The general trend of western societies which made Nanni Moretti so cross in movies such as “Palombella rossa” (how long ago was that? one hundred years? two hundred years?) appears now to be, at the beginning of the third millennium, that of unpoliticization.
The ideologies of the last ten years of the 20th century have gone, we have confusion of political fronts, ideals shelved, values buried, and politics increasingly handled in the wheeler-dealer style, a business rather than a mission, exploiting consensus but not for the citizens, who, especially if young, increasingly feel they have no desire to get involved in it.

This is the situation, starting with Italy as it is today. Generalised speeches, empty as ‘disposable bottles’, whilst unemployment, recession and the uncertainties of the ruling class, both in the government and in the opposition, hang over us. Let us have a look.
The event that has made the greatest impression lately, owing to the number of people involved and the way in which it took place, was the San Giovanni ‘blockbuster’ on 14 September last, when a few hundred thousand people assembled before Nanni Moretti’s stand (hei! look who we are mentioning again… chief composer, be careful) for a street demonstration (according to the new Italian ‘girotondo’ approach) raised to the third power. Against Berlusconi, of course, but not only against him: the left-wing’s position was also ‘discussed’, this cannot be denied.
Let us leave out the remarks on the members of the middle- and upper-class wearing the ‘girotondo’ uniform, whom I am personally acquainted with.
For these people, there is nothing to choose between one uniform and the other, they are politically intolerant and, rather than thinking or acting according to a left-wing attitude, they sniff the air for what the trend is up to, and they are chiefly “insincere”.
This last word has been typed in inverted commas because it is deeply true: they are insincere by nature; their view of politics is not associated with the behaviour and consistency that should follow.
Therefore, among the multitude assembling at San Giovanni, these people are the least concerned and the most exploitable from a political point of view.
In other words, they are detached from politics, whilst in fact they think (?) and speak as if they were fully involved in it, thus wonderfully matching those who, much too often, in the centre-right, regard politics as one of the ways of doing business – hence the current stalemate …
But let us now come to the proletariat, or the post-proletariat / lower middle-class people, the children or even the grandchildren of the humanity which Pasolini viewed at risk thirty years ago, the victims of a “cultural genocide” and of an anthropologic mutation towards homologation: all dressed alike, also inside, in the pre-mass globalisation of the ‘70s.

Three days after the San Giovanni event, I was at the Olympic stadium for the Champions League Roma-Real Madrid football match: it is over twenty years that I write about the political aspects of sport and soccer, of politics outside political circles, of the political parties’ headquarters, of institutional centres which are dormant to say the least, if not worse.
Therefore I also write about stadiums as a political metaphor, a place for passions, involvement, identification and assembling together as a group. But once the Real was leading three-nil, a supporter of the Roma team, who was neither better nor worse than anyone else, but was certainly rough, furious and disappointed, started by complaining about the very high income of the players in his team, (and this can be trivially expected), and asked me, as it usually happens “Dotto’, you tell them on TV, tell ‘these dirty dogs”, but then, as if hit by sudden inspiration, he stood up, he climbed on the edge of the stand, and yelled towards Totti and his mates “I am no longer giving you a blank proxy!!” Well, I put two and two together: he possibly said that because “We are no longer giving you a blank proxy” was the crucial slogan used by Moretti at San Giovanni, it dominated in the papers and TV news, it voiced the politics of antipolitics, and so on.
And three days later it had ended up in the stadium, to emphasise the even only short-lived detachment of a supporter from a football player… So there were traces of politics in the crowd’s urine… Is this our future? Is it conceivable that we won’t wake up, sooner or later? Is the politics of antipolitics also doomed to die at the stadium? Is time up? Is it still possible or proper to go back and begin all over again? Trasnslated by interpres sas