One Hundred Years, Cent'Anni

 

In a very symbolic feat, the long-lived president Mattarella - who may quite soon become the longest-governing head of state for a similar span as well - inaugurated Giorgia Meloni, head of the Fratelli d'Italia faction, as head of the Italian government. This was quite swiftly proclaimed if not the first fascist, then certainly the first extreme right, or most far-right of all governments since the great war, or even since Mussolini in 1943. This near-eighty year span, 

A sixty year-old horror

In the foreign policy marking - or marring - out rime, making distinctions between the "good" powers, those of democratic transitions of power, and those of acts of scheming, or of great evil or nationalistic fervour or chauvinistic gain, of short sight or the calculated gain of leadership as opposed to those of country (yet, in a good or inclusive or at the very least defensible fashion). One great upset of mine this year of bellum horribilis was the remark by a certain columnist at a certain liberal daily of the crime of the Russians of interfering with French "democratic stabilisation operations". This came too short after the too easy to deconstruct a neologism of "special military operation" and was too audacious not to be discounted but by the most gullible, ill-advised, frivolous reader, and thus must have been carried off gently into the night of no further questions. But only if it did not awaken certain harder-edged truths, concerning certain truths in our undead past (not going back to 1619, or even 1830) and symbolised, in its blood-soaked unraveling, by this night of October 17, in sweet and - to France - regenerating 1961. The facts of such a night has already been best penned by Peter Hitchens: 

Using pick handles and rifle butts, the police force of one of the world’s most civilized countries surrounded and savagely beat hundreds of dark-skinned men. They then threw them into the beautiful river that flows through a city celebrated for its cultural and artistic wonders. Those who were still alive after the beatings were left to drown.

This was Paris, City of Lights, on the night of October 17, 1961. To this day, nobody knows how many peaceful Algerian protesters died in this episode, concealed for years by menacing state power and a ­compliant press. Most estimates are in the hundreds. General Charles de Gaulle, towering hero of resistance to Hitler, had recently become President of France in an undoubted military putsch, tactfully concealed but firmly based upon paratroopers. He cannot possibly have been unaware of what was done that night.

This truth does not eradicate previous crimes from the French government, or succession of governments of colours, forms and sentiments as differing as to those of Germany or Spain, but were committed under the present, 1958 Constitution, and necessarily leaves a trace when the question of "democratic stabilisation operations" and the role of France in its ex-colonies ("ex" here denoting a relationship of enduring cohabitation, economic integration and recurrent violence) and the answer to the question why Russia, a lesser economy and a more shameful state - if we are to believe our democratic, or democratically necessary news outlets - seems to pull greater weight, and certainly sympathy, in these parts of the world and many others, in spite of the praises (and silences) of commentators so precious to our democracy as Mr. Jonsson and his ilk. 

Days such as this, who seem to walk with iron shoes and never be very far away - and undoubtedly carry certain day-and-party political inhibitions and designs - are necessary to reminisce in the hard facts that still govern our present day to day political affairs, and the relations between states which now - for a certainty - do not grow like a fungi towards universal hegemony for the free and open and democratic (terms that are internally as contradictory as they are fraternal) states or "the free world". Certainly France is now a polity better assuring rights for its citizens , and certainly these facts are much harder across France's own little pond - to the lands once united with this great union of free states, but sadly no longer - and not only or even deliberately on account of French politicians. No more than the guilt Rwandians issuing racist and race-designating passports, and then blows from the machete, thirty and thirty-five years after the departure of Belgian colonial administrators should or could be admonished, or neglected, nor minimised, nor should we forgive the acts of Algerian authoritarians (or African slave-traders, shut down by European colonial powers, with the black-shirted masters of the first fascist states being among the last). Here, I must say I have developed a sensation I once considered a defect, with the , albeit one united with relaxation of the one enlightened/blighted with the hard facts of our common past. 

The Oldest Horror

Our oldest horror, old as it is only by the centimeters and millimeters splitting us from the great carnage that was the first half of the 20th century, may be approaching more swiftly than we have seen before. And with our oldest horror, I mean that the world will end in a gulf of fire and toxic rain, destroying or covering as a blanket of dismay the survivors. 

This multitude of emotions is one I feel for the recent, and seemingly unstoppable wave of Ukrainian victories in the territories only so recently claimed for the Russian federation. 

The Case for Human Resilience

It would not be an exaggeration to say we are living in a time of crisis. Only the nature of the problem, and thus the means employed to find resolution, or at least release from the sensation of dread, is heavily disputed. Most accurately, we may look on an extinction or near-extinction event. 

The best, and most inadequate answer thus may be that we have been here before. In many shapes, doomsday events and their witnesses and prophets have been preserved for posterity, adding to the general sensation that this cannot be the end times. Most people who are not profiting would like to see them, after all. 

Unfortunately, this can not be said of an apocalyptic thermonuclear event, nor about the full implications of the climate catastrophe emerging through several (af)fronts. The question of rising temperatures aside, ground waters and mass extinction will gradually but very severely impact the conditions necessary to sustain life, and thus set in force other, human actions possibly exacerbating the dilemma. In short, human population and consumerism has stepped out of clear waters, now on an inexorable course to drown - or finally swim. And worse, it will not only involve a course of drastic and unprecedented vigour and innovation, but also the harder art of strategic self-discipline and holding back desires. Not a godly man myself (nor a godly woman) I do not appreciate this part, and will exhaust any possibility for alternative roads to the same ends; once I desire them, that is. And that already excludes a whole bunch. 

We have prevailed, and even in these times of inequality and desperation - the twilight of the West, that is - and their implications, 

The return of Lula

Forest, as his surname reads in the old learned tongue,  will run this successful gauntlet to a successful finish. Nothing but a full-scale revolution by (para)military forces seems poised to counter it. And with this return in triumph, not only from the exile of three terms out of office, but to his high point in a political career spanning half a century, and seeing him run for the supreme office of state and government six times, the first three coming second.