“Politics is the noble art par excellence, however, it has now become a trap”. Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, journalist and writer, offers us a lucid examination of the current political situation.
How did your political passion start?
“By being born into it. Everyone in the family was involved in politics, both my father and my uncle. Unfortunately, then, slowly, the passion faded away. Today there is no longer a battle of ideas, a vision. I’ve seen too many people slaughtered by politics. Even when the right person is found, it happens that he finds himself mocked by the canea called ‘public opinion’ or bitten by the prosecutors. I was very upset to see a gentleman like Ruggero Razza, the former councilor for health in Sicily, whipped in the mud for a sentence on the ‘dead to spread’ in the count of numbers, interpreted by those who spied on him with the same ease of the most sinister Richelieu : ‘Give me six lines written by the most honest of men and I will find a reason for him to be hanged.’ The truth is that decent people stay away from politics also because of the anti-political rhetoric. Why people of value should stop working and devote themselves to politics and then find themselves in prison or with a scarred life. The rule is not bad do not do, fear not to have, but quite the opposite. If you do right, someone will make you pay for it. The story of Rino Nicolosi, the president of the Sicilian Region – a giant of politics – literally slaughtered from prison remains a perennial warning ”.
How did you approach journalism?
“It was a consequence of political passion and study. They are intertwined like two cuts of the same blade. Indeed, the study was functional to political passion “.
From a literary and journalistic point of view, who were your teachers?
“Certainly Francesco Merlo and Peppino Sottile for journalism, while Sergio Claudio Perroni and Antonio Franchini for literature”.
What does Sicily represent for you?
“It is my root and my sky at the same time. In Sicily I find all the reasons for what I have been and those for my aspirations. For what I have left to live. Sicily is female because it is universal, it is by far the most universal place where the whole world meets. It is the only place where you can have the exact perception of diversity, of the most distant horizons and of the most unthinkable adventures “.
Do you still believe that the Region of Sicily should be a commissioner?
“I believe that Sicily has only two possibilities: either to become truly independent or to cancel the autonomy which is useless if not to make everything worse”.
Is Musumeci governing better than Crocetta?
“Obviously there is no competition. Musumeci is better ”.
How do you respond to the journalist Andrea Scanzi who, in essence, said that right-wing culture does not exist?
“At a paradoxical point, Scanzi is right to say that there is no right-wing intellectual because no one who is not from the left or the fly chasing conformism finds voice, visibility and space in the showcase of ideas: there is never a right-wing signature in the Corriere della Sera, the Italian bourgeoisie’s newspaper? Paolo Isotta suffered everything in via Solferino and Montanelli had to found this newspaper after being expelled from via Solferino. Leo Longanesi was never able to write to the Corriere. Never even a free one like Massimo Fini. And, today, do you ever see a Marcello Veneziani – I don’t mean by Lucia Annunziata, and in all the rest of the regime’s cucuzzaro – but on Domenica In or even at Porta a Porta? Do you ever see an antiquity out of the canon at the film festivals, at the Biennale or in the literary awards? Never. It has always been like this: a conditioned reflection of everyone, perhaps even in the two of us, triggers immediate awe towards anyone on the left. They immediately pass for intelligent. Italy is in the hands of professors with a headband who are anxious for the Divine Comedy recited by Benigni. What can one expect? People read some incredible junk. And not in the sense of savory obscenities but in the sense of the heaviest banality. It is Italy in silent expectation of any virologist, other than Cristina Campo. And it seems to have been like this for three hundred years because the cloak is powerful on us all. This is why Scanzi, in his paradox, got it right “.
What is the biggest ‘cultural blasphemy’ you have heard recently?
“In that sort of canasta between friends that is Massimo Gramellini’s show, I heard Alessandro Barbero say that Dante would now be a member of the Radical Party, obviously strangling the eagle of the Empire, not to mention the Ghibelline Veltro. Forced to go on hunger strike ”.
