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A process that began about a century ago and which today, more than yesterday, is showing its maximum power. A radical transition from states of culture to states of blood

Ancient times, happy times

Going back in time he would hardly recognize us. States that welcomed the different, using it as a stimulus to get to know the world. In ancient times, sharing a few religious or non-religious principles was enough to be accepted by other states. A cultural harmony that became a more effective passport than any other to transform itself. These are the cases of the great Eastern empires such as the Ottoman, Chinese and Persian ones but also of decidedly more European empires such as the Russian, German and Italian ones. Perhaps our peninsula was the one that most of all turned into a happy landing place for fugitives, a safe place populated by a thousand different cultures that have populated the Italic lands for centuries. Arabs, turks, French, Spanish, Africans, Jews and Slavs, only some of the cultures that have transformed Italy into the pearl still envied by the world.

From ‘900 to today

It is with the fall of the great empires, however, that the situation precipitates. Young Turks appear in Turkey, states like China and Russia take red turns and Italy and Germany begin to show their blacker sides. It is the Young Turks, however, who first break that dream so solid and wonderful with the infamous treatment of the Armenians. For that political group the only important thing was blood, the only distinction between Turks and non-Turks. It was the first real change of course in Europe, the creation of new minorities, this time anyone who did not have the blood of the “natives” could be declared a foreigner and enticed to escape from those lands, now daughters of blood and not of culture. Yet a trip to Istanbul is enough to realize that we in the places are only custodians …

The example of a stronger Turkey with a new culture developed, this time touching countries like Germany and Italy, both near and far from the Ottoman state. Hatred and the idea that one could win “alone” attracted many, the treaties drawn up by the winners of the war did the rest; the humiliated homeland would take back its place by itself, this time shedding the blood of others. No matter who they were or where they came from, they were different. Mussolini realized, however, that Italy was first Italianized. Too many Arab surnames, too many Albanian and German surnames. The Chinese had the Cultural Revolution, we that of surnames, it takes little for us Italians … And so we went from Kuffar to Cuffaro, from Malden to Maldini and many lost their culture and history, but instantly became of Italian blood so that they could serve in war and show that blood to the world.

A global feeling

It took time for this feeling to make itself known to the world. Those who had wagered on blood had lost (apart from France but that’s another story), culture and diversity had won, a lesson that was to last forever but that was not the case. The basins of consensus are in fact often hungry for hatred and nothing is needed to make them even more hungry. From this point of view, the Internet was an optimistic child’s dream: a platform where everyone can express their thoughts, they thought. Too bad that hatred is enough to ignite it while the good can take years to be perceived. It is from here that personalities of the caliber of Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini and Le Pen were born but I wonder: was a State of Culture so unseemly and is a State of Blood so strong? Readers the sentence, all of us, the action.

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