Vol. VII comparative cinema Pier Paolo No. 12 2019 Pasolini The Power Vacuum in Italy 91-97

“The distinction between fascism as adjective and fascism as noun dates back to the days of the magazine Il Politecnico; that is, to the period immediately after the war …” That is how Franco Fortini begins an article about fascism (in L’Europeo, 26-12-1974); an article with which, as they say, I agree entirely. However, I cannot endorse his tendentious prologue. In fact, the distinction between “fascisms” that is made by Il Politecnico is neither pertinent nor current. Such a distinction might have remained valid up until ten years ago: when the Christian- Democrat regime still effectively constituted the pure and simple continuation of the fascist regime. But ten years ago, “something” happened. “Something” that did not exist and was not foreseeable in the time of the Politecnico, nor even a year before it happened (or even while it was happening, as we shall see). Thus, we cannot make a true comparison “chronologically” between “fascisms” – between Fascist fascism and Christian- Democrat fascism – but instead between Fascist fascism and the radically, totally, unpredictably new fascism which was born out of that “something” that happened a decade ago. As I am a writer, and I write to create controversy, or at least to debate with other writers, allow me to offer a poetical-literary description of that phenomenon which took place in Italy about ten years ago. That would help to simplify and abbreviate my argument (and would probably help to make it more comprehensible). In the early 1960s, because of air pollution, and particularly water pollution in the countryside (our blue rivers and our limpid irrigation ditches), fireflies began to disappear. The phenomenon was swift and sudden. Just a few years later, fireflies had ceased to exist. They are now a heartrending memory of the past, and an elderly man who can remember them is unable to see himself reflected as he once was in the youth of today, and thus he can no longer utter those lovely yearning laments for past times. 92 Vol. VII Document comparative cinema No. 12 PIER PAOLO PASOLINI 2019 The Power Vacuum in Italy phases, which not only hadabsolutely nothing incommon, The Christian-Democrat regime went through two distinct disappearance of thefireflies”.“the And so, Iwillcallthat “something” that happened adecadeago all senseof reality into andturn atrocious, stupid, repressive were proclaimed asnational “values”, they could only lose of agricultural, pre-industrial Italy. Butfrom themomentthey also “real values”; they belonged to thecultures andbeliefs and morality. These “values” (asinthetimes of fascism) were Church, homeland, family, obedience, discipline, order, thrift were touted were thesameasonesunderfascism: the on atotally repressive regime. Inthisworld, the “values” that of the on thepart Vatican was only possible ifitwere based and therural masses, controlled by the Vatican. This control an absolute majoritybasedonthevotes of themiddle classes Fascist dictatorship was shamelessly formal. Itwas founded on the democracy withwhich theChristian Democrats opposed the with regardshas beenimportant to ahistorical understanding: contempt shown for theConstitution. I willfocus onapoint that the continuation of thelegal codes, thepoliceviolence andthe by since there isnopointinre-stating here what was covered fascism iscomplete andabsolute. Iwillnot speakaboutthis, The continuitybetween Fascist fascism andChristian-Democrat Before thedisappearance of thefireflies time. the fireflies untilthe present day. Let usa examine themone at of thefireflies, andthesecond goes of from thedisappearance called it) stretched from theendof thewar to thedisappearance The first phase of this regime (astheRadicals become historically unfathomable. implying senseof continuity, acertain butthey have also at that timethat allthat was not entirely true, and that formal being nurtured by intellectuals andopponents. Itwas hoped All thisisclear andunequivocal today, because vainhopeswere were thepragmatism andformalism of the Vatican. Christian-Democrat regime. The paradigms of that ignorance diverse level –duringboth fascism andtheinitialphaseof the were thehallmarks of theelites andthemasses–albeitona Democrat power. Provincialism, coarseness and ignorance state conformism: theconformism of fascist andChristian- Il Politecnico with reference to theabsenceof any purge, 1 have rightly 93 Vol. VII Document comparative cinema No. 12 PIER PAOLO PASOLINI 2019 The Power Vacuum in Italy words to thetimeof thetransition. Now, before moving onto thesecondphase, Imust devote afew democracy somehow meantsomething. has beenexperienced by other countries, buttheway ittook old peasantandpaleo-industrial order. The samephenomenon new typeof civilization, completely “other” withrespect to the condemned them), andthey were replaced by the “values” of a the marginalized clergy-fascism (even theMSI anything anymore, not even asfalse values. They survived within thrift, morality –noneof these valueswere nolonger worth counted. The Church, homeland, family, obedience, order, agricultural andpaleo-capitalist universe suddenly nolonger The nationalized andtherefore falsified “values” of theold After thedisappearance of thefireflies