Blue monochrome or rainbow? War or peace? Only a confused left could organize a protest supporting both positions without feeling contradictory. That’s why this Saturday in Rome, the European blue flags and the rainbow flags will wave side by side.
Launched in Repubblica by Michele Serra, the rally, by its own promoter’s admission, has always had rather nebulous purposes. It will certainly serve a cathartic function and help those who participate feel on the right side of history, but then what else?
War and Peace
Intellectuals called upon by the Roman newspaper will march, who in these days have tried to ennoble Serra’s indignation with courtly appeals: sometimes with a Garibaldian spirit, like Corrado Augias, sometimes with bellicose intentions, like Antonio Scurati, and sometimes with rather unsettling references, as Achille Occhetto and Serra himself did, to the Manifesto of Ventotene (the one by Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi where a socialist European architecture imposed from above is theorized, built by an elite and not by the people).
Alongside a helmet-wearing Carlo Calenda with the flags of Ukraine and Georgia, there will be Angelo Bonelli with the rainbow cockade. The national ANPI will be there, but not the one from Rome. WWF and Legambiente will be present, along with the Catholics of Sant’Egidio and Agesci. Macron’s supporter Sandro Gozi will march because “Europe must defend itself on its own,” and the pacifists of Assisi will march “against the mad Europe that spends 800 billion on war.” There will be a lot of people who would rather not be there, like Elly Schlein and Maurizio Landini. There will be the blue flags of Europe (which today means rearmament and war), but also the rainbow ones (which mean “not in my name”).
The Former American Ally?
The two positions are irreconcilable, but they cannot stand alone either. The purely pacifist option cannot hold, because no one can be so naive as to think that the security of a continent can be guaranteed with flowers in the cannons. And on the other hand, the Trump hurricane has only accelerated the realization of a problem that has been discussed for decades, a problem made more urgent by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But, understanding how and what can be done is one thing, but thinking, overnight, of rearming Europe, extending the French nuclear shield, and sending troops to the Ukrainian front is another. Where do our warmongers armed with cork guns and cardboard helmets want to go? Even the wavering Ursula von der Leyen (who, two years ago, assured us that Russia was in such a military crisis that they were using chips from washing machines and refrigerators to make tanks) had to restrain her colleague’s pugnacious fervor when a journalist from Le Monde asked her how to do without the “former” American ally: without Washington, Brussels doesn’t go anywhere.
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Macron’s Smart Remarks
The numbers and common sense speak for themselves. The European Union wants to invest 800 billion in defense over four years; the United States spends a thousand billion a year. To put it in perspective: if a war were to break out tomorrow morning, the United States could deploy 300,000 men, armored vehicles, artillery, and fighter jets on European soil within a few days, a force that all European states together, at the same time, would not be able to match. As also reported by Corriere citing a study by the Bruegel Institute in Brussels and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, “the combat capability that the Americans can deploy in Europe within a few days is greater than that of the 29 European armies combined.”
Our blue monochrome warmongers may praise the imprudent Emmanuel Macron’s clever remarks, but they too have to face the fact that France – as explained to La Verità by international relations expert Lucio Martino – “possesses 190 nuclear weapons: the most credible of which are only the 12 ballistic missiles mounted on the single French submarine constantly at sea. The Russian Federation, on the other hand, has 1,700 ready-to-use warheads mounted on missiles, bombers, and submarines.”
The “Democracy” of Ventotene
What was supposed to be a demonstration with a single flag (blue) and a single idea (long live Europe) has ended up becoming a demonstration with many flags and so many contradictory ideas (yes, long live Europe, but maybe, but also no) that nothing is clear anymore.
As a result, Marco Rizzo called for a counter-rally yesterday to demand peace and sovereignty. And the same thing – in a third square – was done by Potere al Popolo.
Yesterday on Repubblica, trying to make sense of the chaos, Serra finally claimed the right to naivety and contradiction. He explained that they will march for the great “European values” such as “peace, freedom, justice, equality, solidarity, civil rights,” and above all, “democracy” because today it is threatened in Washington, not in Brussels (on this matter, ask the Romanians). However, when it comes to democracy, Serra seems unaware that using the Manifesto of Ventotene as the identity card of the “democratic” stroll is a contradiction, considering that Spinelli and Rossi considered “democratic political methodology” “a dead weight in the revolutionary crisis.”
Therefore, as Mao would have said, the situation is excellent. Great is the confusion under the blue monochrome sky.
