The protection of minorities and their rights is fundamental in a liberal democracy. On the contrary, a country cannot be defined as one in which they are not allowed to benefit from the same guarantees as everyone else while maintaining their cultural, religious, linguistic, etc. “differences”.
But can a project and a political program that claims to come to power through electoral victories be organized, and only through the formation of a coalition of minorities? And by becoming an “union” of the rights of each individual, with the danger, yes, the certainty, that what is sacred to one minority is unacceptable to the other?
The question is not abstract as it seems to us, at least for the moment, that Schleins Pd design is this. Be the spokesman for all minorities, from LGBTQia+ to immigrants to Muslims. In fact, sometimes it seems that the Democratic Party confines itself to reproducing the legitimate and, in some cases, justified protests of its respective federations. But shouldn’t a political party, especially when it says (or says) that it has a majority aspiration, achieve a synthesis between the different voices? Wouldn’t it be the task of politics to search for the universal? And even more so when it is progressive.
A great philosopher of US politics and a refined liberal mind, Michael Walzer, has repeatedly warned the American left and Democrats against the “wake drift” judged “reactionary” because the universal idea of the citizen is replaced by a spark of identity is replaced: LGBT, Latin, Black, Asian. Schlein, the most culturally “American” secretary the Democratic Party has ever had, was to confront this problem. And also the possible conflict between the different minorities when politics lack synthesis. Concrete example: Schlein marched at the head of Roman Pride and on the same day the Democratic Party defended the Islamic community against a bill restricting mosques. However, are progressives sure that the LGBTQIA+ movements and Muslims want the same kind of society? And then what happened to the “majority citizen” who is still white and working even in the US, let alone Italy? Does the party, the successor to those who saw the working class as Hegel’s “general class,” think it’s gone? Then they can’t complain if the workers, not from today, actually since 1994, prefer to vote for the right.
It may seem strange that the columns of the newspaper founded by Montanelli, citing Marx, say: “Comrade Schlein, restart from class relations.” But in the end it is not bizarre: for a liberal system cannot exist without an opposition that can compete with the majority. And instead, Schlein’s Democratic Party is destined to play a remaining role going forward.