Dario Fabbri, TV face of Enrico Mentana’s marathons on the war in Ukraine, geopolitical expert and director of Domino magazine, admits he doesn’t have a degree. Above all, he responds with an extremely “know-it-all” tone to Professor Riccardo Puglisi, who was the first to question his qualifications, thereby jeopardizing his geopolitical approach in the face of the social media jungle. Here is an open letter from a geopolitical analyst
Darling Dario Fabbri, you have let us down. And let’s not talk about the fact that you don’t have a degree, because we don’t know the “piece of paper” myth. Rather, more in favor of the author speaking from geopolitical scientist to geopolitical scientist, with the back and forth with the professor born on Twitter Riccardo Puglisi They have exposed the entire geopolitical method to a serious setback. We take the liberty of addressing you directly, Dario, because we know your competence and intelligence, which cannot be questioned. But the processing of the case was one sensational flop. And the patch with the answers to the clear questions of the Dissipatio colleagues is worse than the hole. You claim, Dario, that “it was important to move outside the academy to develop a different way of thinking, alien to international relations and political science.” Everyone goes their own way, you say, and that’s legitimate. Bettino Craxi He had no degree and survived for years in a world of subtle, often punitive and classist doctors until he became prime minister. Giuseppe Di Vittorio, as a simple trade unionist, explained the dynamics of the labor market to great economists and industrialists. Enzo Biagi and Piero Angela They were not university graduates and were able to combatively turn their profession as journalists and popularizers into a means of being protagonists of the public and cultural debate.
“I never respond to personal attacks, just as I have never given personal interviews about my political preferences or personal life. “I love being judged just for my work”: This is how you responded to MOW when asked about Puglisi’s controversy. A departure that, in retrospect, we can only describe as unfortunate. Puglisi was certainly wrong to reinforce the allegations against you. But, we repeat, the fundamental mistake was to provide him with the thread and the needle. And that is your responsibility. There is no stigma about not having a degree. But the claim to the title of “Doctor of Political Science” When you work in multiple locations and put a complex discipline like geopolitics on a different pedestal without then being prepared to face the consequences of the criticism, you expose yourself and your discipline to serious backlash. Puglisi persisted, forcefully and often even intrusively, until he reached a fit on the hunt for “Dario Fabbri’s degree”. He made it a personal crusade. An honest response to the tweet that started the feud would have been enough to calm the matter. You would have come out in style. From this perspective, entrusting the answer to a medium perceived as a “friend” does not seem to be the best way out. This is not a criticism of the Dissipatio boys: the author knows well the history of the group well coordinated by Bravo Davide Arcidiacono and has no doubts about his professionalism. But entrusting this answer to a newspaper that will soon welcome you as a guest at Libropolis can lead to misunderstandings, especially in this wild jungle that is the world of Twitter, X or whatever the hell it is called, where the controversy originates has. The academy has its logic and its shortcomings, but it is not enough, Dario, to propose as a remedy the merits acquired in this field: There is only a risk of reinforcing a perceived minority feeling. In the interview, you claim the results achieved, which have rewarded hundreds of thousands of readers by reading your articles and analyses. The method you adopted from authors like George Friedman, the study of classical geopolitics combined with strategic grammar, and the claim to have gone beyond a certain academic constraint were recognized. But today these departures seem more like an excusatio non paetita. You write, Dario, that human geopolitics has been included in the country’s debate. That you were “invited to present Imperial Grammar, a part of human geopolitics, to graduate students at Oriel College, Oxford.” Or to the management of Microsoft USA together with personalities such as the writer Walter Isaacson, the astronaut Scott Kelly, the journalist Dan Rather to illustrate the strategy and tactics of the USA, Russia and China.
But what exists beyond “I, Dario Fabbri”? This is the question we ask you as scientists of geopolitics, to understand it as a method, a practice, a field of comparison between disciplines, even before it is hard science. As a defender of the geopolitical approach against the angry pointing fingers of others Michele Boldrin, Vittorio Emanuele Parsi and companies that have long been attacking this unconventional way of thinking about strategic grammar. Great scientists were very good at talking about geopolitics. The author quotes some personal teachers: Aldo Giannuli and Alessandro Colombo. Those who know how to talk about the geopolitical method, starting from studies that are not necessarily academically framed, have come out equally well. On limes Alessandro Aresu he wrote about geoeconomics and technological competition using a multidisciplinary method; In the same newspaper that made you famous, we carefully note the approach of Greta Cristini, “Geopolitics,” given to the report that mixed analysis and journalism on his journey to the front lines in Ukraine; on the YouTube channel “Parabellum” Mirko Campochiari He mixes thoughts of different kinds and often calls the analyst Amedeo Maddaluno, in whose “Geopolitics – History of an Ideology” we understand a lot about the method that this discipline should follow. Maddaluno writes in his book a fundamental fact: “In the turmoil of liquid postmodernity, geopolitics can – to quote Bauman – provide an interesting key to understanding the balance of power in the world – although not the only one: it would be interesting to understand how “The class dialectic, for example, still weighs a lot.” Read these words, Dario: Key to understanding, means but not end, a tool for improving the skills of various disciplines. This is geopolitics: an emancipatory method of knowledge. Not an anti-academic enclosure in which to lock yourself up against the world. By claiming to have abandoned your studies to devote yourself to geopolitics, you seem to support this approach and expose geopolitics to attack, to quote Maddaluno, “by those authors who devalue its scientific – and perhaps spiritual – value ?” – to make it a mere toolbox in the hands of the potentate in question, or worse the ideological justification of a momentary chauvinism“. What the Puglisi, the Boldrin, the Parsi of Twitter and more subscribe to. You made a mistake, but we don’t want to crucify you for it. We hope you can admit that you did something carelessly. And start again with strength and vigor. We need to understand the present deeply. And your voice can be one of them. As long as you understand that it’s not the only thing worth hearing, as can be seen from the interview. All of this would be of serious help to anyone questioning your work. And you can’t afford to give them that.