The story of the conspiracy that sees Renzi using a Leonardo satellite, together with General Graziani, to "move" the votes (sent by post) in favor of Trump and make him lose, leads me to some reflections.

I mean, it's easy to demolish this conspiracy theory. First of all, for those who are Italian it is difficult to see their country in the role of the powerful Specter. The Italian is not used to thinking of himself in terms of military-technological power, capable of mocking the NSA, FBI and CIA on the technological level of satellites and determining the destinies of the world. (then if we go to see ASI and Leonardo do very appreciable things, the armed forces are rearming well, but I'm talking about the common vision).

If then in the picture we put Renzi to make Dr. Evil of the situation, let's face it that we miss the giggle. So the Italian newspapers can consider this thing as, I know, a blatant boiata which, however, these strange ignorant Americans, in bison thongs, can believe.

"If they knew the people they mention, or the country they are talking about – this is the implication – they would not have chosen such blatantly false nonsense".

But because the false is "obvious". After all it is true that Italy has competence with satellites, it is true that there are Italian military satellites in orbit, Italy manages the OSMO-SkyMed network (COstellation of small Satellites for Mediterranean basin Observation – Constellation of small satellites for the 'Observation on a Mediterranean basis), SICRAL-1, SICRAL-2, OpSat-3000, and is part of MUSIS (MUltinational Space-based Imaging System – Multinational System for Images from Space) under the aegis of the European Agency for defense (European Defense Agency-EDA).

A very respectable curriculum. But let's face it, especially those old enough to have served in a non-operational corps, the military remembers them by the way.

The Italian imaginary, accustomed to despising and belittling its own armed forces, refuses to believe it, but an American would say "fuck, these are less than California and they have all this stuff?" (I will write a post on the MYTH of Europe that is little armed and in need of the USA, sooner or later)

Same thing for Renzi. It makes us laugh to think of him as the head of the SPECTER who is the number two of a plot led by His Negrita Obama himself. And what was Agnese doing? Should we imagine her in a latex suit directing her Mephistopheles colonels?

(if you don't recognize Yattaman you are coelenterates. And also apocryphal. And scleronomists).

Obviously I don't want to get involved with Boschi too, who is already reviled enough (and I will never be able to explain why, as well as Italo Svevo did in "Senility"), but the point is this: those familiar with these characters find it hard to believe.

Maaaaa … ..

if instead of Renzi there had been Angela Merkel, General Joachim Wundrak , using satellites managed by BundesNachrichenDienst such as the SAR-WOLFs made by OH-Bremen, it would seem different. The names, first of all. This language hostile to Italians. Fuck, how can you doubt that "Wundrak" is badder than "Graziani"? (ok, ok. Close the history book , ok?).

Well, come on, in Italy it would have been salable. I'm not telling you Israel or France.

Perhaps the link between exoticism, unfamiliarity and conspiracy theories needs to be clarified.

Because the problem is that: let's take the Jews for example. As you know, there is no professional conspiracy if there are no Jews involved. Especially if they are rich. But let's face it: how many Italians know a Jew (excluding those who have a Jewish friend who lives in the body of quaternions and thinks like them about Israel)?

Let's face it, few. Yes, I know, you have a Jewish friend. Your supermodel ex girlfriend, the porn star you once met, and your black friend can testify. I can't imagine what happens when you go out to dinner together.

However, the point is this: you know very little about Jews and you meet few in Italy. Few go to Israel. So, if we took Renzi out of the plot and put the chief rabbi of Rome in, well… well… come on…. but in reality, let's be rational: probably the Chief Rabbi of Rome is an ordinary guy who swears for taxes and has problems with traffic, about like everyone else. But… who knows the Chief Rabbi of Rome to the point where he can rule out the Kosher version of Dr. Fu Manchu? It will be, I know, twenty or thirty people.

I don't know if you've ever seen American films about the Vatican. (which then for the USA is always in Italy). Haven't you ever noticed a little, how to say, "overestimation of the thing"? No? Look at this and you will understand

In short, there is a fundamental ingredient in conspiracy theory, which is exoticism. Or rather: the lack of familiarity between a protagonist of the conspiracy and who has to believe in the conspiracy. This contributes to:

