What identity for Italy? Here is the country’s real problem

Italy can have only one project for its future: to become a bridge between Europe, Asia, Africa and America. This also gives a sense of Europe beyond the accounts. This contributes to the sense of unitary Germany as a new glue between East and West of a continent that is about to become something else after the end of the war in Ukraine. Without Italy as a bridge, not only the country but also Europe are at risk. Francesco Sisci’s analysis

The Italian political, social and cultural crisis seems unprecedented since the time of its unity, perhaps for this reason we need to start from the basics.

Italy for centuries had been divided politically despite having an easily identifiable geography and a common language. These two bricks, which had always lived beautifully separated, were linked by the romantic lime of an idea of ​​nation in the 19th century, as happened to Germany and other countries first in Europe and then in the world.

The thrust of nationalist romanticism produced today’s world. This was prompted by the only multi-ethnic nation, the USA, which favored the nationalist independence, often artificial, of the last century even against the demands of colonial powers such as France or Great Britain, its allies.

After all, this nationalist and romantic independence was the offspring of the historical process of the French revolution, so closely linked to the American one.

Today many elements of that revolution have disappeared. The messianic cult of saving and atheistic reason is no more. It is undermined by the discovery of an uncontrollable unconscious itself the victim of chance circumstances, a childhood rebuke from a parent, or too much or too little vitamin C in the diet.

Atheism has vanished, then migrated into Marxism, which has contributed so much to the sense of ourselves in the last two centuries. Nations caught in a self-destructive vortex are in crisis. They have discovered that within them there are other “nations” that claim equal dignity and equally outside there are nations that challenge the national “rights” of others.

Thus nations crumble and need strong governments to keep them artificially alive. The government of Putin in Russia it seems to come from here. The stronger the new government must be the weaker the “Russia” project. Or the old nations, when they have not disappeared or shaky, have more or less unconsciously found a new “project” of themselves around which to aggregate.

For example, Spain is the bridge between Latin America and Europe; France is the continuity of strong and secular ideals of the revolution; the United Kingdom is the great think tank of world geopolitics and the beacon of values ​​of 18th century liberalism; Germany is (was?) the glue and economic engine of Europe, etc.

What is the Italy project?

From 1861 to 1922 there was an overabundance of sense. In addition to the idea of ​​the “Italian nation”, the project was to revive the glories of the Renaissance in a unified way, hence “Risorgimento”, also semantically the son of “Renaissance”. Then there was the fascist idea of ​​reviving the imperial splendor of Rome, which ended up in the mud of hubris. From 1943 to the fall of the USSR, Italy was the march of the West against Islam and Communism.

Now what’s the project?

This seems to be the country’s most serious and real problem.

In the last decade, parties have grown and disappeared in the polls with the speed of a song for various promises: scrapping the past (PD of Renzi), vaffa to all (M5s of Cricket), vaffa immigrants (League of Salvini), last lap but responsible (FdI of Melons). It is always a matter of conjugations of negative and very particular ideas, which have nothing to do with economics.

Of course it is useful for the economy to grow but everyone seems to live in a world where the economy does not matter, hence the technocratic parentheses of the Marii (Mountains or Dragons) they do not count. Perhaps Italy had given up its “meaning” in the name of a greater “meaning” in the European Union (EU).

But here the sense of the EU was only that of a great accountant who gives and asks for money, indifferent to the sense of the nations within it.

Of course, the country must once again have a sense of reality, get back to grips with the economy. But the mass distraction from the reality of the economy is also a symptom of the country’s lack of destiny. The scrapping, the various “vaffa” are all negative responses to what doesn’t work in the sense of the country. The European recall of accounts does not respond to this cry of lack of conscience.

The proposal Calderoli of a pushed autonomy of the regions is then a practical response to this lack of sense. If unitary Italy has lost its meaning, we need to go back to that of the territories, to the Renaissance reality, of a geographical Italy, but not a unitary political space.

It makes historical sense, but the cure seems worse than the disease. It would trigger a process that would lead to the end of the unitary state of 1861 and would set off a virus of continental fragmentation capable of splitting even post-unitary Germany Bismarck.

The project for Italy can be unique: to become a bridge between Europe, Asia, Africa and America. This also gives a sense of Europe beyond the accounts. This contributes to the sense of unitary Germany as a new glue between East and West of a continent that is about to become something else after the end of the war in Ukraine. That is, without bridge Italy, not only the country but also Europe are at risk.

It should be a national project, beyond the parties, but who can take charge of it? We need one or more political forces to take him on, but are they there? This is perhaps the biggest question in the country now.