch eines Philologen". That is: The Language of the Third Reich (Latin translation of ‘Drittes Reich’). Subtitle: Notes of a Philologist. A text written in German by a linguist specialising in French literature. ‘It must be terribly boring!’, we think.

Instead, it ranks among the masterpieces of irony produced by the Jewish intellectuals of the time. The violence of the Third Reich—explains Klemperer—did not begin in 1933, when Hitler came to power. It began in 1925, when the first volume of his "Mein Kampf" was published. Before it becomes physical destruction, radical political violence tears language to shreds. Words make us human: by controlling and draining them of meaning, a tyranny turns us into a herd. When Hitler first came to power in 1933, the racial laws did not appear immediately: they were too complex, as they had to apply to millions of citizens. Klemperer himself would be obliged to wear the yellow star bearing the word ‘Jew’ and to reside in designated areas. But he would not be deported. He had married before the racial laws came into force: his wife was Aryan and, despite pressure, she refused to divorce him. Jews could be forced to do so, but Aryans could not.

Schizophrenic bans are imposed from on high. At the university, Klemperer loses his chair; yet he is able to read announcements that interest him as a philologist: ‘When they write in German, the Jews lie’. If texts by German Jews are to be published, they must bear the specification ‘Translated from the Hebrew’. Of course, let us not console ourselves by simplistically labelling ‘the Germans as evil, the Allies as good’: Klemperer, too, is German, and he is proud to be a genius of the German language. He lives in Dresden. His diary, another hugely famous book, will describe the night of 13–14 February 1945. The war is nearing its end; the Red Army is less than half an hour’s drive from Berlin; Dresden contains no military targets, only a vast mass of refugees: the Allied bombing causes fifty times as many deaths as the infamous raid on Guernica. It incinerates one of the world’s greatest concentrations of art: Dresden was ‘the Florence of the North’. In the pages entitled “La cancellazione di Dresda”, the professor is greeted by many, even in Russian. Has the Red Army already arrived? No, the prisoners-of-war barracks have exploded. “Are you Jewish? I’m living in a confiscated house; I think it’s yours.” Everyone is wandering about without knowing where to go. Like Hiroshima, the city has vanished. It is the depths of winter, yet it is not cold. His wife takes out a cigarette: there are no matches, but she lights it from a burning corpse. Dresden is dead, but she and Viktor wander everywhere, even where signs read ‘No Jews allowed’. The poet Gerhart Hauptmann would write: ‘Those who have forgotten how to weep can learn it again in Dresden’.

Der Spiegel gives us food for thought. So does The New York Times, which occasionally comments on Trump’s linguistic poverty. We Italians, too, when we hear him on the television, remark: ‘Always “good” or “bad”! I didn’t learn English very well, but I speak it better than he does!’ When I was a child, certain fascist slogans still visible on the walls made me ask the adults: ‘Believe, obey, fight? But did Mussolini really know the Italians? Three such commands, one after the other?’. Today we say that Putin’s war is shattering our mental frameworks: battles in Europe once again, eighty years after 1945. It would be more accurate to observe that, just as during the Second World War, violence today is not limited to dropping bombs. Propaganda also rains down from above, even an attack on language: everyone believes they possess it forever, but a tyrant locks it away behind bars, just as he does with his opponents.

Victoria Amelina was a promising writer. In early 2022, there were fears in Ukraine of a Russian attack: but all Kremlin sources denied this. One cannot simply ‘live in anticipation’: one must also live one’s life. Victoria went on holiday to Egypt with her ten-year-old son. Then the invasion began. Please note: this is merely a ‘special operation’; in Russia, it is forbidden to call it a war. Even I know this, despite living in Italy. I have taught in both Russia and Ukraine. Once the war began, we started to provide more practical help to our Ukrainian colleagues: a few women who had lost their homes to the bombing were given shelter in Italy. We continued teaching our Russian colleagues, but only via video. Professional communications, such as clinical discussions, are permitted. However, they could be monitored, so Russian psychoanalysts are careful to use only a sanitised, almost surreal vocabulary: ‘The patient was undergoing treatment for depression. He stopped treatment because he was conscripted into the Special Operation. He wrote to me; I got the impression he was still rather depressed.’

At the start of the invasion, Victoria Amelina rushed to the airport. It was packed with passengers wanting to return to the European Union – mostly Ukrainians. Finally, Victoria found a flight to Prague. On landing, the border police stamped her passport in an awkward silence. Victoria tried to say ‘thank you’, but found it hard to hold back her tears. “Mum, why are you crying?” her son asks. “Because we’re home.” “But we’re not in Ukraine here,” he says, confused. ‘This is Europe,’ Victoria replies, as if ‘Europe’ were the key word for all the necessary explanations – which, of course, it isn’t. The term ‘Europe’ will take on a different meaning in the coming days. The world is changing and words are taking on new meanings. Victoria feels this in her ‘… inability to utter the word “war”’ (V. Amelina, Guardando le donne guardare la guerra, Guanda, p. 52).

Few lines have managed to capture the emotion and geopolitical upheaval of recent years as effectively as these. They pose the question to readers: if even Victoria, the ‘Mother Courage’ of the 21st century, is overwhelmed and can no longer bring herself to utter the word ‘war’, does that mean the facts prove Putin right? Has he poisoned even her mind to such an extent as to emasculate her language as a writer? Do they not agree with him because he is right, but because he hypnotises, distorts and directs words, forcing them to follow him, as if he were a Pied Piper? As Voltaire put it when he said: ‘Slander, slander: something will stick’? Or as racists claimed: are the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ – the forgery describing a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world – ‘right’ simply because everyone knows them and reads them? Is he right when he says: ‘This is not a war, just a special operation’? Has a ‘Fourth Reich’ begun, one that spreads not only its drones but also its language?

Victoria Amelina continued to write about the conflict. On 27 June 2023, in a restaurant in Kramatorsk, a missile shattered her skull. She was thirty-seven years old.