by DANILO TAINO
The new essay by the editor of Corriere, published by Mondadori on March 29th, analyzes and denounces the weakening of democracies in the confrontation with dictatorships
Vladimir Putin when you look to the West? A world that won’t be hard to beat and maybe tear down. Attack as seen in Ukraine. Weak, confused, irreversible decline. Is that so? Is this our reality? Federico Rampini’s latest book Western Suicide, out today for Mondadori bookstores is not just an example of the timing that explains what gets stuck in the minds of authoritarian leaders when they challenge liberal democracies. It is, above all, an acknowledgment of the latter’s serious concern with subverting their own values: it clarifies, to say the least, that behind the Kremlinordered invasion of recent weeks is not just a general geopolitical move; at the root lies our social, cultural, economic, institutional and, of course, political vacillation.
The authoritarian powers writes Rampini despise the Western model. But even before that, “the latter was rejected in its own house: by an economic establishment hating the national identity behind globalization, “that is, what was the historical glue of democracies; and from a culture business that arose in the 1960s and is now in full bloom, according to which “we are the ultimate evil. The book is a broad and precise denunciation of “politically correct”. But no superficial denunciation of the annoying manifestations of leftconformism: he analyzes its profound consequences for society.
One of the places where “propaganda indoctrination” does the most damage is in the educational system, particularly in the United States “where serious culture is forbidden.” Schools and universities have largely been taken over by an ideology that not only makes all negative phenomena the responsibility of the white man, but also that that white man must be reeducated and punished immediately. A racism of the skin that is behind the antiracism campaigns carried out by the Black Lives Matter movement, for example. Not only that, at many universities it is impossible for those who do not take even the most extreme positions on sex and gender to have the right to speak. Often teachers who dare to voice opinions different from organized militant groups then have to humble themselves into public selfcriticism and still risk being turned away from teaching by fearful academic authorities.
In this analysis of what is happening in the United States, Rampini is particularly critical of the socalled progressive media. Especially with the New York Times, which has taken an intolerant turn towards the debate on ideas in recent years. Aside from being closed to the confrontation because of the activism of many of its young journalists, the major New York newspaper was central to the construction of critical race theory, the theory that racism is the building block of American institutions: a theory that has become the glue of often violent movements and also reporting on organized gangs.
Rampini identifies the responsibility of the “New York Times” in the “1619 project” that the newspaper has been carrying out for years: a series of historical analyzes that often unfoundedly argue that the real founding of the United States must be dated the year in which the first slave ship from Africa arrived.
Rampini spares no effort in intensely criticizing the ideologies of the “illiberal left” that risk destroying the West’s tremendous strength. When he talks about the environmental movements mobilizing for the climate, he speaks of the “New Paganism”, the priestly role of this religion exercised by academics, politicians, company heads, film and music stars. And when he speaks of Greta Thunberg, he says seeing her as the bearer of a new political philosophy “is a sign of cultural barbarism, the flattening of the adult world into a childish language.” And he concludes: The communist and Confucian Xi Jinping “observes the “Greta phenomenon as one of the western perversions, which in his reading testify to the decline of the west.
The book is not just an analysis of the serious damage done by the politically correct attitude. And it’s not just about the United States. Talk about the dwindling capacity of democratic states, starting with infrastructure. Talk about the big business groups that tend to take advantage of the birth of new businesses. Politicians, especially Californians, who, with an ideology that despises law and order, have made entire neighborhoods they govern uninhabitable. But it’s not a resigned book: the subtitle is an opening, because it’s wrong to reappraise our history and erase our values.
Capitalism, especially American capitalism, is in a period of involution, but it is certainly not dead. Elon Musk can only be born in America, but in the West, certainly not in China and Russia. Venture capital continues to fund ideas and businesses. The financial system based on dollars and euros dominates. And on the geopolitical side, Joe Biden’s illfated withdrawal from Afghanistan contrasts with the “blob,” the powerful establishment diplomacy part of politics rather than the industrialmilitary apparatus which continues to hold an imperial vision of the United States.
Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin see the shaking of the West. They know that empires, from the Romans to the Americans, end sooner or later and usually collapse from within first. They will do everything to support and expedite this process. But times don’t necessarily dictate them. The war in Ukraine, for example, could give liberal democracies a certain selfconfidence. We will see. Rampini, meanwhile, closes the book with hope: “I want us to hear hundredths of what people feel for whom our values are forbidden.”
March 28, 2022 (change March 28, 2022 | 21:14)
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