But other things could happen. With developments in telematics and interactive TV, soon each one of us could set up and print at home, using a TV remote control, his own essential daily newspaper, choosing from a myriad of fonts. The dailies might die—but not the publishers of dailies, who would sell information at slashed prices. But a homemade paper could say only what users are interested in, and would cut them off from a flow of potentially stimulating information, judgments, and alerts; it would rob them of the chance to pick up, on leafing through the rest of a conventional newspaper, unexpected or undesired news. We would have an elite of extremely well-informed users, who know where and when to look for news, and a mass of information subproletarians, content with knowing that a calf with two heads has been born in their district, and ignoring the rest of the world. Which is what already happens with the American newspapers that are not published in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, and Boston.
This too would be a calamity for politicians, obliged to fall back on television alone. We would have a regime like that of a plebiscitary republic, where the electors would react only in the emotion of the moment, program by program, hour by hour. This might strike some as an ideal situation: then, however, not the individual politician but the groups themselves, the movements, would enjoy careers as brief as those of fashion models.
True, this leaves the Internet of the future, and politicians like Al Gore have understood this for some time. Information is diffused through countless independent channels, the system is headless and uncontrollable, everyone discusses with everyone else, and does not merely react emotionally to the survey in real time, but chews over exhaustive messages discovered bit by bit, builds relationships, and enters into discussions over and above parliamentary dialectics or hoary journalistic polemics.
But, and at least for many years:
- Telematic networks will remain instruments for a cultured and youthful elite—not for Catholic housewives, not for the victims of social discrimination catered to by the refounded Communist Party, not for the pensioners whose cause is championed by the Democratic Party of the Left, and not for the middle-class woman who demonstrates in support of the Freedom Alliance. In making this threat I am joking, but there is an element of truth here. For the time being, the telematic network gives power not to you politicians and your traditional electors, but rather to my students, who will establish privileged links with the yuppies of Wall Street.
- There is no guarantee that these networks will remain headless, free of all control from above. We are already nearing gridlock, and tomorrow some Big Brother could gain control of the access channels, and then what price the debate on the par condicio?…
- The immensity of the information these networks permit could lead to censorship by excess. The Sunday edition of the New York Times really does contain «all the news that’s fit to print,» yet it’s not that different from the Pravda of Stalin’s day, because—given that it is not possible to read the whole thing in seven days—it is as if the news it gives were censored. The excess of information leads either to casual criteria of decimation or to discriminating choices granted, once more, to a highly educated elite.
How to conclude? I believe that the press, in the traditional sense of dailies and weeklies made of paper, which one willingly buys at the newsstand, still has a fundamental function—not only for the civil progress of a country but also for our satisfaction and the pleasure of being accustomed, for some centuries now, to consider reading the daily papers, as Hegel suggested, the equivalent of morning prayers for modern man.
But the way things are going today, the Italian press betrays in its own columns a disquiet it is aware of but cannot banish. Since, as we have seen, the alternatives are difficult, what is required is a slow transformation, one that the world of politics cannot afford to remain extraneous to. For reasons we have seen, the daily press cannot be expected to eliminate altogether the process by which it adopts the features of weeklies. But we should not encourage it to report only gossip gathered in the centers of power, or rash off-the-cuff outpourings. For the risk of a collapse is common to all.
Just for a start, it often happens that a politician sends the newspapers an article that appears with the legend «So-and-so is writing in a personal capacity.» Right, this is an aid to reflection, and an acceptance of responsibility for one’s own statements. Let us ask politicians to read over every interview and endorse the quotes. They will appear less frequently in the papers, but when they do, they will be taken seriously. Newspapers too will benefit from this, because they will no longer be condemned to reporting only emotional outbursts drawn out over one drink and the next. And how will the Italian press fill these gaps? Perhaps by searching for other news, in the rest of the world that does not lie between the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate—places that billions of people could not care less about. Yet we must care about these billions of people. The press must say more about them, and not only because many of our fellow citizens are working with them directly. It is, after all, on their development and their crises that the future of our own society depends.
This is an invitation, addressed to both the press and the world of politics, to look more at the world and less in the mirror.
Ur-Fascism
In 1942, when I was ten, I won the first prize at the Ludi Juveniles, a compulsory open competition for all young Italian Fascists—that is to say, for all young Italians. I had written a virtuoso piece of rhetoric in response to the essay title «Should We Die for the Glory of Mussolini and the Immortal Destiny of Italy?» My answer was in the affirmative. I was a smart kid.
Then in 1943 I discovered the meaning of the word «freedom.» I shall tell that story at the end of this speech. At the time «freedom» did not yet mean «liberation.»
I spent two of my earliest years surrounded by SS, Fascists, and Resistance fighters all busily shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It wasn’t bad training.
In April 1945 the partisans took Milan. Two days later they arrived in the little town where I lived. It was a joyous moment. The main square was crowded with people singing and waving flags, calling loudly for Mimo, the leader of the local Resistance movement. A former sergeant in the Carabinieri, Mimo had thrown his lot in with the followers of Badoglio and had lost a leg in one of the first clashes. He appeared on the balcony of the town hall, pale; with one hand, he tried to calm the crowd. I was waiting for him to begin his speech, given that my entire early childhood had been marked by Mussolini’s great historic speeches, the most important parts of which we used to memorize at school. Silence. Mimo’s voice was hoarse, you could hardly hear him. He said: «Citizens, friends. After so many painful sacrifices … here we are. Glory to those who fell for freedom.» That was it. He went back inside. The crowd gave a shout, the partisans raised their weapons and fired into the air in festive mood. We kids rushed to collect the shell cases, precious collector’s items, but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.
Some days later I saw the first American soldiers. They were African-Americans. The first Yankee I met was a black man, Joseph, who introduced me to the wonders of Dick Tracy and L’il Abner. His comics were in color and smelled good.
One of the officers (a Major or Captain Muddy) was billeted in a villa owned by the family of two of my classmates. It was a home away from home for me in that garden where some ladies were clustered around Captain Muddy, talking in sketchy French. Captain Muddy was a well-educated man and knew a little French. So my first image of the American liberators, after all those pale faces in black shirts, was that of a cultivated black man in a yellow green uniform saying: » Oui, merci beaucoup, Madame, moi aussi j’aime le champagne..Unfortunately there was no champagne, but Captain Muddy gave me my first chewing gum and I chewed it all day long. At night I would put the gum in a glass of water, to keep it fresh for the next day.
In May we heard that the war was over. Peace gave me a curious feeling. I had been told that permanent war was the normal condition for a young Italian. Over the following months I discovered that the Resistance was not a local phenomenon but a European one. I learned exciting new words like «reseau,» «maquis,» «armée secrete,» «Rote Kapelle,» and «Warsaw ghetto.» I saw the first photographs of the Holocaust, and I learned what this meant even before I learned the word. I realized what it was we had been liberated from.
Some people in Italy today wonder if the Resistance had any real military impact on the course of the war. For my generation the question is irrelevant: we immediately understood the moral and psychological significance of the
