Incivility, ignorance and alienation: the crisis of the West
Written by Pino Rotta, 11 dicembre 2024
There are historical moments in which cultural changes occur and these would have been considered impossible in previous years. One among many is the confidence in progress, the optimism towards the future. The West experienced this type of condition of confidence about the future in the years between 1950 and 1970. Since 1980 to 2000, a restructuring of the expansion strategy of the Capitalism, which will later be known by the term “Globalization” (we observe that these periods alternate approximately every twenty years for reasons not scientifically proven, but only for empirical observation). The so-called globalization is none other than the evolution of Capitalism which, from the primary Euro-Atlantic context, expands towards all other countries, both collateral to the American military and financial power and in countries which suffer a transformation, even violent, such as the former Soviet Union which has been transformed into a fake oligarchic democracy in few years, with the pure hoarding of the control centers that pass from the top of the former CPSU to its leaders who take possession of the wealth and productive structures of the country and become the new oligarchs of this fake democracy. n this violent transformation, the new Republic of Russia loses control of countries of fundamental importance such as Romania, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Baltic countries, which are slowly being absorbed into the European Union, while not sharing its liberal values. and social democrats in the secular and libertarian tradition (I published these analyzes in the essay “POTERE Governare con la paura”, published in 2012). Meanwhile, countries such as China, which remains formally communist but essentially transforms itself into a true capitalist monopoly, thanks to this form of centralization and control of both politics and the economy begins to develop its own industrial and commercial power. The voracity of globalization does not spare countries like India or the countries of Latin America. In Western society, the backlash of this globalization of capitalism results in the impoverishment of industrial structures which, also thanks to the whirlwind process of technological innovation, are delocalized by moving first towards the newcomers of the former Soviet Union, and then towards India, the Balkans and Latin America. No industries, no jobs, no tax revenues and no investments in the welfare state. In particular, the European Union, the heart of social democratic and secular civilization, founded precisely on the supremacy of the welfare state safeguard, becomes a prey of banking speculations that take possession of the industrial debts for first and then the debts of the States, eventually coming to be in the conditions of dictate the choices, replacing the democratic institutions which, in their attempt to maintain the pre-existing level of well-being, increase the debt and suffer a resounding defeat that turns into social unease and anger over time and wisely directed not against capitalism but precisely against the social democratic, secular and libertarian conception. While the process of globalization, with its innate corruptive and amoral characterization, continues its development on a world level, revealing its historically imperialist and warmongering face. Western society, especially the working classes and the bourgeoisie, are impoverished and fall into a vortex of irrationality triggered by the emptying of educational agencies and a powerful machine of cultural homologation that has taken over all means of communication from traditional ones such as televisions to the most current ones represented by social networks.It gets to the point that the “powerless” European Commission must issue directives against the use of racially hateful, homophobic and sexist language. As if it were possible to change the mass culture now ravaged by anger and ignorance and to stop the murder of homosexual women and racial and sexual discrimination just by the law. The war between the poor people manifests itself in the acts of violence against the poorest and the different ones who have been induced to be considered “the enemy” (with a cynical choice of party or economic convenience by the reactionary lackeys of capitalism which proves to be very generous in compensation!).
(special thanks to Massimo Ficara for the English translation)