It is almost unnerving to read a newspaper when the general public "discovers" (or pretends to discover) a secret of Pulcinella, and suddenly "the scandal starts". Because in the end the story of the slaughter in prisons is not a new thing and it is not an unknown thing. And especially, it's not something that couldn't have been discovered before, using a little bit of logic.
Of logic? Yes, of logic. The beating that killed Cucchi is a beating that a strong and healthy man survives, say, 999 times out of a thousand. So, if a Cucchi dies, we can assume that (about) another 1000 have been beaten in that way, unless we really believe that the only beating in Italy happened to cross the only undernourished, underhydrated and weakened of the situation.
Even if the estimate of 1000 were different, the fact remains that death by beatings is difficult to obtain, and therefore is the tip of the iceberg. One could therefore wonder how big the rest of the iceberg was.
Moreover, the fact that all the various "police unions" and colleagues, even against the evidence, have worked hard to cancel the evidence of their murders (Cucchi, Aldrovandi, etc), some suspicion could make him come.
Have you really always thought of the police as a force loyal to democracy, rules, safeguards and the defense and social reintegration of criminals?
And if so, what drugs do you use exactly?
I don't want to discuss the role of journalism then. There are about 50,000 people in prison in Italy. There is no shortage of inmates who come out of prison. Is it possible that in all these years no prisoner has been interviewed or told anything?
Absolutely not: Italian journalism, like every sector of society, preferred not to see something about which almost everything was well known.
After all, what about criminal lawyers? Do we mean that nothing was known about what was happening to their clients? Do we want to think that none of them have ever received similar news from their clients in prison? Really? Are we serious?
The truth is that there was a culture of indifference, which was a hegemonic culture .
I say "hegemon" because they were registered doctors, politicians of every faction, journalists, lawyers, judges, intellectuals. No one has ever wanted to see the iceberg whose tip was clearly visible. A hegemonic culture .
And as Gramsci taught, if we want to explain a hegemonic culture, we must ask ourselves who has had cultural hegemony in Italy in recent decades. Because a certain component of the political left has had cultural hegemony in Italy.
So we have to ask ourselves what are the origins of this hegemonic culture that has always tied its hands to the left.
Because it's true, this intellectual left has had an inordinate sympathy for beating agents for decades. It is one of those bullshit that I call "Pasolinate", the bullshit that Pasolini (one of the fascists best disguised as a communist after the end of the regime) invented.
During the repressions of the "Cossiga doctrine", Pasolini took the side of violent policemen (who killed people for no reason, see the entry Giorgiana Masi, & co) saying that they were the real "proletarians" as children of southern peasants with burnt skin for the sun, and therefore – according to Pasolini – not to be condemned because "the last true proletarians".
Once the clerks who strike have been sanctified, and affirmed that it is wrong to hit the uniforms, the “VATE” has handed over an absolute dogma to the cultural hegemony of single thought. The violent policeman is the son of the poor, so he is too innocent to be guilty. It should not be investigated because even if he had responsibilities, he would have no faults: his being populous and ignorant, the sunburnt skin of their fathers, would absolve them.
In the "institutional left" (which had a great desire to govern and to distance itself from the demonstrators) this trick has become the bridge, the possibility of customs clearance. "We are not the ones who beat the agents, we are the ones on the side of the agents." And if Pasolini says so, you can swear that we are.
This culture has become hegemonic (today it is difficult to say that Pasolini is one of the many who, after the end of fascism, became communists, continuing to think like fascists) and clearly today there is no "left" man who dares to take a stand against policemen as a unicum, as an anthropological class (which they now are).
This impunity guaranteed by the left was the fruit of this procession , which later became part of the cultural unicum and magnified by the cultural hegemony of the institutional left.
Moreover, this transformation of Pasolini into the "poet" consists precisely in his apparent expulsion from the PCI, because he transformed him into two things that were depopulated at the time: "countercurrent" and "inconvenient", two adjectives of which precisely those that apparently Pasolini's peasant policemen beat up and killed.
To say that the PCI expelled Pasolini to harm him would be a mockery: the leaders of the PCI knew well that their intellectuals were listed as "bad readings", and they knew well that expelling a known intellectual would give him the trappings of "countercurrent", "Not aligned", "uncomfortable", necessary to ascend to the sanctity of "Vate". It was not for nothing that the entire left intelligentsia began to hang on his lips. (and to those who insist on the issue, I would like to ask if they believe that the "petty bourgeois" or the cops who beat people to death are the ones who defend democracy from fascism).
That said, the pasolinata had a devastating effect: it anesthetized the whole society against the bullying of the police. It became part of the hegemonic culture, and the result was devastating.
The victims are always the proletarians in uniform, and never the cursed bourgeoisie who are beaten (or protest against them).
- journalists have NEVER dealt with a phenomenon that was general. There are very few inquiries into the Italian management of prisons, even when bodies such as the EU, UN, Amnesty, protest because they KNOW that things happen that no one in Italy wants to see, because the children of southern peasants with red skin from the sun do not touch.
- ditto for politicians. There have been countless "visits by parliamentarians to prisons", but no one has ever spoken to a prisoner in private. Even those politicians who HAVE BEEN in prisons do not tell what happened.
- the mass media have always turned the other way. Television and radio have NEVER given a voice to any ex-prisoner, perhaps guaranteeing him a certain anonymity. Still, there is no shortage of ex-prisoners.
- the world of intellectuals has never mentioned this kind of battle, if not with generic press releases, little phrases from television appearances, without ever dealing with a problem that was already serious.
All crushed by a pasolinata that has become hegemonic culture.
Obviously on the right, who like authoritarian methods, it was convenient. And this has made the culture of police beating even more hegemonic.
There is also another accomplice. Because in EVERY prison, to deal with the redemption of prisoners, there is a priest. A priest who talks constantly with prisoners, and confesses them in private. Is it possible that no one has ever talked to them about beating? Is it possible that no one has ever heard of all this?
In the case of the Catholic Church that has turned away, ecclesiastical sympathy for the fascist regimes and their methods weighs heavily, as well as a culture of atonement through pain, dogmas that therefore transform beatings into a species. of "ordeal" which serves to purify the soul of the condemned.
If the right becomes sexually aroused to see a policeman beating someone, the other two pillars of the past silence, namely the Church and the world of the left, have much more reason to be ashamed.
They have much more to be ashamed of because if it is normal for a fascist to approve of fascist methods, those who continually say they fight against oppression and are indignant at a fascist beating on the streets, when it comes to violence in prisons has no semblance of intellectual dignity. Even worse for the Catholic Church, which has more than one priest in EVERY prison, and has preferred to close its eyes: another proof of the fact that, in the end, Pope Francis "the good" is actually a beautiful and good fiction.
And with that, then, it would be better to stop pretending not to have known before.
You simply followed the usual pasolinata.
