2024-08-07 12:09:52
Maybe a rebellion in a left-wing country can only have a right wing? From the Celtic Cross to the Hobbits: a novel from Italy explains why young Italians are right-wing in vain – and probably vote for Meloni today.
Reading left, bashing right? This is what a cliché that persists even in right-wing circles says: “Be careful not to read too much, otherwise you will become a communist,” is what young Ettore and the novel’s first author Davide Coppo hears in the book . The room of Milan youth organization of an un particular right-wing party.
According to a story, ‘understanding’ is synonymous with ‘putting to the left of politics’ that all the stories of the generation of the age of 1968 and the post-68 people have long been around the reading circles of Karl Marx, the French principle and “wild years of reading” (around. book by Ulrich To say Raulff). What was overlooked and continues to be a surprise to this day is that there is still a crazy-right wing scene that calls itself the “new right” across Europe. A German designer born Benedict Kaiserborn in 1987, may have come from the novel “Tomorrow is Ours” by Davide Coppo of Italy, born in 1986.
Davide Coppo and his right wing hero
It is in Milan Coppo Owner of a small winery and editor-in-chief of a sports magazine. He published his first novel with Edizioni E/O, the in-house publishing house of the best-selling Italian author Elena Ferrante, i.e. in a famous address. His novel about the right youth in Italy was published in Germany by Kjona, a small and ambitious publishing house in Munich, under the title “Tomorrow is ours”. The Italian title “La parte sbagliata” would have been literally translated as “The wrong part” and it might be a little more appropriate because young people (like most people) want to be on the right side.
This is also why rebellion seems possible only to Ettore and his colleagues from the right. “One of us?” someone asked when Ettore joined the clique. Ettore hates nothing more than being part of the faceless, almost herd-like crowd that commutes into Milan every day to school and work; And from your point of view, that’s still just to be on the left.
He tells the story of how young people are moving to the political right because being on the left has become a myth. During the Cold War, Italy was the European state with the largest communist party outside the Eastern Bloc. This influence continued even after the fall of the Wall. Coppo’s story takes place in Milan in the early 2000s. Everything was under the influence of the leftist anti-globalization scandal against the then G-8 summit in Genoa.
But Ettore knew early on that he didn’t want to be part of the elite cliques and although he was integrated into his basketball gang, ultimately it was too apolitical for him. Etore began to be interested in politics. At first it was newspapers from the Mussolini era that a teacher showed in class, but soon there were more. Approached by an older student who attacked him as a fascist, Ettore ended up in the youth program of a right-wing party.
For him, it is above all a gateway to friends he would otherwise not have, to a library that his parents did not have, to political topics that he – an only child – was not able to discuss with his abusive parents. . The first book Ettore bought was a biography of Mussolini, and he brought back the Celtic cross from his student exchange in Ireland. He was also interested in Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, the French writer and pioneer of the new right; for Jan Palach (the hero of the Prague Spring), for IRA terrorist Bobby Sands, St. Patrick’s Day and Palestine – Much Ettore comes from a melange of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and anti-globalism, which is se. right and left information is.
Coppo’s novel does not provide clear answers to why a sensitive youth would be attracted to post-fascism. Even though the young Ettore goes through an obscure heterosexual origin, a homoerotic component runs through the book, and the male bodies he describes are described in great physiognomic detail more than once. At points like this, Coppo’s story reads like an update of Klaus Theweleit’s “Men’s Fantasy”.
When hate becomes a good feeling
At least as important as the fear and desire for sex, both classic elements of young adult literature, is the experience of violence. “People hate me, and this hate makes me,” Ettore thought after a fight that took place in connection with a school project (“Fascists leave the school”). The adrenaline that flows through Ettore’s body is known from countless depictions of hooligans and violence. Coppo’s book does not indulge in it, but only in the idea that the style – even in Jan Schönherr’s smooth translation – is subtle, atmospherically haunting.
The novel is written in retrospect of young adults; The message from the novel that teachers still do not appreciate is: “It is not true, as I will hear often in the following years, that hate can be fought through reading and learning.”
For German readers with knowledge of Italy, the novel works above all as a picture of a political event that was isolated then, with Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia group, suddenly part of the establishment – the symbol “post -fascist” is more. more complicated than it is for German readers at first glance. The parties in Mussolini’s succession have made many changes.
Italian Prime Minister Meloni, born in 1977, spent his political youth in the youth organization Fronte della Gioventu of the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), founded by supporters of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In 1996 he became the leader of Azione Studentesca, whose symbol is the Celtic cross used by right-wing extremists across Europe. In 1998, Meloni founded the Atreyu Festival, named after the character of the same name in Michael Ende’s fantasy epic “The Neverending Story”. Atreyu rode out on his horse Artrax to save the fantasy from destruction.
The boy is from the Greenskins people of the Sea of Grass, raised together after his parents died. He is an orphan – and yet “everyone’s child”. Of course, Atreyu is a born recognizable figure, as characters from literary fantasy generally have a great attraction for rights. In Coppo’s novel they are briefly mentioned MSI Hobbit Camps
Davide Coppo: The morning is ours
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