Note on the elections in Italy

Image: Anselmo Pessoa Neto
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By ANSELMO PESSOA NETO*

Considerations on the defeat of the Italian Democratic Party (PD)

It is curious how the whirlpools of thought are formed. People you observe and consider attentive to what is happening in the world and around them, suddenly, as if out of nowhere, have an opinion that is totally detached from reality, they see what is not given. The construction of ideas is a studied phenomenon. From the Ámountain Greek to Goebbels, reaching the sophistication of advertising and the professionals of the marketing.

Exemplary in this regard is the work of Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays (1891–1995), considered the father of advertising in the United States. Edward Bernays used the famous uncle theory to make money, he was the one who created the wave that smoking was fashionable for women. The cigarette, constructed as a phallic symbol in Bernays' campaigns for the tobacco industry, is the expression of male power, and women, with a cigarette in their mouths, become powerful or, at least, smokers and subject to cancer.

The documentary film about Edward Bernays' mind and heart manipulation experience, whose title is The séego's ass (The Century of the Self), is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azE_Mjyma3I

This seemingly long "wax nose" is only apparently a wax nose. Who stopped here and went to watch the Séego's ass he would have already gained his time (time is that thing that advertising also says is money). The political elections of September 25, 2022 in Italy were shrouded in mystification and propaganda. The obvious question is: what election isn't? And the obvious answer is: it's true, every election is shrouded in propaganda and mystification. The difference, in this case, however, is one of degree. The advertisement went up one or more houses.

Roughly speaking, until very recently you had at least two major camps in struggle: one on the left and one on the right. In general, you also had a field claiming to be from the center that, in fact, was from the right as well. Then you could have various nuances of the left and, a little less, nuances of the right. These two great camps soon established themselves and the dispute, via advertising, was that of a camp trying to demystify the other camp, which, in a way, helped the voter, that poor guy. The material means of doing propaganda count, well, they count! And the right, always close to capital, also had more money and, consequently, more time.

The evolution of the world, at least in the world of advertising, has taken us to another level. The cards were shuffled. Now, of those two camps, one on the left, one on the right, you still have two camps, one presenting itself as on the right and the other claiming to be on the left, but in terms of program, ideas, proposals, worldview , the difference is only in clothing, only in advertising.

The values ​​of the left and their theorists are still valid. But that great party that used to be on the left and that defended the historical values ​​of the left, today it's an old colorful outfit hidden in some closet. In an orchestrated way, what happens around the world is a dispute between a right with an open heart and a so-called left with values, mainly in the crucial question, the economic question, of the right. In short, you have a right against another right, but that voter, poor thing, continues to be deceived that he is in a contest of good against evil. And evil, we know, is the other.

This was the case with the recent Italian elections, as was the case with the last elections in France and the United States, to give two strong examples. It was still not exactly a dispute between right and left in the traditional sense, since the United States never had a leftist candidate who managed to compete, competitively, in a real election. Joe Biden, like Barack Obama and the Clintons, Bill and Hillary are, unabashedly, employees of the arms industry and finance capital. Emmanuel Macron never presented himself as being on the left, but he capitalized on the fear. Emmanuel Macron, and you and I saw it, set himself up as the defender of what has now gained even more strength in Italy: Western values!

In short, Western values ​​could be translated in many ways, but the most direct and accurate is that what Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden (and Enrico Letta) understand as Western values ​​is the defense of the system dominated and organized by international finance capital. . Everything else that challenges this system is populism. And that left, which used to be left, and which prided itself on challenging the system, that left now wears the shirt of the system with great pride and servitude.

But this new modernized left acts to appear to still be of the left and to continue using the label of the left. She, this left that defends the system, says she is defending the system against a greater evil: against the right that defends the system! So, what we had in Italy was a dispute between a right that defends the system, represented by Giorgia Meloni, and his party Brothers of Italy (with origins in fascism) against Enrico Letta and his Democratic Party (with origins in communism) that defends the system!

If Emmanuel Macron is a Rothschild employee, the Democratic Party (PD) also has its pet bankers: Pier Carlo Padoan, Mario Monti and now the best of the best: Mario Draghi. Well, both Giorgia Meloni and Enrico Letta defend the “Draghi agenda”, the banker's agenda.

I couldn't tell you about the nuances, and it's the nuances that make Italy the most beautiful and most transparent country, in a sense, in the world. Anyone who wants to know, in Italy, you can. But Italy is also the country of the indifferent (Alberto Moravia): https://www.raicultura.it/letteratura/articoli/2020/01/Gli-indifferenti-di-Alberto-Moravia-673c4c8c-b1df-41e9-960c-ed1ecc3759c6.html

Dear reader, passionate supporter, do not cry for the defeat of the PD in Italy. It was also an Italian, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, who created the maxim of maxims: “For things to remain the same, everything must change”. You can also watch Luchino Visconti's classic film, The Leopard.

For a spur of the moment analysis of the vote, in Italian, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFFYR_o6LOI ou https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFphyyK3Pog or even https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69tza7WdmRI

* Anselmo Pessoa Neto is professor of Italian literature at UFG. Author, among other books, of Italo Calvino: the must-see passages (UFG Publisher).

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