“The people in the square have always beaten each other and have always taken beatings from the guards, but before they took them if they did something, today they take them when they do nothing.” The cartoonist Zerocalcare, interviewed by The Republic at the Turin Book Fair, he says that «the level of conflict in the streets in recent years has been non-existent. At most 16 year olds blocking the ring road or throwing paint on the walls. Twenty years ago we wouldn’t even have called them protests. Today, however, an unthinkable rhetorical arsenal is used for these things, even by those who comment on social media. Prison is called for, criminal associations are hypothesized… The poverty of conflict generates barbaric and closed societies where every expression of criticism becomes something to be repressed with prison.”
The cartoonist also spoke out for Ilaria Salis, detained in Hungary. He doesn’t say whether he will vote for her or not: however, he explains, “perhaps the candidacy is a possibility that we who are mobilizing would not have been able to obtain.” Even if «it is an individual solution, despite this being a process that concerns eighteen people. The others will not be able to play the same card. The candidacy highlights a major weakness of the mobilization, which I feel is a failure.”
