At the opening of the XXIII Congress of the Nonviolent Movement (Brescia, 2010), Daniele Lugli, the outgoing president, pointed to nonviolence as the key to overcoming conflicts both near and far. Among the closest are those related to the management of the migratory phenomenon, and it is no coincidence that this Congress was entitled “Nonviolence for the open city”.
By Daniele Lugli
Today we offer another extract from this report, aware that in the last fourteen years the conditions of migrants who choose Italy, whether to live there or to cross it, are far from improving. In the following passage, Daniele reveals the misunderstood reference to federalism and talks about the practice of looking for scapegoats to explain the attitude of governments towards immigrants when they are unable or unwilling to give coexistence a direction that is not dictated by the law of the market.
The first part of the speech at the Brescia Congress can be read again at this link.
The associations of privileged states, which are responsible for most of these situations, close themselves off like fortresses to contain the waves of migration. The result is highly stratified societies: internally, with powerful super-rich and powerful and growing pockets of poverty, and in inter-state relations, with a morality that affirms the right of the strongest. It is the exact opposite of the idea of progress that Condorcet had given us: the reduction of differences within states and between nations, and the continuing upward mobility of personal ethics. The hopes raised by Obama’s appointment as head of the great power, if not extinguished, have certainly been dimmed.
“The city of man, with the way he thinks about it and builds it, is the name given to man’s common way of living on earth,” Franco Riva reminds us. Our cities are changing rapidly before our eyes, as are their inhabitants, their aspirations, and their relationships. It is a powerful change. Some call it anthropological. Its direction does not seem to me to be entirely positive.
It seemed to us that a good introduction to this reality is the “Attempt at a Decalogue for Interethnic Coexistence” by Alexander Langer, whose view we envy. These changes bring new problems and complexities that can be disorienting and frightening. Complex situations require rich and complex thinking and action to deal with them adequately. They take commitment and effort. They do not appear to be immediately cost-effective. Hence the recourse to elementary ways of thinking, to brutal actions that temporarily remove fear and seem to offer precise guidance. Careful examination of problems, and the need to understand methods and causes, seems a waste of time in the face of an emergency. The very democratic procedures, the guarantees of the rule of law resulting from the struggles and sacrifices of our predecessors, are perceived as an obstacle to effective action. The success of the political forces that have become entrepreneurs of disorientation and the fears of the citizens in the face of sudden and unusual changes have these roots. We see that where fear enters, there is no room for anything else. Like a gas, it occupies the whole environment in which it spreads. It is difficult to neutralize. It finds a destructive outlet more easily.
The old practice of scapegoating is revived with some variations. The name of the immigrant population, which seems more threatening, is changed, while the always troublesome and difficult-to-deal-with character of the Roma is confirmed. As for religion, there is no doubt that the negative palm goes to Islam. The city no longer even retains the memory of the polis, the place where citizens exercised their capacity for self-government. Voting periodically for whoever is proposed as the best sheriff, so that the citizens (it is hard to call them that anymore) can go about their business as aristocrats, artisans, lots, slaves, barbarians, immigrants… ….
This model, established in a few places, has spread far and wide.
The cruel misery of politics comes to the fore. We measure its effects every day, and this catastrophe does not only affect our country. Here it is cloaked in the noble name of federalism. It has nothing to do with Cattaneo, Spinelli or Rossi. It is the opposite of what they thought: the union of different peoples. We start from the city, from the region, from the closest and most concrete experience, in order to unite in a higher dimension in every sense. Today it is blasphemous to limit ourselves to a place, to an invented ethnicity. In other countries, populist and xenophobic tendencies are on the rise. They are all the more worrying because they come at a time of crisis for the European experience and the very idea of Europe.
The English historian Sassoon reminds us that Europe’s internal market is larger than that of the United States, but it is fragmented into dozens of states, divided, according to the Dutchman Kohstamm, between the small and those who do not know they are small. The great European civil war, in two phases (World War I and World War II), destroyed the supremacy of the old continent. Rising from the ruins and renouncing its military ambitions, Europe launched the most important experiment in regional integration in history. Today it is in the midst of a profound crisis. Europe still has to choose between remaining little more than a free trade area or building a truly federal state.
This indecision weighs heavily. So, yes, while appreciating the positive aspects that are painstakingly advancing international law, the weakness of the UN is evident and particularly felt in the so-called world of globalization. Law, at all levels, both in its subjective aspect (individual rights) and its objective aspect (rules applicable to all), seems to be under attack by economic, political, and military powers that want to free themselves from all rules.