At least part of the left sees in Salvini a new Mussolini. What do you think?
“On this I wrote a book to prove how this comparison is only a mental short circuit that exists only in the superficiality of interpretations because Mussolini is a great champion of the left, while Salvini, on the other hand, is a representative of the right. What amused me was seeing the young editors working on this book when, reading it, they were surprised by all the Mussolini implications that were almost group-revolutionary atmospheres that did not coincide with the official story. As proof of the inability to have a serene recognition of right-wing culture in Italy ”.
Who will win the Salvini-Meloni duel?
“This duel leads to only one result: the fall of both. Just think that two defeats are expected in Rome and Milan and this will be an unexpected gift for the left ”.
But if they cancel each other out, what will be the future of the center-right?
“I do not know. The center-right has always been the interpreter of a silent majority, offering it a voice, a political project and a path for the formation of a ruling class. Now we need a federator who brings all these voices together. The advantage of the center-right over the center-left is to have multiple expressions, but a federator is needed. From this point of view, Berlusconi has taught a lot ”.
Who can this federator be today?
“In Rome I see many center-right voters who are unleashed for Carlo Calenda, a moderate who is neither sovereignist and certainly not populist. Calenda can become the new Ernesto Nathan, who in monarchical and papal Italy became the mayor of the capital of that Kingdom and of that Church, despite being a republican, a Freemason and, therefore, an atheist. In the same way, today, the paradox of relying on Calenda in a sovereign and populist Italy can be realized ”.
And, instead, is Renzi finished?
“Renzi is a champion of politics. It has shown that it is not necessary to have a large army to carry out political action. It has many defects and I also have some scars from the Renzi experience on my skin. However, I must admit that he was able to play this game well. Other Christian Democrats scare me much more ”.
What will happen to the M5S?
“Just like Forza Italia which is inevitably linked to the figure of Silvio Berlusconi, the M5S is linked to this invention by Beppe Grillo and, obviously, it has already dissolved. Some of the protagonists will take their own path, while others will go into oblivion. Luigi Di Maio and, outside the M5S, Alessandro Di Battista will remain. They were the Castoro and Polluce, the two dioscuri destined for two different paths: one revolutionary and the other descended into the horizon of the Italian bourgeoisie. I imagine Di Maio in that area of the “silent majority” and not alongside Bettini, Conte or who knows what other form of deranged progressivism “.
And with you?
“Conte was a variable, indeed, a variant of the CoronaGrillo, a Dadaist invention of Grillo. Out of the spotlight, his hologram will go out. Italians are cynical and they will forget it ”.
Is Grillo finished after that video?
“I don’t want to comment because it is the pain and anguish of a father. Certainly he had finished doing politics for a while, he was tired from before ”.
What do you think of the Draghi government?
“We have to deal with reality. This is the only government possible because the elections will never give them. And then never. Better to stay inside rather than outside. If the whole right had been inside, at least there would be no Minister Speranza ”.
Who handled the pandemic best? Count or Draghi?
“It’s like when you ask me the difference between Crocetta and Musumeci. There is no competition: obviously Draghi ”.
Were you afraid of covid?
“I’m afraid of madness. I am afraid of leukemia, tumors and all that is disease and, therefore, the covid, on a scale of danger, is at the bottom of the fright threshold. But what frightens me even more is the despotic, schizophrenic and insane attitude of a bureaucratic machine that gives you the perception of living in perennial anguish ”.
How did you spend this year characterized by quarantines?
“I can’t stand it anymore because I have a whole life away from home. It is unbearable the dullness that hovers around, the looks, the hysteria of the people, forcibly gathering in public transport and, then, plunging into the pantomime of distancing inside the bars. It is all a contradiction. I am convinced that bureaucratic superfetation has exacerbated this sense of anguish and that health is also the health of the mind and we will pay the consequences in clinical terms ”.
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