through europe

The financial collapse that hit the world economy since September 2008, particularly affecting Europe after the Greek crisis a year ago, has blatantly exposed the failure of the Neoliberal ideology, and has shown that the main source of unemployment and of misery is the greed of the financial class and the obsession of profit. Did you expect that the leaders of the EU listen to the urgent demand for wealth redistribution, and for a democratic change in the economic life?

a small italian room. in a small italian town. outside of venice. barred door closed, people inside. smoking.

      This is the transcript of the seminar "From Tute Bianche to the Book Bloc: the Italian movement and the coming European insurrection". [italian version]

It seems a century has gone by since the political season of the Tute Bianche (White Overalls), but it was only a little over ten years ago. Ten years in which much has happened. Despite the historical shifts that have taken place in these past ten years, rebellious students in Rome and in London last autumn endorsed the experience of conflict invented by the Tute Bianche: shields and helmets for body protection; violation of the red zones and of the headquarters of institutional political power, barricaded behind their edifices, with no democratic relationship with society.

Recently, I have been asked several times by Italian friends and comrades to talk about the British student movement. I must confess that their questions always made me feel slightly embarrassed.
At first, I tried to forget about this uncomfortable feeling, talking about the rise of a new civic participation, which had been lacking in this country since the 1980s, with the brief exception of the anti-war movement of 2003. Then, in my heart of hearts, I tried to offer to my embarrassment the acknowledgment that in the UK, at the moment, there is not a ‘movement’ as such, rather a constellation of small groups and organizations.

Mass Zynismus

In his book The courage of truth  (Le courage de la verité), a transcript of lectures delivered at the College de France in 1984, Michel Foucault speaks of Diogenes and the other ancient philosophers known as cynicists and defines their thought as the practice of telling the truth (parresia).  Twenty-five years later, the word cynicism has acquired a totally different meaning, almost opposite: the cynic is someone routinely lying to everyone, especially him or herself.