Of Rambi and Partisans.
I'm having an interesting discussion on the phenomenon of "rambism", originating from the famous film with Stallone in the 80s, which according to some then generated the culture that would have opened the doors to fascism, including the current situation. But my conclusion is very different.
The point is simple: the films of that period, heavily based on militarism (the USA was trying to "digest" the defeat of Vietnam, and the social problems it had produced), actually had a tremendous cultural impact on Europe and also on the USA .
Companies began to make survival courses and bootcamps, to "motivate" themselves (due to a great abundance of "trainers" who were also trying to recycle themselves on the job market), all that rambism that eventually led to led corporate culture (and to some extent youth culture) to pseudo-militarize.
From here, it seems almost clear. But let's go deeper and as usual (for those who remember the plot of "Rambo" (the first of the series, called "First Blood", the others were unwatchable), let's reverse the parts.
You want to make exactly the same film, with the same characters and the same plot, but set in Italy.
Since the last war of the Italians is the Second World War, you have to put it in instead of Vietnam. And so, you have to put characters and contexts into it.
But here we start to go wrong. A simple veteran returning from Russia, or from the war, would not have received the contempt or immediate and open hostility from the policeman. On the contrary.
So you have to choose someone else, and here we are fine with a partisan returning from the mountains, or as Scelba said (he was a minister at the time) "wolves who came down from the mountains to murder passers-by". Imagine the sympathy of the police.
Here we are perfectly.
At that point the whole story can unfold peacefully, and instead of Trautmann's intervention you put his commander during the partisan struggle, and all that. It works perfectly.
The character would be in tone too. You would have the person with the steel body (it's not that the life of a partisan in the mountains was easy), at least he would have known how to kill a boar without getting killed like an idiot (jumping on him with a dagger does NOT work, Rambo's was a bad imitation of the Ka-Bar Mark I, mixed with some characteristics of a Camillus Mk2, which would have been no good against a real boar. ), would have known the areas better than the average Caserta policeman, etc.
It would have worked great, the plot. It would also have been much less dubious, in the sense that the partisan would also have had hidden deposits of weapons, ready hiding places. And the police were really fascist, and they had reasons to hate him (in the USA many Vietnam veterans became policemen, therefore colleagues: here the Rambo plot is worthless).
To recap: the film would have been even more believable if set in Italy in 1952. The plot would have been impeccable, almost historical. And think about it: “Rambo” could also have been a woman. Without losing historicity.
You would have been spoiled for choice:
And then we have to ask ourselves a question: if the conditions existed for an Italian "rambismo", which would also have historically made sense (Stallone was among the losers of Vietnam, our partisan was among the winners, so all the more reason he could be incensed) , why did none exist and instead we followed the American one?
The problem was, in my opinion, an innate predisposition for a facade of pacifism and for a purely aesthetic anti-fascism, which did not claim any military, warlike and/or warlike function.
For years and years, therefore, the country has experienced the contradiction of a partisan culture that did NOT claim any military enterprise. It's true that if Stallone had been in Vietnam he probably wouldn't have wanted to celebrate anything, so maybe the partisans didn't like him that much either, but on the other hand… the tremendous contradiction remains of an America that makes Rambo using an improbable story, when the exact same plot set in Italy would have been super believable if not historical.
The first relevant point, in my opinion, is that after the war everything was parceled out between the parties. MSI had maybe 5%, but it was sometimes useful in parliament. So something had to be given to MSI.
It was decided to give them the school that was not a school, i.e. the ISEF, and the Coni. They were sporty, dynamic, muscular things, and they went well with the fact that to give the "professional" athletes an income, the armed forces came into play, which "hired" them.
As lifting weights, sweating in a place full of sweaty males and throwing punches became “fascist”, the reaction of the left was extremely Stalinist: the extremists would count on the number (as did those of Lotta Continua, and other groups already dying), while the usual leaders had to go to the places of the Kultura.
Contempt for anyone who practiced sports that didn't have some herbivorous or pacifist value intensified, to the point that in left-wing circles at a certain point not even Judo was tolerated – they switched to the useless Chinese ballet which I don't even remember what it's called – reason so my first club (an after-work club run by the CGIL) closed its doors.
From then on, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, leftist circles showed an absolute contempt for anything that sounded martial, manly, physical.
They realized the mistake from the beginning of the 90s, about ten/twenty years later.
In addition to the rambism of the 80s, in which Rocky was strong but no one on the left had anything to do with muscles or a boxing gym, the problem that the extreme left experienced in Emilia was that they were no longer able to beat fascists .
For example, Fini's life in Emilia was not very easy. They were literally hunted, chased through the streets, and an anecdote is told about Fini, who managed to save himself from the beating of the self-employed because a pitying lady welcomes him into her home.
But only a few years later, in Piazza Verdi, I realized I was witnessing something very different. A right-wing boy who had left his motorbike near Piazza Verdi to go and get a document at the university, in Law. I knew him because we went to the gym together, to do Muay Thai, with a master named Flavio Monti. A great teacher, but a Nazi like I don't know what, and specialized in removing inhibitions (inhibition of violence is part of our education).
The guy was nicknamed Gippo. The three autonomous men, completely untethered in anything fighting, surrounded him. Each was holding a large chain used to lock the bikes. Gippo jumped his motorbike, placing himself on the other side, and a fool tried to get on him, without noticing that Gippo had put on his helmet.
Finished with a so called Sok Tong. Probably one of the most destructive techniques in muay thai. The luck of the autonomous was to have turned his face to the sky, so he got away with a crash of his face. Normally the technique breaks through the skull. Literally.
