“The Russian aggression against Ukraine seems to lead us – together – to indignation and resignation. But perhaps more to the second than to the first. As if its brutality nourished our fear more than our indignation. It will be necessary to reflect on it. And maybe even try to react.
Older generations had cut their teeth demonstrating against wars and invasions, mobilizing in the name of the derelict peoples, indignant against the great powers of the time. Our streets were filled from time to time with burnt flags (especially American) and with slogans and songs of freedom with which we wanted to celebrate our solidarity against all oppression.
Those who are a few years older remember the protests against the Americans for Vietnam, the less crowded ones against the Soviets for Czechoslovakia and so on, listing the infinity of noble and generous causes, just and less just, which have awakened passions and the controversies of the time. The Middle East, Latin America, Africa. All the places where cold wars and hot wars, sometimes very hot, were fought. To each of which our imagination wanted to give the contribution of a presence, albeit a symbolic one.
We were under the illusion of changing the course of things. Maybe sometimes the passion took a geopolitical course that could be questionable. And the tendency to blame especially our cumbersome American ally sometimes led to the neglect of many other atrocities that were taking shape elsewhere. But so be it. Those parades of young people eager to change the world evoked a deep and heartfelt civil vocation.
Now, of all this, there seems to be very little left. The merit of Enrico Letta is honored, who at least gathered his leaders and militants in protest in front of the Russian embassy. But that merit, which in other times would have been judged almost as obvious, stands out precisely because silence was heard above all elsewhere. And it is that silence that speaks of us, of our civil torpor, of our fear of giving a voice to ourselves.
Yes, because there is no doubt that Putin’s aggression against Ukraine clashes, as well as with international law, with the most basic democratic rules on which our country is founded. And although Realpolitik has been able to suggest prudence and circumspection, there is something in the brutality of that war – because it is a war – that should push our political forces and our public opinion to claim the reasons for the attacked with much more determination.
It is certainly not a question of descending on the terrain of military contention, God forbid. But not even to entrust with a trembling soul to protest notes written with the tip of a pen and to sanctions imposed with the pharmacist’s slingbar. What is at stake, in fact, is not only the bitter fate of the Ukrainian people (which in itself deserves a little more heat). But it is the ability of historical democracies, let’s call them that, to assert their arguments in the midst of such an adventurous international turbulence.
It should be remembered that just six months ago we fled from Afghanistan returned to the Taliban, albeit in their softer version (at least for now). And that before us all hangs the question of Formosa, to which the Chinese leadership seems to intend to devote all its attention as soon as possible. Not to mention Hong Kong, already cornered in spite of an agreement with Great Britain that turned out to be as fragile as tissue paper.
Perhaps it would then be appropriate to devote a few more grams of civil passion to these topics. Instead, the prudent, terrified silence with which we follow the developments of the Ukrainian tragedy signals the difficulty of all of us in living to the end a season that promises to be fraught with risks and pain. Even for us, protected from a distance of just a few hundred kilometers “.
(Of Marco Follini)
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