Ricossa’s words resonate once again with impressive clarity and foresight, expressing a warning against the illusion of the disappearance of certain ideologies, which after more than twenty years proves to be accurate and incredibly timely: “… there is an obligation to no longer fear communism. Those who would like to maintain some immune defense are mocked. There is no longer any need to fear Italian communism, nor European communism, nor Chinese communism. As the Berlin Wall fell, Communist China harshly repressed student rebellions, as it still does today. Today the Russian army is massacring Chechnya. Nuclear weapons are scurrying up and down Asia. But the good tone Western European demands that we not worry” (Ibid). If, for example, we put “Ukraine” instead of “Chechnya”, it would seem like it was written yesterday.
But it is in the part in which he addresses young people that his reflection particularly hits the mark: those young people who were so important to him so that they could defend themselves from partisan hammering of statist ideologieswho exalt the State which sees everything and regulates everything for the common good, which carries out fake privatizations and which exalts the no profit financed with profit generated by others: “Since 1989 our young people have been sleeping, with few exceptions. For ten years they have been dreaming of fairy tales: the cold war is over, the whole world must love each other, long live ecumenism (but not globalisation, wanted by the diabolical multinationals), only the State knows the common good (the State and voluntary organizations no profit), the individual is selfish, Long live altruistic and supportive equality, the rich are rich because they are exploiters and the poor are poor because they are exploited, the State gives away, the State remedies market failures, etc. Young people do not know that almost all of the aforementioned fairy tales derive from communism and Catholic-communism (Ibid)”.
Young people who continue to be taught that danger comes from “wild liberalism” in a country (and on a continent) where there is very little liberalism and where, instead, elephantine bureaucracies are rampant, inefficient, very expensive and incapable of understanding reality: “Most of our young people have been convinced for ten years that we live in an Italy, or rather in a world of “wild liberalism”, barely reined in by wise and charitable governments. Most of our young people have been convinced for ten years that our social-communists have changed because, among other things, they privatize public companies. It does not analyze whether they are real or fake privatizations, voluntary or not (Idib)”.
And finally, the omen on beautiful pacifist souls which still stand out in the firmament of diplomacy and geopolitical analysis today: “Most of our young people have been pacifists for ten years, and don’t even ask themselves whether Italy and Western Europe have defense problems. The collapse of the wall extinguished any defense concerns. The end of the Cold War (?) demands the end of every war. In conclusion, compared to communism, Italy is as never before without moral, political, legal and military defenses. Our future is in the hands of the rulers of a distant country, the United States, in whose world strategy, after the fall of the wall, we count for little or nothing.” (Ibid).
Current issues, one might say, which still concern today’s young people. But which also concerns many who are no longer young today, who were young then and who have remained stuck at that stage ever since, and who continue to practice and teach at that same stage today.
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