I have been trying to write for days, but I remain speechless, silent in front of the blank page with the same paralysis as when, almost a teenager, I watched for the first time the mini-series “Holocaust”. Stunned and barely able to walk, without saying anything I went to sleep or better, I dragged myself to bed and in the darkness of the room I let flow rivers of tears, a desperate cry that I could not describe, a mixture of pain, empathy and impotence in facing the monstrosity of an absolute and unjust violence of men over other men, of human beings against other human beings.
I couldn’t say what was bothering me so much. No doubt there was the infinite sadness for the pain of so many people, surely there was also the fear that it could happen again and strike me too (and given nowadays, maybe it was not such an abstract fear), but there was also something else, it was that violence without “meaning” that terrified me. Or rather, a reason for that violence was there, but it was not only economic, material; there was not only a matter of “useful” behind the extermination. I felt it, but I could not say it, because I did not know the difference between destruction, physical aggression and the annulment pulsion, that is, a psychic aggression such that the very existence of the other is made to disappear, it is made non-existent (and, if you go on to act as in the case of the Nazi concentration camps or the Argentine desaparecidos, you make the other disappear even physically). This “psychic” aggression is much worse than physical violence, because it is an invisible violence that can destroy you if you cannot see it and oppose it: if you do not see it you cannot even refuse it. And then you believe your aggressor and allow him to manipulate you and take away your reality, to make you disappear; you allow him to prevent you from finding the fantasy to react, in the most beautiful, creative and “human” way possible. It is possible to react. A splendid example, among many, is that of Liliana Segre, who did not believe she could be destroyed in her humanity. She resisted and refused to respond with violence and with the killing of her jailer when at the end of the war during the liberation she was presented with the opportunity to take revenge.
But why am I going into all this? Why do I associate Nazi destruction with the war in Ukraine that we are witnessing these days? Perhaps because, taking for granted the news that you hear on the news or read on social – which is not entirely obvious in an era of fake news and “driven” communication – there are stories of bombing on civilians rather than on military targets, shootings on people while they are seeking refuge elsewhere, destruction of entire cities, schools, hospitals.. Hospitals. What struck me most were the missiles on the pediatric and maternity hospitals.. It gives me back an image of a desire to erase life, the very birth of a people… The idea of a possible democracy? Is that it? I do not know, I am not able to make socio-political analysis and I do not even feel like painting the “good” invaded and tortured and the “bad” invader, because reality is much more complex than that…
Maybe I risk being unpopular, but I really don’t think there is any “good” in reality. There’s not in any war, and I don’t think there’s here either. The alleged “good” sometimes seems to make propaganda, he too, and incites the other Heads of State to take measures so drastic as to make concrete the danger of a third world war. As if, even here, perhaps out of desperation (or instead perhaps for “attitude”?) something has to be erased… the possibility of resolving conflicts with diplomatic intervention? the actual possibility of repudiating war as a mean of dispute resolution (as solemnly stated in our Constitution)? I do not know, but I know that the “good” Zelensky frightens me in the same way as the “bad” Putin. And, regarding both and the other more or less silent players of this game to the massacre (Usa first of all) – even though with different weights and measures each – the words that Marco Michelini wrote in the article last week on this blog echo in my mind: Maybe something different was moving up? What if it was the emergence of a new thought that triggered the need to put the clock back?
I wonder in all this what the boys and girls of 5bs of Latina High Grassi – who have been telling us about them and their fears and hopes – are thinking. Do they also know that (I’m quoting as above) human beings are born equal all over the world, that the human reality made of affections, joys, emotions, sadness, love, hope is the same in all the young people of the world? Do they want to defend this new thought? I feel like it’s been a century since I read their last post on this blog last month, and I’ve enjoyed their words, their freshness of not wanting to rip lines as they were taught to do, as they’re expected to do… I cannot wait to read their new article and to know how they are living this moment, what they will choose to say and tell us; I cannot wait to imagine, to feel with them and with the many guys and girls who will read us, a Fantasy possible.
Luigia Lazzaro
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