•
Rating: 98 years ago, on January 21st, my grandmother Anna was born. To distinguish her from my other grandmother who is also named Anna, I will call her Anna; the other was called "The school grandmother" in my childhood since she was a janitor at the nursery schools in our town. Grandma Anna always voted for the Christian Democrats and taught me the only two simple prayers I know. I have a lingering thought of her addressing Jesus, the brightest memory of those invocations: "sweet heart of my Jesus, make me love you more and more, sweet heart of Mary, be the salvation of my soul".
My grandfather Carlo, her husband, hated communists: "the partisans have committed many misdeeds and have stolen from the poor, as well as the rich" and he would counterpose the often misused: "HE also did some good things". Grandfather couldn't stand fascism, he never picked up the fascist membership card at the fascist headquarters: "I never went by there" even though every morning he cycled 20km to go work for Van Dyke, planting poles with a slice of polenta in one pocket and a slice of salami in the other. My grandfather wasn't interested in politics but always remained true to his neutrality: "neither with the fascists, nor with the communists". Needless to say, my grandfather was born "twice with nothing" and died as a supporter of the Northern League, but not in today’s vulgarity but in a progressive secessionist ideal, tainted by the Lumbards.
The party. I grew up in the reformist left metamorphosis from the Democrats of the Left, to the Margherita, from the Refoundation to the Olive Tree, until reaching this Democratic Party that doesn’t even prick a finger to avoid seeing red blood; we are left with Potere al Popolo and Liberi e Uguali, with the brunorossi and D'Alema.
Communism hasn’t won; the everyday enemy has won, the pentapartito has won, and there’s not even a whiff of communists around. The PCI is dead, and today we wave its carcass smiling and reminiscing about the good old days when selfishness seemed supplanted by widespread socialism. They talked about the statized idyll of Emilia and the Bolognese freedom, industrious people with the vice of laziness, while in Veneto there were the skeletons of warehouses and hoarders of other people’s money, an industrialized jungle of envy and mistrust.
Today, in Veneto, communism is a speck in the eyes of leghismo that becomes a log in the mouths of politicians. The workers side with the boss for 50 euros extra under the table; they don’t know what classism is, and if they can, they screw their own col...league, the union is sold out and collaborative with rampant capitalism but becomes friendly as soon as one hour of overtime isn’t logged in the payslip; deep down, we are all communists with someone else’s ass.
Loading comments slowly
