Let me tell you a story. Listen to me. Actually, read me. In my adolescence and long youth, all spent in Marina, I experienced situations like the ones I’m about to tell you. They are similar to those of many of my peers. Either directly. Or by hearsay. Or as witnesses to the events. The first little story is not at all “fantasized,” not even in the emphasis of the telling. Here it is: in those years, Marina was small, a jewel box by the sea, which only for a few hundred meters, going up from the important train station, stretched out to the locality of Fortuna. In that Marina, as elsewhere, there was a boy who was always fighting. With anyone. And for any lack of reason. He fought not because of that classic character called nervous. He fought just for the sake of fighting. He always got beaten. Never once did he land an extra punch or slap on those who foolishly responded to his “challenges.” At the end of the fight, he would join us and say verbatim: “Idru mindaminau, ma eu cindadissi!” We laughed, but we didn’t mock him. We always agreed with him. “Bravu tu sì ca sì daveru coraggiusu.” And he would leave happy and proud, looking for someone else to provoke. Another fight. The other story is the memory of a fact that has stayed with me. An event I have often mentioned in conversations and lessons to demonstrate a reality that you yourselves will draw from the reading. Here it is: in the “neighborhood” where I lived, right near my house, a hundred meters from the Institute, still under construction in the new part, of the Sisters of Mary Immaculate Conception of Ivrea (I remember the full title well, as well as the teaching sisters and all my classmates), where I attended school “from kindergarten” to elementary, there was a boy a few years older than me, who acted like a bully, though the word “bully” wasn’t used then. He had already left school, to the full joy of his teachers. He didn’t study and didn’t do his homework. He was often absent. He came in late and insisted on leaving whenever he wanted. He dressed sloppily. And since he was always out from early morning, among construction sites, the beach where the fishermen arrived, woods and pine forest, then close to the town, he showed up in, let’s say, not very hygienic, shabby conditions. In short, a real “degenerate.” He didn’t look for fights. He didn’t fake “victorious” clashes. He acted like a bully. Physically strong. Tall, not “fat,” but bulky with real muscles and nerves like ship ropes. He was intimidating just to look at. He wanted to impose himself in the neighborhood. With strength and bullying. To be feared. To receive subjection and obedience. And whatever he needed, from well-stuffed sandwiches to “Panini” stickers he was missing from his album. To assert himself. To be known: “u sai cu su eu” and he’d hit. “Ricordati u noma meu,” and off he’d go, looking for someone else to threaten. Who? Anyone (he picked them well, he wasn’t stupid!) with a good family upbringing, from which came that weakness towards aggressors and violent people. In short, any boy who was already afraid of him, who had made a name for himself as strong and unbeatable. I still don’t know why he never acted against me. He looked at me “sideways,” but didn’t threaten me. He did it daily to my close friend, almost a brother. He was like me. More determined than me in rejecting, already culturally, violence and the violent, bullying and bullies, little yard mafiosos. He was a free and jealous boy, my brother-friend, of his freedom. And he didn’t bend, just as he later did in life. One afternoon, as dusk was falling, in the clearing of the construction site for the new building of the Sisters, I saw the “little mafioso” on top of the body of one of his victims. He was hitting the poor guy with punches and slaps.
I threw myself on him, grabbing him from behind to pull him away from that “heroic action.” Meanwhile, I, skinny, almost a wire at that age, was pulling him, and I discovered that underneath him was my friend, who by nature was anti-violence and didn’t even defend himself. I knew him well. “Lassalu,” I told him. “Vattinda, ca ti minu puru a tia.” He said to me. There was nothing to do. He wouldn’t let go and kept hitting. He hit hard. I found myself holding a diary, which I had just bought with my savings at the stationery shop, one of those nice diaries with a cover as hard as a stone. And I hit him on the head with it. A few small scrapes with a bit of blood. He touched it with his hand. Saw it a little red. He got up scared, let go of his “prey.” And, shouting, ran off at full speed. “Mo’ ciu dicu a frattimma, a pagati cara chissa (now I’ll tell my older brother, you’ll pay for this!). We lived nearby and for a few days, I was a bit afraid of that brother, who, however, walked past me as if nothing had happened. From that day on, the bully, the arrogant one, the idiot, the little mafioso, was never seen in our area again. Society, the one that grew up on power relations, has always gone on, up to our days, imposing this scheme. A bully, who feels strong because he has preferred muscle over reason, selfishness and cynicism over morals, uses arrogance and physical strength to instill fear in others and impose his will. Above all, to acquire ever greater power. Power with which to impose his own rules, conquer new spaces and more wealth. Extend his domain over territories and countries and nations, even distant ones. And plant his flag on other people’s land. And on everyone’s hat, the feather from the wings of birds, which he, with the same violence, has torn from the sky. Then, after bringing a cemetery silence over all that domain, and over the rubble under which not a moan, a breath, or a heartbeat can be heard, he declares he has built peace. He, the new planetary hero, the pacifist peacemaker for pacified peace. The one in which the new principle reigns, invented by himself: peace is built with war. The good war is the one that wins over the enemy’s weakness. In fact, for bullies, you don’t even need an enemy.
It’s enough that there are rich lands to conquer, precious resources to steal, defenseless peoples to starve, desperate people to annihilate. Many, many children to let die, of hunger or fire. And women to “demother,” so that no new offspring are born. This “deadly” peace is the peace of bullies. Of the new bullies. Of those who show their muscles and use their fists. Threaten harsher violence. And devastating acts of war. This Peace and these bullies need only the most faithful and “peaceful” ally, fear. Of peoples, of States, Nations, governments, individuals. With this historic alliance they will continue to rule the world. With today’s most effective authoritarianism, which doesn’t even need to dress up as fascism. On fear, the so-called “strong” man acts easily. Fear, especially when collective, generates impotence, collapse. Abandonment of the self, individual and collective. It drains the strength from the Us. Dries up critical thinking. Cancels social conscience and with it wipes out Politics. But the bully is a fool dressed anew. The arrogant, vain, super-ego-scented one is a madman revered as likeable, intelligent and normal by courtiers and the frightened. The arrogant, bullying, egocentric, muscle-bound one is a weakling who is afraid. And, like mafiosi and bullies of every latitude and every era, he covers his fragility by hitting the weak. The weaker than him. But, as history teaches, it only takes a “boom,” to show a little courage, that overcomes the fear of a moment or even just shows to have it, and the bully, the arrogant, the overbearing, will run away with his tail between his legs. The same goes for real mafiosi. Especially if that moment of courage is expressed by people together, united citizens, allied States and Nations.
From that moment, a new world can be born. One of wealth for all. And of true Peace. The Peace in which all energies and wills are combined with Freedom. And Justice with Democracy.
Franco Cimino