The hunt for the sniper or “traitor” after the election of Ignazio La Russa to the Senate, a coalition held in check by Silvio Berlusconi, the very hard confrontation with Giorgia Meloni and the social anger that threatens to explode.
In these days, politics and society seem to be experiencing a real earthquake. Yet another since the beginning of 2020. “In reality, the worst is yet to come, what many feared is emerging, the right does not have the minimum tools to deal with the country, it is held together only by the ambition of individuals, people determined to leave an imprint of one’s passage, at any cost. This is human, it is a question of understanding what kind of legacy they will deposit ”.
The discussion with Domenico Barrilà (in the picture), writer, Adlerian analyst, one of the greatest Italian psychotherapists, very attentive to issues concerning the social impact of the personality of political leaders, starts precisely from these interactions, from the influences that the personal qualities of those who practice it exercise in the political sphere. His predictions this time are not rosy.
“The situation is very serious, we are faced with a turbid primordial broth, where the worst instances have met, all at once, and the instincts dance like beans in boiling water”.
However, a large majority came out of the polls.
“Consequence of an electoral system that seems to be the fruit of the mind of a schizophrenic. The center-right alliance is just over 40 percent, moreover having voted something more than 60 percent of those entitled. The true majority is another thing, we must all remember this, and above all that they respect this data, otherwise an unprecedented bumper car will start, which will lead the country where not even the war and Covid have succeeded “.
The first moves of the coalition, in the Senate in the House, seem to prove you right.
“Impossible to make worse choices. Citizens cannot be provoked in this way ”.
It refers to the presidents of the two newly elected branches of parliament.
“These are tremendous, provocative, extreme choices, which show the presence of a series of disturbing traits, starting with an evident lack of sense of responsibility, balance, institutional and personal. More moderation was needed. Neither Ignazio La Russa nor, much less Lorenzo Fontana, will ever be able to represent the sensitivities scattered throughout the country, these people are the daughters of an absurd contingency that will give birth to other punches in the stomach. Unfortunately, despair has always opened its doors to unwanted guests. Social unease is a reality, too many traumas one after the other, but such a self-injurious reaction to the polls could make what we have seen so far become a joke ”.
What will be the consequences of this choice.
“To understand it you have to take a step back, rummage the background of both. Ignazio La Russa is the living symbol of a tragedy that does not pass, because it is nestled in the hearts of too many men. People like him keep the torch alive, or rather the flame, until, it happens with a certain regularity, the planets are aligned and we can indulge in temptations that would be better left outside the door ”.
It may seem curious, but it is hard to find people who explicitly declare that they have voted for Meloni’s party.
“It’s true, many of the ordinary people who vote for certain parties don’t like to talk about it. They know that it is a serious choice, a spite, and spite is done in secret ”.
In his activity, social psychology plays a central role and therefore also “political” psychology. What is the soul of a fascist like?
“As a professional I believe that being a fascist, especially in a country that for a century has been carrying on its skin wounds and grief generated by a mentally disturbed man, is not a sign of great inner balance, nor of real interest towards one’s fellow men. It is necessary to be particular to found or vote today a party that has the tricolor flame in the symbol, to have open accounts with life, with democracy itself. This is also true for Giorgia Meloni and for all those who feel the fascination of a culture, build political successes in it, recalling that specific consensus, but taking care not to proclaim it. They do it in rallies, saying very bad things, listing the targets and feeding them to the instincts of the crowd, then they do the moderates when they have to sit at the table. There is something disturbing in these people, I still think of the prime minister in pectore that she says she wants to “unite the nation” not realizing that her very presence divides her “.
These days we have seen electricity and gas bills burning in protest, as well as posters with the faces of political leaders. Are they warning signs of a social anger that could explode?
“There will be a lot of social indolence in the coming months, which is the violence of myths, people who will never make violent choices but will not help unite the country with a right-wing leader in power. They will just do the minimum, leaning on the oars without pushing them, because they don’t want to swallow the bite. We will have a formidable subtraction of resources from the cause of the common good. It is one thing that Sergio Mattarella and Mario Draghi ask to make sacrifices, another thing is that the exponent of a party that touches something delicate within us, injuring a democratic and civil sensibility, asks for it ”.