You jump, using the opponent or an object (a chair, a table, a motorcycle, a rock) and you fall on the opponent with your elbow, from top to bottom.
The two friends stopped to help the idiot who was on the ground in the throes of convulsions, and convulsions are not very nice to see, and Gippo got on the saddle and went away. I saw him again in the gym a couple of days later, where he was perfectly unharmed and I begged me not to tell anyone because the victim was in really bad shape. Face smashing is a very dangerous thing. Basically, he does this to people, and it's one of the most common serious injuries in MMA.
In addition to the personal anecdote, the 90s saw an epochal change in the balance of power. Suddenly, even in Emilia and even in overwhelming numbers, beating the fascists became too dangerous. The wounds they left were too serious: boxing wounds, low kicks on ligaments, all disabling or semi-disabling stuff.
This is the essential reason why it never happens that, during a fascist attack on a homosexual, someone rebels by harming the fascist. And it never happens that one hears of fascists beaten by the autonomous, or by central socialists. Even the notorious black blocks are careful not to try, and even in large numbers.
The reversal took place around the 1990s. And it concerned the whole culture of violence: for example, why do fascist aggressors never find a homosexual or a trans woman with a gun in her pocket when they attack? Because guns are no longer part (with a good part of arch hunting) of left-wing culture. But not because they've never been a part of it; the partisan culture WAS a culture of weapons.
But not today.
Driven also by the myth of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, whatever ended up in the hands of rambism and yuppism became exclusive to the right. And when I say everything, I mean pretty much a whole truckload of values.
Take for example the motorcycle and the wind in the hair. Easy Rider was one of the most representative films of "leftist" culture in the years of protest.
And so the question today is this: how is it possible that today if you enter a motorcycle club you only find people of the right, and how is it possible that this type of freedom has become the exclusive prerogative of the right.
Because leaving by car (even with a two-hp) or a van, sleeping outdoors in sleeping bags or in hostels was a left-wing thing for all the years of protest, and it suddenly became right-wing culture, and today it do they only do with aggressive cars that take you around "on adventures"?
The problem is that this type of freedom was the freedom of the individual, but for a couple of decades the European left was obsessed with the "Kollettivo", with groups where individuality had to disappear, freedom was a mirage , the freedom of the individual was Capitalism, and to do anything you had to call a meeting. Wanted to buy beer for the venue? You were making a motion, which if it passed, would be debated a week later, and he would win a soft drink made on a kibbutz in Guatemala.
The destruction of individual freedom, as a culture, was a conscious choice of the European left, and perhaps also the American one, but from a certain point on they began to ape us, who abandoned the theme of freedom to the right. Berlusconi limited himself to collecting what the left had abandoned on the street.
Rambism, that is the worship of a warrior on the right side, or of the fighter, became impossible both because we spoke of violence, and because we spoke of ideals, and because we were dealing with individuals, perhaps to be adored like Il Che (probably the most mediocre of any partisan leader in history), but all they then did was wear T-shirts and read books. Going to the gym or taking survival courses to be like Che, or like a partisan, was out of the question.
In other words, the left was unable to react to rambism despite a real tradition of fighters, because it simply expelled the culture of combat, of the individual and of individual freedom into a rhetoric made up of collectives (in the extreme left) and of classes, or masses (workers, etc.).
The effects of this abandonment are deadly. Let's take for example the cases of feminicide, and ask a provocative question.
Why is it that when a woman is stalked for months on end, no one advises her to buy a firearm? In my opinion, an attempted femicide that ends with an asshole in a pool of blood would dissuade more than an "increase in sentence"
Have you asked yourself? You have a type that follows you, threatens you and oppresses you. Why not apply for a firearms permit, if only for sport shooting? It's true that it's not as easy as in the USA, but even the loopholes of Italian law are easy to get around. To understand each other, a license for "shooting sport" allows you weapons like this:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/SITES_Spectre_M4
I'm not recommending it because it's too big, but a normal .357 pistol, used, doesn't even cost much. And it has a didactic power that I would define as penetrating.
And if you kill the asshole you can always say that you were going to the shooting range, or that you forgot the gun in your bag after the last training session. You get the complaint, but if the stalker was armed and close enough, and in front of you, if you have a clean record you certainly won't go to jail for a firearms license without a firearms license. The penalty is too low and the extenuating circumstances are too many.
But you don't even have to dry it, shooting the legs or belly works too, and you'll just hurt him. But typically the first deterrent shot fired into the air will work 90% of the time. "shot in the air" does not exclude "close enough to the fool to hear the whistle of the bullet".
But I repeat: Although the constant slaughter of women has reached the numbers of a butcher shop, no one is yet telling women they are afraid of their ex to buy a firearm. Not even ANPI, which deals with resistance.
It is said that "males must be educated" or "porn abolished", but in my opinion, when you have shot a moron and he remains on the ground, you have educated him. You can verify this, if you shoot well the brains will be mostly on the ground and the education will be visible. And also for porn, all right, there are always holes.
But it doesn't happen.
If the right has taken over the individual, the struggle, violence and freedom, it is simply because the left has completely ABANDONED these themes, repudiating them.
This is a fault, and there is NO justification: when a woman can no longer go out except by car or accompanied, when hundreds are killed every year, we would expect at least bodies like ANPI to say "arm yourselves". That's what they did, right?
But the memory of the resistance, apparently, has given way to a herbivorous, pacifist and collectivist ideology, in which the individual (for example the woman) can no longer have individual initiatives, can no longer fight violently for his own freedom (especially life), and to be honest it is not even allowed to decide to eat a good steak.
So don't complain if freedom, struggle and the individual are all “right” concepts today: once they were left-wing, but then you disgusted them.
Did someone say "rebellion"?