Of ethics and law.
The murder of the poor street vendor by an Italian guy (with all the footage) sparked an absurd contumelia about the fact that "no one helped him". Since a certain faction intends to blame the entire population anyway, let's try to explain what happens if you help, in that case.
First, the moment you have decided to stop a violent criminal, you are starting a conflict. So you know it will come to blows, whether you want it or not. But here there would be no problem, because there is never a shortage of people willing to get to grips.
The newspapers give two examples: one obviously is poor Alika Ogorchukwu, while the other is a case in which the bartender, intervening by force, saved the life of a boy who had been stabbed.
So apparently the people who help you exist. But the law is involved. And the law DOES NOT want anyone to fight crime. Or rather: find a way to get yourself a lot of trouble if you do.
Let's take the happy example. The bartender in question managed to stop a guy who had previously stabbed a Moroccan boy. Here, according to the Italian law, a specific case is triggered, because the danger is evident, as the stab wounds have flown, and there is a person to save.
In that case, and only in that case, the bartender will have had an easy time. But only because it didn't hurt the thug. If she had hurt him, however, things would have turned out differently. Because in that case a judge would have been called to give his opinion on the "proportionality" of the damage.
Let's take an example, taking up the bartender of the case. You are a hardware store, and you see that on the sidewalk in front of you a guy is stabbing a passerby. Grab a crowbar, approach the attacker from behind, do the golfer's motion and hit the crowbar on the ankle or shins. You won in one fell swoop, the guy with the knife drops to the ground screaming and won't get up for at least a week.
Good. You apparently acted with the utmost respect for human life. A crowbar shot at the tibia, or ankle, can't kill. But it has 100% stopping power: checkmate in one move. Amen.
So you think the law is on your side. No. Things are not like that. They could be like that. But.
- You broke the criminal's malleolus. Nothing fancy, but he's stopped for three months. At least. And for the first two, the pain will make them look like hell like a Rimini beach.
- The offender cannot "work".
- You came out of the shop with the crowbar, so you wanted to use it or you planned to use it.
- By being outside your shop, you could close the shutter and stay safe.
- The stabbed, fortunately, got away with a few dozen points. So the proportionality of your action is lacking. The criminal will say he didn't want to kill him but just scare him, and you are the evil ones who thought the worst.
You will end up in trouble. It depends a lot on the judge (Italy has exceeded the level of discretion of the common law, ending up by now in the mockery of law), but in any case it will be said that if we compare it with the risk incurred by the stabbing (a few dozen points) with the damage that you have done, voluntarily and deliberately, you are the criminal.
And in the worst case scenario, you will also end up paying the criminal money.
This is not a new concept. All Italians learn it at school, and it remains a constant in society. It is a message that you are taught in school: you must never rebel against injustice. The bully goes unpunished for years, but the day I slapped one, I was punished. What was the message? The message was "you must never rebel against injustices, if anything you should be the unjust, if you are among the strong".
In theory, then, when growth hormones and sport had strengthened me, I should have joined the bully, and not sit him on the ground. That would be tolerated and unpunished.
The message is constant: when there was military service, grandparents remained unpunished while those who beat one were severely punished (with few exceptions, such as on Navy ships, for different reasons), to reiterate the concept that you must never rebel. .
And when you are citizens, you will know with certainty that the law will never be on the side of those who rebel against injustice, but on the side of those who do injustice. If someone had intervened to kick the murderer of the poor peddler, the law would have punished him severely, because the message that the state wants to inculcate in the citizen is that he must not rebel against injustice, he must bow his head to abuse. .
Coming today to discover that Italian does not rebel against abuses, knowing full well that it is a teaching that comes first from school and then from the law, and to attribute it to racism, is hairy, stupid and shows a very little misunderstanding of the problem.
I saw an interesting video some time ago:
if by any chance that ordinance had been true, those who rebelled by destroying the fence and insulting the "town guy" would have committed crimes. Of course, then in the constitutional court you would have shown that the municipal ordinance (or the decree of the ministry, if you prefer) were unconstitutional, but to defeat the stakes and let the boys out of the fence, as well as insult the public official, were subject to complaint. Why'?
Because the message is that we must not rebel against abuses or injustices. A citizen-sheep, who makes his own cabbages.
All Italian law is based on "you must not rebel against abuses, but if you are strong enough to do it to others we will turn to the other side". Education in schools is. It was in military service. He is in college and he is at work.
Everything in Italy continues to tell everyone "you cannot rebel against abuses, you must not react to bullying". Because rebellion is what the government fears.
If no one defends an invalid who is killed with his own crutch, you have to thank the state.