FIFTH COLUMN
Of Marcello Veneziani
The Benettons not only produced sweaters and managed highways but were the first local factory of global ideology. They were not only sponsors but also precursors of the ideological alphabet, symbolic and sentimental of the left. They were the bridge, it's worth saying, between the multinational interests of global capitalism and the Americanization of the planet, with their profits and their marketing and anti-racism messages, against sexism, in favor of society without borders, lgbt, transgressive and progressive. Their campaigns, entrusted to Oliviero Toscani, they tried to unite the shock side, which often bordered on bad taste and a punch in the stomach, with the progressive humanitarian message: multiracial society, without borders, without distinctions of sex, of religions, of ethnic groups and peoples, with special attention to minors. Remove barriers everywhere, except at toll booths, where it comes to taking tolls. Benetton recently also carried out humanitarian campaigns on immigrant boats and launched a video "against all resurgent racism". The connection between sermons on the skin of the desperate and selling sweaters or charging cars tolls is mysterious.
However, behind Benetton's "progressive" facade there is the reality of Matton, the B side. That's the case, for example Benetton's million hectares in Patagonia, taken from local populations, like the Mapuche communities, vainly rebelled and bloody repressed. Or the unscrupulous exploitation of the Amazon, cloaked behind campaigns in defense of the environment. Or the story of sweaters produced at rock-bottom costs by companies that exploited workers, women and minors at starvation wages and painful conditions, as happened in Bangladesh in Dacca, where a thousand exploited people who worked in a company that also produced for Benetton died. We have never seen their faces in Benetton's humanitarian commercials, just as we won't see any red shirts, no red hat sponsored by Benetton or promoted by Toscani for the victims of Genoa. Added to this is the business of managing the motorways first and then the motorways entirely for Benetton, after the Italian State has invested billions for decades to create the motorway network. A "gift" from the public to the private sector, as happens only in Italy. Italian capitalism has always had this parasitic and predatory side: does not invest, he doesn't take risks on his own but lives off the public sector or its orders. Sometimes it socializes losses and privatizes profits, as Fiat often did, for example, or places its discarded products from the market to the State, as De Benedetti did for example by transferring slightly old Olivetti materials to the public administration. Companies that discovered themselves to be nationalist when it came to milking from the Italian state and then became global when it came to going abroad for production reasons, tax or lower costs. Or we take over the management of the motorways like the Benettons and their partners, with sumptuous profits but then it remains to be seen whether they have taken care to invest adequately to modernize the network and carry out effective maintenance. The tragedy of Genoa hangs like a giant question mark among the cables suspended over the city.
Of all this, naturally, little is said about it in the Italian media, especially in adults; let's not forget that Benetton, as well as an important advertising client in the media, he is a shareholder in the la Repubblica-L'Espesso-La Stampa group, where the much-praised Agnelli and De Benedetti met - just look at that. In miniature, follows the same ideological and business model as Benetton, also Oscar Farinetti, the boss of Eataly. On the one hand, our capitalism supports "progressive" battles by supporting political forces leaning to the left and financing global and anti-racist campaigns; then on the other hand he finds himself entangled in colonial stories of expropriation of land from indigenous populations, of exploitation of resources and men to produce at minimal costs and without safety, obtaining maximum profit.
Then you wonder why certain politically correct opinions are dominant in Italy: a block has been cemented between a progressive ideological-political class, radical, leftist who provides the certificate of good conscience to a business class of scoundrel capitalists. A class that is vice versa adopted, kept on payroll, from the same. In this fusion of interests, potentates are formed and against this entanglement populism has taken hold.
But sometimes reality arises. Dramatically, as was the case in Genoa. Where responsibilities need to be ascertained, the grades and levels. It goes without saying that in all likelihood there will not be a single culprit, there will be different liability plans, also at the level of local administrators, of central governments and transport ministries, that they should have monitored and forced the highway company to spend more on safety, under penalty of forfeiture of the concession. With hindsight it is easy to say that if the shareholders of the highway company had spent half of their profits (over a billion euros a year) for further maintenance, safety and renovation of structures at risk, as the Morandi bridge in Genoa famously was, today we probably wouldn't be mourning the dead and a devastated city, gutted. But recalling other responsibilities does not mean throwing it on the usual practice of all guilty no one convicted; no, there are different degrees and levels of responsibility, and someone will have to pay for what happened, each according to his degree of guilt actually ascertained. At this point reviewing the concessions is necessary. But it cannot be the only answer. We need to rethink the Italian model which has no longer worked for years, he lives on the past and sends his assets down the drain. We need to rethink our broken modernity, to our obsolete structural repertoire, old like the industrial archeology warehouses and the cathedrals in the desert that often disfigure our landscape and remind us of our past, when industry was the bright future. A country that no longer knows how to think big, invest, undertake, give birth, think about the future. The Roman bridges resist, the bridges from the fascist era resist, work "perennial air", but recent works creak or collapse, because there was no real maintenance, because there was overload, or because they were originally made with inadequate materials, with permits obtained obliquely, because someone speculated on it, and not just construction companies.
In all of this, Unfortunately, the grillina line of not doing, of cutting, Saving money on major works or major renovations is not an adequate response to problems and emergencies. Let's not forget that until yesterday the risk of the Morandi bridge in Genoa collapsing was a "fairytale", it was just a way to milk money; and therefore in order to curb any corrupt and corrupting people, for them it is better to stick to poor roads and unsafe bridges.
In the meantime, it is necessary to question the prevailing model, with a residue of incapable and impotent statism, which is accompanied by a voracious and parasitic capitalism under the guise of progressive and humanitarian, with all its political connivances denounced by Di Maio. Those companies that brought the children of the world into a circle, except to see them exploited in Third World companies or expropriate their lands. Those companies that wanted to break down walls and borders in the world and in the meantime the bridges at home collapsed...
The weather 17 August 2018
Source: http://www.marcelloveneziani.com/articoli/benetton-maletton/