The word “lesson” has been obsessively recurring in the Italian media in recent days, following the Italian referendum and the Hungarian vote, which supposedly gave two lessons of caution to the Italian right. Which would have taken them into account by distancing themselves from Donald Trump and Israel. But according to news and comments, even Pope Leo would have given a masterful lesson of pacifism, engaging in an indirect conversation with the omnipresent US president. Overused in the media, then, are the metaphors of the “wind” and the “air” that would have changed, to return to the alleged lesson learned by our conservatives, indicating the end of an equally alleged populist era.
The causal emphasis of simple sequences of events is inevitable, but the current etiological irrationalism also affects usually objective observers. However, it is difficult to hypothesize that, before the referendum, Italy would have completely remained silent on Trump’s comments against the Pontiff. Perhaps Giorgia Meloni would have used a different tone, perhaps she would have limited herself to wishing Prevost a good trip without explicitly condemning the aggression, which in fact arrived after nine hours, as some journalists have taken care to time. Just as the left, at another time and if the aggression had not come from the number one public enemy, would perhaps have maintained a thread of respect for the secularity of American democracy.
Moreover, in the offensive manner that distinguishes him, Trump raises a point that is shareable on the merits: the danger posed by Iran and magnified by its atomic potential. We are talking about a theocratic regime, speaking of secularity, which explicitly states the destruction of Israel in its program, with all due respect to the total reversal of approach attempted in recent days by Romano Prodi. It is therefore true that the Iranian threat is indirectly also directed against those who cooperate in defense with Tel Aviv, let us remember that our memorandum remains in force, albeit with the suspension of automatic renewal. However, the US president translates his total lack of courtesy and the delirious eccentricity of his style into an absurd warlike conduct, into a schizoid strategy that does not ensure the containment of the risk represented by the ayatollahs in the middle of Eurasia (the Mercator projection deceives), on the contrary.
We trust that the premier will not succumb to excessive causalism, one of the limits of our progressives and others, will measure things calmly, precisely because international variables are so unpredictable that chasing them is losing. In Hungary, the left did not win, which cannot even claim success on justice, which has become a catalyst for internal divisions. On the contrary, congratulations to Elly Schlein who, in the primary magma, gave a burst of energy, a visibility boost with the adamant declaration defending Italy and the premier against Trumpian aggressions.
Meloni was right not to be too disheartened by the referendum setback, she will do well not to exalt herself for the current recovery of consensus and, although some of her decisions in the immediate term are debatable, she seems to have taken the only sensible path: to use the year at the end of the legislature and the simultaneous electoral campaign to work on concrete things, to confirm to Italians that in these years they have had the least bad of possible governments. Certainly, the mood will not be the best, considering that every day brings its ministerial trouble and, after the unmentionable Piantedosi-Conte affair, now opens the Musumeci-Niscemi one. The local trouble added to the global one.
