through europe

As the euro-mediterranean countries enter their umpteenth phase of decay, their governments are starting to consider extraordinary measures to face the situation. In Italy, on 15 October 2011, 200,000 people took to the streets to protest against the austerity measures enforced by their government. A day of mayhem followed, as the so-called ‘black bloc’ declared urban war. The smoke of petrol bombs was still lingering in the air when the right-wing Minister of the Interior declared the necessity of exceptional security regulations, promptly backed by the left-wing opposition.

Prologue

Looking around ourselves today, we realize that we have already seen all this. It wasn’t quite the same in terms of style; skirts were longer, kids were wearing shorts, cars were slower and fewer, and everything was in black and white. Yet, we have seen all this before. We have encountered it in history books, or in the tales of our grandparents. We have met it in the novels of Faulkner and Musil, or in the pig-faced paintings of Grosz. We forgot about it long ago, since we started to repeat to ourselves that its atrocious offspring would never come back to life. Never again. And yet, he is coming back now. Once again, we are living in the nervous times, pregnant with the monster.

We are the last ones. We’ve always been, even if we didn’t realize. We were the last ones in 1968, when, as youth, we threw ourselves against everything, whether that was just in our little town, just in our thoughts. We were the last ones in 1977, when the future collapsed over us. The last ones in the 1980s, stuck within, in the 1990s, in the 2000s... After us, work will be something completely different. After us, retirement will be no more. After us, nothing. Of all things that we have been, punk is the only one that really stuck with us, whether we wanted it to or not. We are the pensioners, and we aren’t finished yet.