Scenes we’ve already seen

There is a weird atmosphere in Italy.

Luckily, I’m one of those people who still have a job and a decent life, and I rarely have the time to worry about those manifestations on the streets and in the harbors of the country. 

On the 21^st of July the unemployed of Naples, marching and pleading honest jobs, went as far as diving in the sea to stop the ships packed with tourists sailing towards the islands of the region.

What worries me, however, more than the daily frequency of these protests, is the reactions these manifestations cause.

Firstly I’m scared by the increasing use of force to forbid even the most civil protests. If we all agree that we can’t defend acts of vandalism by the protesters, we can’t defend police attacks on common and harmless people either.

It happened with the population of L’Acquila after the earthquake, but also with groups of students.

Not only.

Now the fear of independent voices is such that the police goes as far as stopping people who MIGHT protest.

It happened a few nights ago in Milan.

The police didn’t allow some people to reach Piazza del Duomo because they had already protested against Berlusconi.

For hours they were kept away from the “scene of the crime” (the presentation of an award to our Premier) by some sixty cops. They – all in all 20 people without banners or flags – could have shouted unwelcome words. They could have!

Leaving a curious parallelism with Minority Report (where Tom Cruise arrests criminals before they have the chance of committing a crime) this piece of news has the same nostalgic taste of those documentaries of the Istituto Luce.

Only difference: now, instead of those grey and black shirts, we have suits and ties, or maybe a nice jumper. The substance, however, seems to be the same.