Italy is doomed to division

“A man is in bed, wanting to sleep.

A rat is on the wall by his head, wanting to move.

The man hears the rat stir and cannot sleep, the rat hears the man stir and does not dare to move.

They are both miserable, one stirring, the other waiting, or both happy, the rat moving and the man sleeping.

It is curious that this fragment of

, a novel written by Samuel Beckett in 1938, has become for two decades the metaphor of the crisis in which Western democracies have plunged.

With each election date, this stalemate is presented to us more clearly each time, drowning in advance any hope of a result that does not compromise the country's unity.

Whatever the issues on the table, by now it should be obvious that there is a deep gap that runs through all Western countries and that engulfs the field of shared values ​​and blocks the virtuous mechanism of alternation between the majority and opposition.

It is this that causes each electoral campaign to bring only negative feelings of extreme antagonism, if not genuine personal hatred—mutual accusations, recriminations, vetoes, revenge—and never, never glimmers of hope.

For many years now, people have not voted to build a better society, but only to

their opponents' mouths, to

, to humiliate their representatives.

A gap that is much more deadly since it divides the countries into two parts that are almost numerically equivalent, so that the loser can feel authorized, if they wish, to reject the result, dismissing it as the result of false information, of corruption, foreign interference or electoral fraud, often reported in advance and without the slightest proof.

The culminating moment of this trend was reached on January 6 of last year in the United States, with the assault of Donald Trump's supporters on Capitol Hill: none of the attackers thought of

of his electoral slogan, his intention was simply to destroy the very symbol of that greatness, after the presidential elections two months earlier (“rigged”, according to its leader) had seen the hated Joe Biden and the hated Nancy Pelosi prevail.

And if the latter had been working in her office that January 6, it is not difficult to imagine the fate she would have suffered, before the security forces managed to regain control of the building.

Whether you want to admit it or not, this is the context in which the political elections this Sunday in Italy are also framed.

The real themes of the confrontation are “throw into the sea”, “send them back home”, “clean up”, “get out of the way”, “delete”, and they are even more so than is declared.

Behind the demagogic proposals of the right we are threatened by intentions known to all, although not openly declared: leaving the euro, leaving the European Union, leaving NATO, reforming the Constitution, closing the borders, naval blockades, the reduction of the rights of women and minorities.

On the other side stands a proud “no” to all of this, not accompanied, however, by concrete, innovative and convincing proposals.

And ultimately,

Regardless of who we assign the role of the mouse and the man in Beckett's fragment, it seems that the fateful word

, which today we are ashamed to even pronounce, can once again become currency among Italians only in the event of a definitive separation from one of them. the others.

A separation, however, impossible to achieve even if the inconceivable were to be conceived, that is, a

: because the gap does not coincide with physical borders, it does not run along river beds or mountain ridges, so that two or more countries can be taken out of one country: it has metastasised into the cells most elementary of civil society, regardless of the geographical realities in which they are located: in the territory, separating the inhabitants of the cities from those of the countryside;

in the cities, separating the inhabitants of the center from those of the suburbs;

in the world of work, separating the workers with rights from the precarious, and all of them from the unemployed;

in places of socialization, whether virtual or not, separating the inclusive from the racist, the vaccinated from the anti-vaccine, the pro-Ukrainian from the pro-Russian;

even reaching the bosom of their own families,

separating the interests of adults and the elderly from those of their children and grandchildren.

Therefore, the cold Beckettian happiness of

, and we know that in advance.

However, there has been an unprecedented aspect in this unprecedented summer election campaign: the landing of political forces on TikTok.

Despite the fact that a high percentage of its users is made up of minors, unusable for electoral purposes, Italian political leaders have been equally seduced by the figures recorded by this platform (in Italy, 5.4 million users), and have tried to settle there.

Well, the humorous and discouraging aspect of such an invasion is the tone that many of these leaders have used in their speeches, imbued with paternalism, a goliardic spirit and underestimation of their interlocutors ("dear guys, today I will talk to you about the work ...”), with the result of appearing in their eyes as ridiculous, pathetic and opportunistic people instead of believable.

those teasing videos are pure bullying, and anti-bullying is one of the most heartfelt topics on TikTok.

Another very heartfelt issue is that of the climate emergency, but obviously our politicians hunting for the vote of young people have not formulated any practical proposal on this issue.

For all this, in Italy it is not allowed to harbor sincere hopes about the result of this Sunday's vote.

Instead, it is inevitable to feed a sincere fear, mitigated only by the words of a 13-year-old daughter, who, seeing the concern painted on her parents' faces, tries to comfort them by saying: "Courage, when our turn comes to vote all this will end”.

Unable to give up hope, I really strive to believe that it will be so: in five years this will all be over.

And I refrain from asking the immediately following question: "Okay, but what will replace it?"

Sandro Veronesi

is a writer.

He won the Strega Prize with his novel

(Anagrama).

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