• secrecy. Setting a conspiracy theory in a secret area like Area51 is easy, if we set it in Linate it becomes more difficult. A virus can escape from a laboratory in Wuhan, not from the INPS of Pescara . We do not expect Area51 to have “opening hours to the public”. INPS in Pescara has them, it seems.
• the distance. If something is very distant, it's unfamiliar. We find it easy to set Ufo Robot in Japan. Japan. Gundam. Fuck, they do robots. Very modern nation. Cutting-edge technology. Then we go to Japan, we notice that the students go to school with hand warmers, because Japanese schools almost never have heating. Oh shit.
• the tongue. A language that is not spoken, in fact, is made up of esoteric symbols. It is a form of occult, because "occult" precisely means "hidden", and a language that we do not understand hides its meaning. We cannot imagine General Graziani as a member of a conspiracy, but Generalleutnant does. D. der Luftwaffe der Bundeswehr Joachim Wundrak… well, it's a different thing. Nobody is afraid of the Italian secret services, but if we put ourselves in the BundesNachricthenDienst, the language does its job.
• the myth. I mean, let's face it: if you've done three inquisitions, a witch hunt, a dozen crusades and you've been allied with about thirty fascist regimes, we'll pass the warrior nuns too, come on. Otherwise then Hellsing has a plot that doesn't stand up. And Hellsing is FICO. And that too has the warrior nuns. (the truth, in the end…). It would be much more difficult to attribute it to FoppaPedretti, so to speak. I would exclude that Foppa Pedretti has warrior nuns, but after all… what do I know about Foppa Pedretti? And you? Cat cats us.

But that changes if you live in the US, or on another island in the English-speaking archipelago. (UK, Australia, New Zealand, etc). Here for you the world is FAR. And you don't study languages. And these ancient nations have so many myths. And they (like all nations) have secrets.

So it's easy for an American to set everything abroad. Because everything foreign sounds mythical to you.

Years ago I had a site that killed itself with magic, and at a certain point I came into contact with an American woman who, although not speaking a word in Italian, was the reference point for Italian-American Wiccans. The interesting thing is that his website invited people "to enter Fabrizia's grove".

I tried to explain to her that presenting herself in Italy as someone who invites you to enter her "grove" was quite problematic, and she replied that her grandmother also had a grove, it was very much coveted, (which I do not doubt, since she had descent) because inside there were the secrets of the ancient Italian witchcraft, which existed before Italy. In short, according to her, the place where the witches gathered was indicated by "grove". The dignity of the crossroads and of the Benevento Walnut swept away by a stupid grove. Incidentally, according to her, her grandmother was almost burned by the Inquisition in 1902, so she fled to the USA, with all the grove. An Italian witch never leaves her grove.

I also tried to explain to her the absurdity of having prayers in Italian (questionable) "which date back to the time of Rome", but she replied that evidently I was a benandante and I was there to damage her. To which I replied that I am not Friulian and that there is no evidence of benandanti in Emilia Romagna, and she replied that with friuli (which she placed in Umbria, since she was part of a clan of "Umbrea" witches and fought the benandanti (who had followed them to the USA, but in Italy they were door to door with them) after all they were a few kilometers, so Emilia and Friuli are the same thing.

All in English, because she didn't speak a word of Italian. Yet he made a lot of money, and at the time he was one of the most authoritative figures of "Italian" Wicca in the US.

That said, the point is simple: for Americans and for English speakers in general the world is a mysterious, occult place, full of legends and myths. Then they are "slightly" wrong in positioning them, both in time and space, but until the news arrives that you are inside a conspiracy theory and you try to understand what happens, you do not realize it.

This phenomenon is called “insularity”: the whole Anglo-Saxon culture is permeated by it. The insularity of that culture is what allows their ruling classes to tell them anything.

Could Saddam Hussein attack the US? Of course. An atomic arsenal in the ice cream trucks? Obvious. Does the European Union want to take all the English bananas and straighten them? And what else do Europeans do all day? And you didn't know what happened in Sweden last Friday? No.

At the base of this insularity, things like the Renzi-Graziani conspiracy are born.

The funny thing is that they have NEVER clearly read the history of Italy after the war: otherwise, between the PD, the Borghese coup and everything else, they would certainly not have limited themselves to an unprofessional coup like the one they invented. Italy is full of mysteries. Of legends. Of mysterious places.

But as I say, the construction of conspiracies requires NOT to know and NOT to know. Therefore of all the currents of information to which they could attach themselves, it was not necessary for the Americans to use elements of reality: the conspiracy speaks of occult things, therefore it necessarily REQUIRES explicitly not to know anything, if not some names.

The same principle that pushes the tourist to take a selfie with a praetorian under the colosseum, and to accept the idea of ​​the Pope's warrior nuns, can push a Japanese to imagine such a thing and the Camorra can also be depicted in this way. ':

(the typical Neapolitan Camorra, Giorno Giovanna – but he is a male – according to the Japanese imagination. I wonder if you shoot from those curls. It wouldn't surprise me)

So we must not be surprised on the one hand, but on the other we must ask ourselves one thing: but if we were foreigners, and we lived in Wuhan, or in a "mysterious" place such as Siberia, or where they speak unknown languages, what would we think of the conspiracies which do we struggle to believe? Would we spend time laughing?

Well it depends.

If an anti-Semitic theory starts from the plot and 6 million Jews die, maybe we laugh a little. If the conspiracy theory starts with the decision to break through your country with bombs, maybe you don't laugh.

So don't worry: if Trump wins in 2024, maybe you will keep laughing at the plot. If it doesn't bomb you.

Ah, right: I want to clarify that I NEVER entered the “Boschetto di Fabrizia”.