(Video transcript)
I imagine that many of you will turn up your noses today at the thought of yet another psychologist who starts talking about politics and reduces everything to psychology. But I’m absolutely convinced that without a clear and well-defined understanding of human nature, politicians—and I’m referring to left-wing politicians or so-called progressives, because the left seems to have disappeared these days—remain uncertain; they’re stuck in the middle, neither fish nor fowl, unable to propose anything truly alternative. They risk being nothing more than a poor copy—or a good copy, you decide—of the right. Perhaps they’re a bit softer, a bit less repressive, but without proposing a radically new vision. Now they call themselves progressives because they try to move beyond the old idea of the human being handed down to us by tradition, yet they’re unable to reject it entirely. Conservatives, on the other hand, remain firmly tied to traditional values—“God, country, and family”—as if human nature were immutable over time. But I’ll say it again: I believe the most important reason for this uncertainty and hesitation is precisely the lack of clear ideas about human nature. Yet I believe that must be the very first starting point for any political discourse. We’ve written and said this many times on our blog, but I know it’s not easy to shake off the ideas we grew up with. Anyway, for example, do you have any idea why the left gets upset with the right when it appeals to people’s gut feelings? Now, in part, this is absolutely true, in the sense that the right constantly creates things that stir up anger and fear in order to gain easy support and thus legitimize repressive measures. But the point is that left-wing thinking is based on the idea that people’s gut reactions are limited to that. That’s why we shouldn’t appeal to the gut, but rather to rationality and reason. And this is a false premise that prevents us from developing any truly innovative projects. They say we must be rational, and that’s how we’ll find sociality, solidarity, and all those wonderful things. Now, it seems clear to me that the right has a clear understanding of this. They are conservatives because they cling to the old ideas about human beings—ideas we’ve known for hundreds of years—namely, that deep down we all have violent, antisocial instincts that must be controlled and repressed; otherwise, chaos would ensue, wouldn’t it? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so to speak. So society’s task would be to repress, control, and punish in order to guarantee social order. Now, however, this control on an individual level would be carried out by rationality—the very same rationality that the left intends to appeal to—and so we see a strange short circuit emerging between the right and the left. As we just mentioned, the right plays this little trick of appealing to people’s anger and fears to legitimize repressive measures; we’ve seen this a billion times, haven’t we? But consider that fear of this violent nature is evidently amplified when one encounters the unknown, the different; thus, fear increases exponentially because it is accompanied by the anxiety of a reality that is even more threatening precisely because it is unknown. When I was little, children were frightened by the idea of the “bogeyman”—“I’ll send you to the bogeyman.” Viewed in psychodynamic terms, the bogeyman—that is, the “black object”—is the entity onto which one projects one’s own negative aspects; in other words, the unknown “other” becomes the vessel for what is ugly and violent within us. This mechanism is called projective identification, which consists precisely of identifying the other with the ugliness I have projected onto them, and it is an inseparable relationship; in fact, the right always needs the monster, the enemy who instills anxiety and terror in us. But then there’s another little trick: think of Vannacci—also from the right—who conflates two terms, “normality” and “sanity,” which are by no means synonyms. In fact, there are people who behave in a completely normal way—who act like the majority of people, since “normality” is a statistical concept derived from the word “norm”—yet they may be deeply ill. Conversely, there are highly original people who behave in a way that is completely different from the majority, yet they are perfectly healthy. But let’s return to the left and its view of human nature. Now, in the video on sex education, I touched on some of Freud’s ideas about human nature—ideas the left has fallen so deeply in love with, though it’s not entirely clear why. On the surface, he seemed to propose a new perspective, open to the unconscious; but in substance, he ended up proposing something utterly reactionary. Go back and watch some passages from that video because there are some truly powerful points. But, getting back to the matter at hand, dear left-wing and progressive politicians, hasn’t the time come to turn to new, truly revolutionary theories that speak to us of a nonviolent human nature that spontaneously seeks connection with other human beings—with those who are different? Isn’t it time to