Illustrious Director Feltri,
I was struck to say the least by the revelation made by John Elkann about his mother, Margherita Agnelli. It seems that the sweet mother used rather violent methods towards all her children, but she was fierce
especially on Lapo. Even the rich experience these family hardships which we consider to be exclusive to families afflicted by degradation and poverty.
Have you had the opportunity to read John’s statements?
Riccardo Brindisi
Dear Riccardo,
I have found below some statements released by the president of Stellantis, John Elkann, to the French weekly Le Point and taken up yesterday by La Stampa, whose publisher is also Elkann. What struck me was not learning about the violent and punitive treatment that Margherita reserved for her children when they were children and teenagers, children with whom there is an ongoing legal battle over the inheritance that has been going on for decades, but rather seeing that a newspaper like La Stampa, which almost every day delves into issues such as the alleged patriarchy to which the phenomenon of feminicide and the oppression of women is ascribed, admits and contemplates when the victim is a man who is also owner of the ambaradan, that violence does not represent a gender fact, that is, something that males use completely exclusively against females, rather it constitutes something that belongs to the human being.
Fierce, brutal, aggressive, terrible, despotic, a woman can also be and she can be a mother, although the stereotype of the angelic woman, the welcoming mother and source of love and understanding, is rooted in our culture. Equally wrong
it would be to delude ourselves that where there is material and economic well-being there cannot be emotional distress, abuse, human and spiritual misery, dysfunction, psychic fracture. Happy families, if they exist, are not wealthy families, where there is no problem of not making ends meet, of not being able to pay the bills, of not being able to go shopping. The families that are better off are those where there are healthy methods of communication, in which adult individuals are resolved and do not take out their frustrations or vent their traumas on the more fragile individuals who make up the family itself, perhaps through the use of violent methods , both physical and psychological, as, according to John’s story, happened in Margherita Agnelli’s matriarchy.
I have no reason to doubt Elkann’s testimony and I am very sorry to know that Lapo, about whom his grandfather, Gianni, always spoke to me with love and tenderness and towards whom he always had a special eye, perhaps aware of what the child suffered at the hands of his parent, suffered severe, harsh, even persecutory treatment from his mother. Unfortunately, the young man reported signs and repercussions which manifested themselves in sometimes incorrect choices, in chronic addictions which Lapo overcame thanks
to his willpower, in periodic existential crises, from which he rose each time as a new man. We judged him, ridiculed him, mocked him, condemned him superficially, with insensitivity, not considering what abyss of pain he hid and carried in his soul. Lapo has been reborn several times, yes, it’s true, but always bruised, wounded, because the wounds left by the lack of love are the most terrible. They never heal. A mother, a female, is absolutely capable of using such violence, of marking the fate of those around her, especially her children.
What does this story teach us? As I explained, there are two lessons: first, money does not make us happy, although I am the first to argue that it is much better to be rich than poor,
better to cry on the seat of the limousine than on the seat of a beat-up Fiat 500, forgive me Elkann; secondly, that women can be just as dangerous and cruel as men. There are no differences.