Edy “Bozambo” Ongaro e la left filorussa
“His martyrdom serves to break the castle of lies of this war, but above all to relaunch the anti-fascist and internationalist struggle. Edy’s sacrifice shows the strength of the proletariat that will be able to lead to the triumph of communism. We salute you fellow partisan with the motto that was so dear to you: Death to fascism, freedom to the People. “Thus the Collective Red Star – Northeast paid tribute to Edy Ongaro, known as “Bozambo”, a Venetian militiaman who died at the age of 46 after having spent the last seven fighting in the Donbass, on the side of the Russians. “He was in the trenches with other soldiers when a hand grenade dropped by the enemy fell. Edy threw himself on the bomb making a barrier with his body. He heroically sacrificed himself to save the lives of his companions “, specifies the memory entrusted to social media.
Who was Edy “Bozambo” Ongaro
Because Putin also likes the left
The Ongaro story is the tip of the iceberg that the prevailing narrative on the war in Ukraine is not adequately taking into account. Maybe without reaching the levels of “Bozambo”, who took up arms, but several Italians on the left feel closer to Putin than to Zelenskyeven if the Russian “tsar” has notoriously had more solid relations with the Italian right, given the close friendship with Silvio Berlusconi and the publicly expressed support from Matteo Salvini, albeit in a very different phase from the current one. Furthermore, on an international level, Putin is the point of reference for the new right, from that of Trump in America to that of Orban in Hungary. And yet, several left-wing Italians still look sympathetically at the Kremlin today. The reasons for this feeling are many, starting from the nostalgia for a past that obviously not everyone is relegated to the book of memories. When Ongaro’s comrades celebrate the militiaman who has dedicated “his whole life to defending the weak and fighting the oppressors” they resort to a symbolic register that today’s left really seems to have abandoned. The obvious reference is to the phase of opposing blocs, of which Putin is certainly an heir, having served in the ranks of the Kgb and therefore in the deepest ganglia of Soviet power. If after the fall of the Berlin wall and the dissolution of the USSR it was thought that we had entered a post-ideological era, the underlying problems have remained the same, starting with the social injustices that fuel the class struggle. Not coincidentally, they are instances that come from forces that place themselves “To the left of the Democratic Party”not at all to keep up with the positions taken by the party of Read.
Anti-Americanism as a glue
Among the positions in the crosshairs is the strong Atlanticist vocation, which some translate as subservience to American interests and the ever-green yankee imperialism. At a time when there is a strong risk of one military opposition between Putin and NATOcriticisms of the Atlantic alliance are received as blasphemies in the church, yet there would be more than one reason to reconsider US hegemony over international politics, Biden’s infamous phrases about a possible regime change in Russia and also the failures of international missions, up to Afghanistan. The very motivation of such military missions has been seriously questioned by intellectuals who make no secret of their leftist identity, such as Michele Santoro e Alessandro Orsini, very explicit in underlining the points of contact between Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and similar behavior by the US presidents. This does not mean giving Putin right, but simply recognizing that there are similar wrongs also against the West and that, never as in this case, two wrongs do not make a right. Who Putin is is well known to everyone and not from today: we also knew it when we entered into the supply contracts with him that today serve as a weapon of blackmail. Making him an icon of the left – or even just of democracy – is frankly laughable, as is his declared intent of “Denazify” Ukraine. Neo-Nazis are not lacking in its ranks either, but if we do not want to succumb to the temptation of simplification and polarization, we cannot pretend that the Azov battalion does not exist. This in no way justifies the invasion of Ukraine, but at least in part explains an otherwise incomprehensible attitude on the part of those who feel anti-fascist, such as Ongaro.
The Donbass culpably ignored
Our countryman had been in Donbass since 2015, a year after the start of a conflict that we have culpably ignored. It is precisely in this ignorance that the difficulty in fully understanding what is happening has fermented, because the complex events that led to the birth of Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk they are still open wounds, which have contributed to the consolidation of a fratricidal rivalry that we are struggling to decipher. Also for this reason the identification with the Ukrainian resistance it was not immediate and generalized, with respect to the history of our country and the struggle against Nazi-fascism. Not as much as Zelensky had hoped, at least, and it is certainly no coincidence that his decidedly skilled spin doctors led him to remove this reference in his appeal to our Parliament, knowing full well that in the country there is a feeling of strong solidarity in against the victims of the war, but not one total ideological adhesion. Tomaso Montanari argued that the basic difference between the Italian and Ukrainian Resistance lies in the fact that the former fought an opponent on the run and destined for defeat, while the Russians sooner or later will overwhelm the even fighting army of Kiev: a curious but indicative motivation of a certain identity crisis of the Italian left. Perhaps today the true way of being against the system is to be uncritically against the mainstream thesis and therefore also deny the evidence, such as Putin’s faults. The fact is that the positions on the war between Russia and Ukraine are far from crystallized and that, even on this, the differences between right and left are no longer so easy to understand.