stop thinking of human beings the way the right does—that is, as a boiling pot of violent instincts that needs a lid to keep them from spilling over? You see, because otherwise you can only stammer something about money, the minimum wage, things like that—all of which are right and sacrosanct, for heaven’s sake— but you don’t even touch people’s hearts, because deep down you share the same view of human beings as the right wing—and instead you should have the courage to speak to people’s hearts because, as we’ve seen—and as you’ve seen, for example, during the pro-Palestine demonstrations—there’s not just anger and fear in people’s hearts, but something entirely different. And you really think you’re inspiring people’s dreams by appealing to their reason. But how many people have stopped voting because you’ve failed to offer them a dream, a hope? You see, spending all this money on weapons—which is being talked about so much these days—isn’t just disgusting because it diverts funds from healthcare, education, and other areas, but it’s deeply disgusting because of the worldview behind it. “Oh my God, now Russia is going to invade us. If someone fires a missile at us, how will we manage without American help? And the Chinese with those almond-shaped eyes? Mmm. And those Black people landing on our shores? Now who knows—they’ll make us lose the purity of our race.” But guys, we’re really losing our minds here. To me, it all sounds like pure delusion. They reply, “But you don’t know anything about geopolitics! History has always taught us about these things.” Yeah, sure, but that’s exactly why we need a new way of thinking—precisely so we don’t repeat these absurdities from the past. And then they tell you, “But that’s a utopia; you’re a populist.” Maybe so, but you guys need to stop being terrified of what’s different, and then maybe we can talk about it again. Look, there are a billion things to say. For example, our prisons are overflowing with young people who are heading down a path of no return, with countless repeat offenses and so on. But do you want to understand that there’s no such thing as innate evil? Help them rediscover their humanity, because at birth they’re exactly the same as all of us, no matter where in the world they were born—whether they’re white, black, yellow, or green. It’s just that they’ve lost sight of this human reality—because it’s clear that human beings can become ill and turn violent; we’ve said and written this countless times on our blog—but precisely for this reason, we should be proposing policies that stimulate and facilitate people’s natural development. Look at how immigrants are treated, and then we’re surprised when they commit crimes. They arrive hoping for a better world and are treated like animals, like intruders—not to mention the school system, where, for example, the sacrosanct “no”—which must be said to children—with Valditara’s absurd punishments; or—and here I really must address the left—which revives the confused ideas of ’68, where “different” is conflated with “sick,” and no distinction is made between civil rights and public health, because there is truly a massive lack of research on human reality. You can no longer—and you are no longer able to—distinguish what is healthy from what is not. Now, excuse me, but I want to remind the left—perhaps it would be more accurate to say the center-left—that when you were in government, you sent immigrants back to Libyan prisons; you did not change the Bossi-Fini law, which is a law that creates undocumented immigrants. You didn’t even manage to pass the law on ius soli, because you clearly have very confused ideas about human beings. Another thing: when Russia attacked Ukraine, you didn’t give a moment’s thought to supporting the sending of weapons, even though you knew this would lead to a bloodbath of young people—whether Russian or Ukrainian, it obviously makes no difference. Consider that we’re talking about an average of 400 to 500 young people dying every day for more than four years, yet it seems nobody gives a damn. So, why don’t people vote anymore? Could it be that the vast majority of people have their basic needs met and are fed up with your compromises, your lack of vision, and your chasing after the right wing because you lack the courage, the knowledge, and the imagination to propose a vision of society that would allow us all to live together peacefully? Look, not a day goes by without a femicide. Underage kids stabbing each other to death, lunatics who get a kick out of stabbing strangers—we could list 100,000 such cases. Now, I understand that many politicians, even with the best of intentions, just can’t seem to shake off their old ways of thinking, so they try to do something, but they can’t go any further than that. But look, this is the time for radical choices because there’s a menacing dark wave sweeping across all of Europe, and dithering now could pose an extremely high risk. So if you can’t handle it, make way for those with new ideas, courage, and imagination. Oh well, I’ll stop here. Have a great summer, everyone.
Marco Michelini
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