Of Marcello Veneziani

Tom Wolfe died in America last Monday and I would like to say something about radical chic, of which he was the discoverer and brilliant slayer. I too have criticized them since I met them, As a boy I read Wolfe's book against them which Alfredo Cattabiani had published in '73 by Rusconi. On the contrary, before the radical-chic I met their ancestor, lo snob of which Panfilo Gentile spoke ill, noting that snob stands for without nobility, fake nobleman who poses as one. As well as opinionated, i radical chic they snob they become detestable when they become intolerant towards those who do not belong to them race.
But I don't like their backhand at all either, crude pop ignorance. That of those who hate all reading and despise everything that smells of art, thought and culture, that of those who make contemptuous and demented judgments online without understanding, without knowing; that of those who hate the world and belch and fart against the universe and all greatness in the name of freedom and rights. That of those who suffer fromegalitarian envy, he wants to make those who are better off than them suffer and have them confiscate what they have deserved and achieved. In short, those who assert their encyclopedic ignorance as a right and a virtue. Sometimes they are even right-wing people, although usually the homunculus-type is below the right and left. I can't say which is worse, radical-chic or rude-pop. Or better, I would know: the worst are those who make their arrogance or ignorance fall on others.
I don't rule out that there is also a link between the two categories, and not only because one acts as an alibi for the other. The connection dates back to '68 which on the one hand was the birthplace of radical chic, the bourgeois who love the proletarians "but at their home", away from their living rooms, the snotty daddy's boys who contested the world in the name of the damned of the earth; the pageant and living room bourgeois, with the heart on the left and the wallet on the right. But from the other side '68 decreed everyone's rights to have everything and judge everything, regardless of merit, titles and quality; and established revolutionary value, constituent, of ignorance, until it is elevated to a virtue. There is therefore a connection between radical chic and cafonal-pop, probably.
I would like to express the discomfort, which is the disappointment of a lifetime, of finding himself between the two and suffering the ostracism of the former, the incomprehension of the latter and the contempt of both. It's not a personal matter, it is the discomfort of those who have been culturally "on the right" for a lifetime, relegated between the conservatives, the national revolutionaries, traditional Catholics, the real or presumed fascists with their father dead, that is, classified as such when fascism had long been gone. It's sad to have to fight two opponents, one powerful and the other numerous; a strong one to hold the code of the time, the other strong enough to speak and vomit in the name of the masses.
Tom Wolfe probably experienced similar discomfort, being a free intelligence and an elegant man in a world of scoundrels and aligned intellectuals and widespread and rampant vulgarity. Then you understand the consequence, special discomfort of living now in the era in which some hold cultural hegemony and others conquer the political majority? We find ourselves exactly at that crossing point.
I preferred it the worker and proletarian communists of little culture and great integrity, I preferred the illiterates of the past, fearing God and those who know more than them. I preferred it those who knew the value of culture obtained through sacrifice, and they respected her. I regret it in short, the true aristocracies who are authoritative without being contemptuous and the genuine people who have common sense and at the same time a sense of limits. Then, for goodness sake, the world has always been inhabited by an overwhelming majority of ignorant people and minorities who abuse privileges.
Sometimes you feel like it to raise the drawbridge and limit contact with others to close acquaintances, to the greats of the past and to the whole world but in nature, art and beauty, uninhabited by the masses. Unfriendly but polite. Gently gently without jerking the engine, to sing it with Lucio Battisti.
The weather 19 maggio 2018