as “genocide” inhisManifesto. fully achieve, for thefirst timeinItaly, what Marxhaddescribed time termed “welfare” withthe “progress” that was aboutto future would bring, norcould anyone identifywhat was at that could have suspected thehistorical reality that theimmediate experience, andwhich was inessenceonly formalistic. Noone but thiswas information that was not yet backed upby years hadcalled theMarxist analytical method into question), They were fairly well informed by (which sociology duringthose and criticshadyet noticed that fireflies were“the disappearing”. mobilized by thePCI the country(Iamreferring to theworkers andpeasantmasses In fact, neitherthehuge countrythat was takingshapewithin of fascism, aspresented in During thisperiod, thedistinction between thedifferent forms During thedisappearance of thefireflies values ​​ only oneprecedent: pre-Hitlerian Germany. InGermany, too, the world andtheleveling-out caused by industry hasperhaps The Italiantrauma of thecontact between thepluralist “archaic” unification resulting from thebourgeois-industrial revolution. logic, onto theunification of themonarchy andthe subsequent countries itwas incorporated inaccordance withacertain real “unification” that our countryendured, whereas in other place inItaly was quite unique, because itrepresented thefirst of thevariousindividualcultures were destroyed by the 2 ) northeleading advancedintellectuals Il Politecnico , could still have worked. 3 essentially essentially 94 Vol. VII Document comparative cinema No. 12 PIER PAOLO PASOLINI 2019 The Power Vacuum in Italy who cameto form thesavage, perverse, unpredictable corpsof old (peasants, andnot yet artisans) (bourgeois), modern and consequent forming of thosehuge masseswhowere nolonger violent standardization resulting from industrialization, withthe And soitisridiculous that Fortini should return to the before. celebrated May Day asifthey hadheld thelast onetheyear in Portugal: after forty years of fascism, thePortuguese people fell, everything went back to how itwas before. Ialsosaw this masks that you could putonandtake off. WhenFascist fascism could not beinvolved inthem. The fascist “models” were just and reiterated itsimpositionsof conduct invain: consciousness dissociated from consciousness. “Totalitarian” power insisted during Fascist fascism, aperiodinwhich behavior was totally people to astate of irreversible degradation. This didnot happen power transform anddeform theconsciousnessof theItalian seen – “with allmysenses” –thecoercive acts of consumerist spheres. Itwas areal love, rooted in myway of being. Thus Ihave opposition to them), andoutside thepopulist andhumanitarian both outsidethespheres of power (furthermore, inadesperate love them. Sadly, Iloved theseItalianpeople: i.e, mylove was in order to understand thechanges inthepeople, you needto only needto go outonto thestreets to seethis. Butof course, who are degenerate, ridiculous, monstrous andcriminal. You in thecentral-southern regions) they have into turned apeople did to thishistorical trauma. Injust afew years (andespecially millennia. The Italianscould not have reacted worse thanthey history: oneof thoseages inhumanhistory that last for now knows) facing “new times”, butrather anew age inhuman industrialization fifty years ago. We are no longer (as everyone represents acrucial “mutation” even compared to Germany’s more violence, because theindustrialization of the1970s In Italy asimilarprocess isunderway, andwitheven the Nazitroops. All myreaders willnodoubt have noticed the change inthe different reason, which Iwillexplain below. even thoughIwould really like to. Iaminfact writingitfor avery In any case, Iamnotjust writingthisarticle to argue thispoint, all of history. power not only hasnoequivalent inourhistory, butprobably in and thefascism of thissecondphaseof Christian-Democrat early postwar period: the distinction between Fascist fascism distinction between two typesof fascism asthey were inthe 95 Vol. VII Document comparative cinema No. 12 PIER PAOLO PASOLINI 2019 The Power Vacuum in Italy sincerity. The blessed light of true good humorshinesfrom show their radiant smiles, which possessanunbelievable they have into turned funeral masks. Admittedly, they still Christian-Democrat leaders: inthespaceof just afew months do withthe Vatican, asacenter of backward, impoverished they continuedto wield anddispensenolonger knew what to rely onthe Vatican forever, withoutrealizing that thepower same intheirregime; that they would, for example, beable to They were undertheillusionthat everything would remain the evolution, itwas radically changing innature. dispensed was not merely undergoing a “natural” stage of they never even suspected that thepower they wielded and criminal, theirlack of awareness onthispointwas absolute: having noticed. Even thoughwe might considerthisto bealmost fireflies” tothat of “thedisappearance ofthe fireflies” without the Christian-Democrat have party gone from the “stage of the The explanation is, onceagain, simple: thepowerful brokers of this point?” How didwe –orrather, “how didthesemen of power –reach sense, but apower vacuum initself. in theend, it’s not avacuumof politicalpower inany traditional legislative orexecutive power, noravacuumof leadership, no– today’s Italy. Butthis