FLASH
Shkruar nga Ezio Mauro
In reality, what is being demanded today by the left is a test of governance...
After nearly two centuries of progress, the left must immediately understand that its sacred and symbolic cities today are Kiev and Tehran. What is happening in Ukraine and Iran directly challenges it, because it calls into question its values of freedom, its call for solidarity with the weakest, its rejection of abuse and injustice, its support for the struggle for liberation from all tyranny, and its defense of law and rights. Having honored the false idols of communism in the twentieth century, which promised universal liberation and ended up imprisoning countries and peoples in dictatorship, this is the “Credo” that remains: a commitment to justice and freedom, equality and emancipation, which has survived the storms of the last century and the uncertainties of the new century. This is not little and, in any case, it is enough to live with dignity in the world, to play its historical role and, finally, to defend the principles of democracy wherever they are challenged.
In reality, what is required today from the left is a test of governance. Because good governance in the traditional sense is no longer enough in the face of the constant emergency of an out-of-control world, with citizens who feel exposed, vulnerable and increasingly less protected by the state monopoly of force. For this reason, they seek protection in authoritarian solutions, in strong figures, in autocratic simplification, blaming democracy for the mistakes and failures of politics. In the end, they are willing to exchange parts of freedom for more security, regardless of the nature or origin of this security. To govern not only a complex country like Italy, but also an unprecedented and unregulated global crisis, in which we are navigating in the dark, clarity is needed on three fundamental concepts of our present and future: freedom, the West and democracy. They represent, respectively, our condition as free men and women, arbiters of our destiny; the cultural context, not just geographical, where our civilization emerged; and the political and institutional form we have given to our coexistence, in the mutual recognition that constitutes a civil community.
In Ukraine, it is clear that any democratic order has been violated for four years, since Russian tanks invaded and violated the borders of a sovereign state, causing a conflict of territorial and spiritual conquest. The real, historical and permanent dispute is related to the original soul of Kievan Rus, contested between Russia and Europe. On the one hand stands the freedom of the Ukrainian population, attacked and bombed in the civilian life of its destroyed cities; on the other, the imperial freedom of Russia, which gives itself the right to rewrite its thousand-year history on foreign soil, imposing the future of a people in the service of the “sacred” destiny of the empire, so that Moscow can fulfill its universal mission of salvation. And it is the West, experienced by the Kremlin as a rival civilization and a challenging empire, that is, as a permanent enemy, with the mythical projection of Eurasia as a spiritual space, an inner continent and geopolitical result of this decisive clash of the beginning of the century, which must resolve the unresolved scores between democracy and autocracy.
It is difficult for any citizen, regardless of political persuasion, not to recognize Ukraine as a victim of aggression and not to express solidarity, simply in the name of humanity, freedom, autonomy of peoples and independence of states, universal values and, therefore, ours too. But it is incomprehensible that a part of the left does not go a step further and does not clearly recognize in the actions of the Russian army that imperialism that was one of the main ghosts of the twentieth century, once personified by the United States of America. What political use can be made of this revived imperialism today? To deny it, to pretend not to see it, or to justify it, to those who are against Zelensky, just to avoid facing the fact that he is defending the point of view of the West and its fundamental values.
In Iran, the contradiction between this minority and a short-sighted left is even more pronounced. There is a popular uprising against a theocratic dictatorship that has oppressed the people for 47 years, transforming the law of the Creator into an obligation for all creatures. The circle of terror surrounding the regime collapsed and a devastating economic crisis brought people to the streets against the ayatollahs, challenging the Revolutionary Guard, which responded by killing thousands of insurgents, in a veritable massacre of freedom, with machine gun fire. Faced with this test of violence, oppression, and absolutism, how can anyone hesitate or make distinctions? The cause of the youth of Tehran is the cause of all democratic citizens, of every leftist; otherwise, the left no longer has a cause.
The bitter truth is that a segment of the left refuses to recognize itself by Western standards because it does not recognize the values and importance of democracy. It seems incredible, but it is true. This refusal combines old and new reasons, creating a permanent anti-democratic spirit, perfectly intertwined with the anti-democracy of the right: remnants of Soviet beliefs, communist ashes, anti-American embers that never go out and, above all, the fuel of the new populism, a narrow-mindedness that portrays democracy as a fraud of the elites, unworthy of being defended and, even, worthy of contempt. This explains why the justifiable protest against Israel for the crimes in Gaza has turned into an uncontrolled explosion on the left, dominating the discourse to the point of embracing the terrorist slogans of Hamas: because the rights of the weakest were defended without embracing the democratic West.
It is clear to everyone that the global chaos we are immersed in today has Washington as its driving force, through Donald Trump's planned and continuous destruction of the world order that guarantees peaceful coexistence: ignoring alliances, undermining international organizations for the prevention and management of conflicts and legitimizing the national egoism of the great powers in the forcible pursuit of their interests, to the detriment of everyone. But here the contradiction reaches its peak: because the opposition, and today the resistance, to Trump is precisely the defense of those Western values of freedom that represent the best of American history. Against Trump, in the name of America, democracy and the West, passing, after Gaza, through Kiev and Tehran. Cities that are, necessarily, the capitals of the left in the new century. Or the end of the road. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "La Repubblica"
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