The same can be said for the Speaker of the House, I guess.
“In some ways it is even worse, because those who are fascists have an ideology, wrong but with a head and a tail, while the new president of the Chamber is a truly convoluted person, an unspeakable expression of the most primitive, if not downright sick, Catholicism. Here there is something profound and unresolved on a personal level, a contact with the themes of religion that is frightening, because it is a process devoid of realism and self-criticism, as happens in psychosis. A drift present today in sects and in the most nostalgic Catholicism of the catacombs ”.
What do you mean?
“We are talking about people who fail to feel part of the national community in their own right, putting them back on the edge, often putting themselves at the mercy of manipulative and unscrupulous spiritual guides. Subgroups, subsets, which use themes such as abortion and homosexuality as sabers, but in reality cover their inability to adapt to a changing world, to growing rights, to asserting freedoms. Children frightened by the storm looking for the reassuring hand of mom and dad. This flow of votes went to the right, to people who deny the brotherhood of human beings, a circumstance that speaks of violence and atheism, other than religion. There are individuals who should face their problems before inflicting themselves on fellow deputies, on the country and on more adult Catholicism which, believe me, exists and also holds the ballast. These days I have been in the company of two priests who feel normal and use words and actions only to unite. Anyone who knows me knows that I have several reservations about the ease with which the abortion law has been left to itself, but civil rights must be improved and certainly not fought “.
How vast is this most backward ecclesial territory?
“There are many who are part of this nostalgic and anti-evangelical church, which unfortunately believes it is the only interpreter of the Christian spirit. An only apparent paradox, this rear guard of Catholicism that rebels against the conciliar turning point and wants to become a child again. Often these are people of good faith, which I would not hear of the new Speaker of the House, victims of painful biographies who see religious affiliation as a sort of therapy, a surrogate family, a safe place. An attic they don’t want to get out of. A scent of death that betrays, indeed kills, the Christian revolution, thirsting for joy, hope, trust in man, in life ”.
What did you think on the day of the election of Ignazio La Russa to the second position of the state?
“My thoughts immediately went to my father, six years of imprisonment during the Second World War, wanted by the German Nazi party, which the Italian fascist party joined. He allegedly died about 20 years after returning home, due to a state of health undermined by that experience. In a few days the anniversary of his death will fall, the fifty-fourth, the most bitter of all, because it arrives just as the country proves that it has no memory or culture, simply making its sacrifice and that of an entire generation, including the side that was on the wrong side. That election is a slap in the face to dad and to all those who were betrayed by a disease that is hard to heal and perhaps will never heal ”.
This is what Liliana Segre also left intending in her speech at the opening of the first session of the 19th legislature …
“Liliana Segre was clear, speaking of“ vertigo ”, while remembering that exactly a century ago the march on Rome took place, the first act of an unparalleled catastrophe. The actors change, the disease remains, transmigrating from generation to generation ”.
With the polls closed, while the pieces are being put in place for the new executive, perhaps we must not forget what he said before, that the first party was that of abstention. Because?
“Italy is in danger due to a lack of depth and responsibility on the part of the voters, who desert the polls and do not exercise the necessary social control over politics, but also on the part of the elected, divided between arrogance, power games and temptations playful, the first session of the Senate was the appetizer of what awaits us, aware that there are few people we can really count on. A shabby picture, in which even fish of little value can give the cards. At this moment I think of the worst of all, an arrogant and violent person, whose appearance on the political scene is responsible for an acceleration of all the degenerative processes of the last ten years. A calculating, cynical, destructive person with whom we will deal with for a long time ”.
How does it come out?
“Politics must be removed from the hands of actors like the one I mention in the watermark, and the only way to do this is to push people to commit themselves directly and massively, because as long as it remains a game for a few close friends there will be no escape”.
The psychotherapist: “Fontana and La Russa provocative, extreme, terrible choices”