isprecisely thepoint: it’s not avacuumof The explanation issimple: there isadramatic power vacuumin and ashes: there would benothing butavacuum. removed thesemasks, we would findnot even apile of bones Yet infact they are nothing butmasks. Iamsure that ifwe promises. which we canmake outtheflatus vocis of theusual stereotyped on imperturbablywiththeirincomprehensible rigmarole, on as much as happiness itself. Furthermore, ourleaders carry cunning, which issomething that apparently pleases voters their eyes, alternating withthecomplicitglintof ingenuity and the power of consumerismwhich imposedradical changes period) to thrift, to morality. Now [thefamily] was subject to the guarantee of continuityithadenjoyed since thefascist same must besaidof thefamily, constrained (andnow without nature, which resembled technocratic policeforces. Andthe already maneuvering to create new armies, transnational in without noticing that thepower they continuedto wield was rely onanational (astheirfascist army predecessors did) peasant life. They were undertheillusionthat they could still 96 Vol. VII Document comparative cinema No. 12 PIER PAOLO PASOLINI 2019 The Power Vacuum in Italy totalitarian interms of itsviolently totalizing nature). by thepermissiveness of thenew power, which was worse than everything else, withoutlimit(or at least upto thelimitallowed upon it, to thepointof makingitaccept divorce and, therefore, ecological, urbanplanningandanthropological disaster. Infact, us soatrociously for years, thirty leading Italy to aneconomic, a question of “replacing” thegroup of menwhohave governed “macabre” fascination witha the entire nation. Onesignof thishappening, for example, isthe through acrisisandreorganization that cannot fail to involve fact, the “vacuum” of which Ispeakisalready beingfilled in, predicated intheabstract and Anyhow, a “vacuum” cannot exist inhistory; itcanonly be double-breasted suits. instruments that make nothing elsereal buttheirmournful without them, andallthey have intheirhandsare thoseuseless smiles, are covering over thevacuum. Real power carries on Democrat brokers, withalltheirautomaton maneuverings and I say “formally” because, Irepeat, thepowerful Christian- successful) to hangonto power at any price. the present day, inanattempt (which sofar hasbeenformally the horrible events that have beenorchestrated from 1969to enough, seemsto betheonewhohasbeenleast involved inall Latin). This was particularlytrue of Aldo Moro, amanwho, oddly new language (which was incidentally asincomprehensible as changed theway they expressed themselves, adopting atotally of thefireflies”) theChristian-Democrat bigwigssuddenly In thetransitional stage (that is, “during thedisappearance Gramsci), only inlanguage could thesymptoms bedetected. to thembutto anentire form of civilization. Asalways (see “something else”, something that was unfathomable not only managing allthisupheaval. They never realized that itwas haveparty experienced, inthebelief that itwas they whowere That is what themenof power inthe Christian-Democrat the something that may have begun to fillupthe “vacuum” for thepast decadewithoutrecognizing thereality: thisis The real power which thosesame “woodenheads” have served constitution, Nazis). that inthiscasethe “troops” would already be, interms of their fascist power apparatuses, would bepointless (anditisclear more so), carried outby theartificial reinforcement of theold woodenheads (noless mournfully carnivalesque, perhaps even the spuriousreplacement of these “woodenheads” withother coup d’état ad absurdum . Asifitwere simply . Chancesare, in (also thwarting the possible participation in the government of that great communist nation that was born out of Italy’s gangrene: because it’s not about “governing”). As yet we only have abstract, fundamentally apocalyptic images of such a “real power”: we cannot imagine what “forms” it might take if it comparative cinema comparative were to immediately replace those who have viewed it as a mere “modernizing” of methods. In any case, speaking for myself (if that should be of any interest to the reader), let me simply say that no matter how multinational it might be, I would give the whole of Montedison for a single firefly.

Translated by Ruth Pérez-Chaves, Ph.D.

Published in: PASOLINI, Pier Paolo (1975). Il vuoto del potere in Italia. Corriere della Sera, 1st February 1975. https://www.corriere.it/speciali/pasolini/potere.html [access: April 1st 2019] The first version of this translation was published in the blog Città Pasolini in 2016: http://cittapasolini.blogspot. com/2016/09/the-vacuum-of-power-il-vuoto-del-potere.html [access: April 1st 2019].

97 1/ Most probably Pasolini is referring to the characterization of “regime” dis- cussed by Ernesto Rossi and Mario Pannunzio, both members of the Partito Radicale (Radical Party), left-wing political party (1955-1989). (Translator’s Note).

2/ Partito Comunista Italiano (Italian Communist Party). (Translator’s Note)

3/ Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement), neo-fascist political party (1946-1995). Renamed Movimento Sociale Italiano – Destra Nazionale (Italian Social Movement – National Right) in 1972. (Translator’s Note) Document PASOLINI PIER PAOLO in Italy Vacuum The Power 2019 No. 12 No. Vol. VII Vol.