Imagine Piazza del Popolo as “an emotional place, a source of European pride at a time when Europe is facing a very complicated situation, facing risks because on one side there is Trump and on the other side there is Putin.” It will definitely be very exciting to participate in the event launched by Michele Serra on Repubblica. A demonstration “with zero party flags, only the monochrome European blue” to which many have already joined: Cgil, Cisl, Uil, Acli, Pd, Azione, and even the Communication Festival of Camogli (so everyone is really on board).

It will surely be a grand parade that will echo, but with more substantial numbers, the gathering organized by Azione the other day “against tariffs and America’s NATO disengagement” and in favor of “taxes on big tech and European defense.”

The Consistency of D’Alema

It will all be very beautiful and very right. Who wouldn’t want a more prominent Europe? This Old Continent has realized that it can no longer remain dormant, that Trump is not joking, that Putin is not joking, and that even Xi is not joking. Who wouldn’t want it to have a bit more “guts”?

Serra admitted seraphically: his was an “emotional” appeal, almost like a “bar talk.” But, well, Trump and Vance mistreat Zelenski, the United States is abandoning us, Putin is laughing at the Kremlin, and we do nothing? So let there be a demonstration: everyone waving the flags with the twelve stars, all taking aim at those two who, as Coma Cose would say, with eyes like guns, shoot at our hearts.

It must be said that, so far, like Europe, many eager protesters were dormant. As long as there was Biden, it wasn’t worth taking to the streets. Does anyone remember “emotional” rallies for Afghanistan or Artsakh? But now, with the wrecking ball in the White House, it’s time for mobilization. It’s the revenge of those who have known for a lifetime that you can’t trust the Yankees. “Have you seen? We were right in the seventies to be anti-American. We shouted that American imperialism was barbaric when we were young” (Massimo D’Alema – at least he has always been consistent in his anti-Americanism: he even went to the square with Hezbollah).

That’s Not How It’s Done

“You don’t interrupt an emotion,” Federico Fellini used to say to criticize the insertion of commercials during movies. And even the protesters called to gather by Serra do not want to interrupt the emotion of those who want to live in a more beautiful, fairer, and monochrome blue world.

It’s a shame that facts are so stubborn. It’s a shame that the war has been at a standstill for two years, that the United States and Europe have deluded Ukraine into thinking it could continue fighting indefinitely (always providing enough weapons to resist, but never to win), that Trump is doing what Biden dreamed of doing, that Starmer and Meloni have more sense than Macron, that Zelenski realized he made a glaring mistake behaving like a bully with someone bigger than him and is now trying to backtrack.

All this is a shame, that’s not how it’s done. But maybe by waving a few little flags, we can fool ourselves into thinking we haven’t interrupted the emotion.

Blue Flag, White Flag

Sooner or later, even those from Repubblica will come back to reality. Maybe realizing that yesterday, on the front page, next to the article by Corrado Augias that ennobled Serra’s call to arms, of that necessary Garibaldian spirit that is due, there was Lucio Caracciolo’s article that began like this: “The European Union is clinically dead. When put to the test of war, it proved useless in resolving it. In the three years of conflict in Ukraine, it has not been able to articulate even a hint of a proposal to end it.”

That was what Pope Francis insisted on, to say the least. Emotional mobilizations? None.

“We must acknowledge Trump – Caracciolo wrote – the merit of bringing us back to reality, a very unpleasant one for us Europeans. We know what we are no longer. Nor will we return to being. It is urgent to reflect on what we can want. This also applies to us Italians. First and foremost, peace in Ukraine is needed under the least worst conditions possible and with decent security guarantees for Kiev, assuming that without the Americans, nothing would be possible. On this, Rome can contribute. After all, we were the only European country to propose a negotiation scheme for the war a month after it broke out, then unexpectedly deposited in a drawer of the UN Secretary-General, where it obviously rotted.”

Trump, with his brusque and coercive methods, is doing what Europe should have done two years ago: seek negotiations between the United States and Russia to preserve Ukraine. We didn’t do it, now we go to the square to wave the little flags. They are monochrome blue, but they look white.