“I am afraid” is a statement that we hear several times in the newsroom, pronounced by citizens who needed and still need to vent, without that venting turning into a public complaint or a report to the judicial authorities. We have in mind some emblematic episodes that demonstrate the inability to react to abuse, injustice and even damage suffered. A sign that there are large pockets of power, intertwined, capable of strong cover-ups even by those who should oppose and rebel. These episodes are true, but we tell them as if they had happened in imaginary places and in other contexts distant from the scene in which they actually occurred.
A laboratory catches fire, someone gets hurt, but the bosses silence everything and threaten the workers: clean everything up, and if anyone speaks out, they will be fired. It happens in a public institution. No one speaks out, a few confidences to trusted friends, nothing else. “We are afraid.”
Before hiring you on a fixed-term contract as agreed with the politician in question, the employer clearly tells you: I cannot hire you at the level of classification provided for in the contract for your duties, so if you are not happy with it, say so immediately, of course forget about the union card. The unemployed person accepts, among other things it is a gift from the politician he voted for. “I am afraid to refuse”.
The employer hires you but on one condition: at the end of the month you have to pay him back in cash, 25% of your salary. The worker accepts, better 75% of one thousand two hundred euros than zero euros. That’s what many do in this company, everyone knows and no one speaks. Everyone knows and no one rebels. “Even the union representative Tizio knows, but if I speak I’ll lose my job, I’m scared.”
The competition for 10 positions in a public institution is won by the boss’s partner, the friends of the deputy boss and the relatives of the boss’s trusted servant. Everyone knows, but no one speaks up: “I’m afraid of making enemies of the boss and the deputy boss, one day they can be nice to me too”.
There is a contract for the resurfacing of the Pinco Pallo municipal road, 120 million. It is the fourth resurfacing in 6 years, but what do you want, the money arrives and what do you do, you don’t spend it? You spend it. The winning company is the one on duty in the calendar established by the small local cartel. First the Caio company, with a discount of 2.5% and all the others with a discount of up to 1.5%. Then the Sempronio company with 2-3% and so on. Waiting for the contract for the hydrogeological remediation. Here the dish is more succulent, it will be politics that decides, not the cartel. “You know, they take bribes from the Municipality”. Well then go with a thousand euros to that technical manager and record the matter. “I’m scared”. And so the trend can continue.
We have reported the most striking facts involving the transversal power system with our investigations and editorials. We stop at these episodes that appear residual, sporadic, small but are extensive and placed in the emotional framework of fear. Emblematic of a larger and more powerful “strategy of fear” implemented by cliques of power, affiliated with a larger system of conveniences, complacencies and interests that are not always legitimate.
Being afraid, because someone or a circumstance created on purpose scares you, is a typically “mafia” dynamic. When the Sicilian mafia decided in 1947 to look to the DC following the decline of Andrea Finocchiaro’s separatist movement, many leaders tried to react to the risky criminal infiltration in the party. But the front that won, in order to prevent the communist advance and weaken the Chambers of Labor, tactically adopted the possibility of making deals with the mafia in the countries where the left obtained more consensus in the administrative elections of ’46. It was necessary to “scare,” said some Christian Democrat exponents.
Here, in order for a system of power to expand and continually strengthen itself, it must be “scary.” This can be done in many ways: by threatening dismissals or career blocks, by creating obstacles for your company, by closing the doors that matter to you, by threatening to smear you and by blackmailing you in some way. This dynamic is also recorded at the time of elections, especially administrative ones, when the instigators of questionable characters resort to forms of pressure to favor a list or a candidate that is pleasing to the exponents of any power group.
Conditions of fear are found in many spheres of society, economy, politics and Lucanian institutions. Contexts of fear or, if you like, cliques of power, formed by leaders and bosses, who use the strategy of fear, are found in the university, in the judiciary, in companies, in sub-regional bodies, in professional organizations, in the publishing sector, in banks. In many cases the boundary between persuasion and undue pressure is very thin. The forms of warning are various and not always perceptible outside the context in which they manifest themselves. The group of power is more respected and inspires more fear if it boasts high-level relations in the places that count. If it can intervene in political or even judicial decisions, in deliberations and measures both at the local level and beyond the confines of the local. If, with a simple phone call, it can reach the bishop, the general, the president, the mayor, the deputy, the minister, the judge, etc.
Often, power groups and affiliated cliques recruit new followers among those who have been victims of their arrogance and warnings. These former victims thus become part of the circle of friends of friends, a sort of very large “dishonored society”. From that moment on, the new “affiliate” will only receive benefits, which are not always legitimate, of course.
In short, the fear of opposing injustices, abuses, and the arrogance of power cliques does not create development, rather, it slows down the economic and cultural growth of a territory, keeping it inactive. A civil society that in many circumstances is silent rather than speaking, closes its eyes rather than reporting, looks the other way rather than addressing situations, represents a rich prairie at the service of a “non-mafia” system of power that is becoming increasingly demanding. There is no other way than to reverse the dynamic: react, with justice and without fear, to injustices and abuses of power.
