«The best lack all conviction, while the worst | They are full of passionate intensity.” Observing how my city, Florence, approaches the runoff between the candidate of the Democratic Party and that of the far right, this famous verse by Yeats comes to mind. A servile press is at pains to describe program differences that are searched for in vain by rummaging through the statements of the two very mediocre competitors: a search that further weakens any conviction, when for example we read (with infinite embarrassment) that it is the second to contest a privatization and listing of public services on the stock exchange, which the former instead promotes and defends… (https://firenze.repubblica.it/cronaca/2024/06/14/news/firenze_elezioni_funaro_schmidt_multiutility_renzi_pd_iv-423230311/).
They are not the same, let’s be clear. Even if the anthropology is similar, the ‘vision’ is not opposite, the (non)project is dangerously close. If in Rome the return of the fascists to government means a mortal danger for the Constitution and democracy, their already governing Pisa, Siena, Grosseto, Pistoia, Arezzo and other cities in Tuscany which was anti-fascist has not caused disasters, but ‘only’ a descent of more steps towards hell. Not a small descent: above all because the bill for this further landslide to the right (and what a right!) is paid by the most fragile, the last, the defenceless, the migrants, the different, the poor: abandoned and despised by those who govern Florence today, but even persecuted by those who could govern tomorrow. However, how can we forget that Sara Funaro’s candidacy was decided precisely because of her gray and obedient continuity with the government of Dario Nardella? A mayor who enthusiastically approved the urban measures for the poor decided in the prefecture; who allowed himself to be filmed on a bulldozer while leveling a nomad camp, declaring that “the flag of legality cannot be left only to the right”, and who promises to take action against “illegal occupations, especially if they have a high impact, which affect property private or public interest”; one who invited Marco Minniti to close a conference inspired by La Pira on the topic of «migrations between the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. How cities can contribute to the definition of new migration policies and collaborate for effective respect for fundamental human rights”, convinced (these are Nardella’s words) that Minniti is “the only figure who can expose the unreliability of Salvini and the his government, precisely because it has demonstrated that topics such as legality and immigration can be addressed seriously and more effectively even by the left”. It is the full continuity with all this that Elly Schlein came to bless Florence, denying the evidence with a disconcerting cynicism: «Sara Funaro has already demonstrated that she knows where to put her hands to change life in Florence for the better, which is a well governed city. She was a great administrator and is the best possible candidate, she will be mayor.” A threat, more than a promise…
Is it by voting for this stuff that we will stop fascism? Or aren’t we instead digging our own graves, feeding this horrible common sense for years? And again: this perpetuation of blackmail, this tired survival of a ‘left-of-right’ based on fear, these votes given with the impact of vomiting, what good can all this do? Doesn’t this prepare for a stronger crash, the one that is starting to happen across Europe? Won’t it then be worse for everyone, even the least fortunate? Won’t a ‘safe’ Florence contribute to closing the eyes even more of the already almost blind ruling class of a Democratic Party, which would thus risk losing the Tuscany region (a very probable eventuality now), with much greater damage to the latter? It’s still: Is it sensible to fight fascism by continuing to keep alive the system that actually creates consensus for the return of fascism, because it makes democracy look like a failure and a scam? A political system that, abandoning every project, genuflected to the market and its brutal force, allowing equality and social justice to be destroyed, expelling workers and embracing rent, devastating the territory and practicing politics as a closed system of power. Going to vote for Sara Funaro means saying: ‘thank you, continue like this, and do it in my name too’. Expand the airport, list privatized services on the stock exchange, sell off public space again, increase the flow of tourists, build concrete, repress the protests, drive out the poor, praise repression… Thinking about it makes you dizzy.
Don’t go and vote, or cancel the ballot, or leave it blank, then? In these hours the most reliable observers tell us that if Funaro’s voters in the first round were to vote again, it would be enough to elect her. Well, one thinks: let them do it, since they are convinced of it. But then, she starts to gnaw at a worm: what if they don’t come back? And what if Florence also ended up, perhaps by a handful of votes, in the hands of these horrible fascists? Behind the mediocre, colorless figure of the German director there are the small Florentine hierarchs, repellent even just to hear their voices. Here, then: let’s think about this possibility, from which one always turns one’s gaze away as one does with unlikely misfortunes. If it really happened this time, who would be to blame? Not responsibility, but precisely guilt: the moral one, the one that doesn’t make you sleep. For decades now, this is how it has worked on the left: an unworthy political class, which denies every principle, morally blackmails voters it doesn’t respect and doesn’t listen. It shifts all responsibility onto them, in an indecent yet effective misdirection. Really, if Florence were to move to the right, would it be the fault of those who have been denouncing this possible outcome for decades, condemning the right-wing policies committed by a so-called left, proposing alternatives, and spending themselves in every way for a change? No, this is really too much: if Florence were to move to the right it would not be thanks to this obscene right, nor the responsibility of the abstaining left-wing voters, but only the fault (and very serious fault) of those who have governed this city for decades without a shred of plan, of justice, of moral sense.
There is widespread in Florence a growing intolerance towards a system that, half-heartedly, you increasingly hear called ‘a mafia’. Many would like to change. Like Renzo dei Betrothed, who “had so little to praise about the ordinary course of things, that he found himself inclined to approve anything that changed it, in any way.” In any way, just to change: I confess that if competing against the state of things were an anti-fascist and constitutional right, a democratic and compassionate right, I would almost (almost) be tempted to vote for it myself. Because ultimately the vision of the world would be very close to that of those who now govern the city, and at least there would be a healthy change in this clan ossification of power.
And yet, that right is not there: just as there is no left that is on the side of the least and fights to change the state of things. And this is why in the first round the absolute majority (150,980) of those entitled to vote in Florence (who are 288,571) said (with abstention, or with other votes) that they do not want the mayor or Funaro (who took 78,126 votes) nor Schmidt (59,465). And now, an electoral law which is the opposite of democracy will transform a minority (a small minority: less than a third) into a majority, with the false and lying rhetoric of the “mayor of all”. And so, sonce the field has been clouded by feelings of guilt, the political dilemma remains: what is the right thing to do in this run-off between two different ‘worsts’. I don’t think anyone is capable of indicating one choice as ‘dutiful’, or of criticizing another as ‘unworthy’: I certainly am not, who, in Moretti’s style, “barely represent myself”. We will feel bad in any way: whether by voting or not by voting (as I am more inclined to do). While I try to make a painful personal choice, I feel solidarity growing with my companions in misfortune who will make one or the other decision.
