A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #460: Edito: Companions nuns, companions parrini (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

If there is the possibility of being on the wrong side, believing 
instead to be on the right side, rest assured that the Italian left will 
not miss the opportunity. Perhaps because of the obsession with cultural 
hegemony, perhaps because of the mania of wanting to be popular at all 
costs, the left has become accustomed to chasing consensus rather than 
trying to build it. After having mythologized Pope Francis, making him a 
sort of comrade in battle, the same thing happened with the conclave in 
May that elected, or rather erected, the American prelate Robert 
Francois Prevost as monarch of the Catholic Church, who then took the 
name of Leo XIV, thus becoming the 267th pontiff of an institution that 
still plagues our lives. The Italian left has given itself a task, and 
has tried to carry it out with an admirable and moving obstinacy, if it 
were not for the damage that such a choice entails: it has chosen to 
make the oldest and most obscurantist institution left popular and 
likeable. The true mystery of faith is how one can be passionate about a 
boring, chauvinistic and classist rite where dozens of elderly men 
decide the future head of one of the most powerful religious 
institutions in the world, which has also been in crisis for decades? 
Don't worry, the Italian left will take care of reviving its glories. 
Parrini and penguins thank you, it's a miracle that someone with sense 
has done the job for them. It seems unbelievable on May 8th in 
Repubblica to be able to write an article with this title: Reality show 
cardinals and chimney sweeper accounts: the most impenetrable event of 
the Church overwhelmed by desecration on the web. But if only it had 
been desecration: the enormous production of memes, videos and comments 
on social networks has done nothing but pay homage to the rite. Without 
any reversal of meaning, without any real mockery, without even the 
slightest lack of respect: on the left, devotion has been widespread. 
From the passion for the figures of the cardinals to the fascination of 
the procedures inside the Sistine Chapel, the usual mass kidnapping has 
been celebrated which, thanks to the coincidence with the jubilee, has 
in fact expropriated large portions of Rome. In an instant, it is really 
the case to say, we have improvised Vaticanists, obviously omitting the 
daily control and the continuous mystifications of the clergy. A wave of 
bullshit has invaded every means of communication. Radio and TV have 
offered continuous live broadcasts, seeking constant updates where 
instead the cosmic void prevailed, in the face of a military occupation; 
newspapers like Corriere and Repubblica have churned out thirty pages a 
day discussing papabili (and getting all the predictions wrong), the 
meanings of the colors of cassocks and already anticipating the 
sainthood of the recently deceased Pope Ciccio; social media has focused 
on the most inane details, like the seagulls circling the chimney from 
which white smoke was expected, or inventing childish games like the 
fantapapa and fantasizing about the aura of the cardinals, as if they 
were superheroes and not, for the most part, gray people devoid of any 
bite. The left has approached the conclave as if it were watching the 
homonymous (and mediocre) film. To feed the hunger for conspiracies, 
creating intrigues and subterfuges where there are none. And, above all, 
to make up for the absence of the comrade Pope Ciccio, or Francis if you 
like. Offer a shoulder for the tears of the many people on the left who 
have remembered his support for peace, his support for Gaza, his 
attention to the environment, his support for migration, his words of 
opposition to liberalism. And was a pope needed to mobilize on these 
issues? I have seen activists, both new and long-standing, cite the 
encyclical Laudato Si as if it were the gospel, acting as its bearers 
and disseminators as if they were environmental priests and nuns. "A 
selfish and boundless thirst for power and material prosperity leads 
both to the improper use of available natural resources and to the 
exclusion of the weak and disadvantaged": what a phrase, huh? And who 
uttered it? A man of power, who at most offered paternalistic charity to 
the "weak" and the "disadvantaged". At most, we should grant him a 
communicative astuteness: not only did he fool many people, even on the 
left, that he was making revolutions from within - of course, history is 
full of sovereigns who do everything to give up power - but he was good 
at spreading expressions that he had learned elsewhere and then 
rehashed. Like "the existential peripheries" or "the world war in 
pieces". But if it is only for the sagacity of the expressions (copied 
among other things) well, it should be remembered that Jesus was also a 
good dispenser of aphorisms. But no, the Italian left has gone and 
remains in adoration of a pope who at most has embraced some of our 
themes, forgetting at the same time that the same pontiff then repeated 
until his death his aversion to "gender ideology", condemned atheism, 
led an increasingly centralizing government of the church, renouncing 
the promises of decentralization and sharing. And perhaps it is 
precisely this last aspect that has made the left forget the usual 
reactionary and retrograde battles that Pope Ciccio has led, as all his 
predecessors have done and as all his heirs will continue to do. Perhaps 
the left have watched with admiration the occupation of all the 
positions of power by their most loyal followers, so much so that after 
his death Pope Ciccio has essentially managed to choose his heir. In 
this sense, both the old and the new pope emblematically represent the 
direction that liberal democracies around the world have taken for some 
time, and which can be summarized with the term "democratura," a 
portmanteau of the words democracy and dictatorship: a model where a few 
people elect a monarch who holds power for life and decides the 
destinies of people while the latter amuse themselves with daily 
bullshit that they will have already forgotten the next day, fed by 
feelings of guilt and blinded by messages that encourage delegation. It 
is no coincidence that democracies are always seeking religious 
approval. A good part of the Italian left, however, seems to have 
forgotten all this. For our part, we remain faithful to no king. Even 
more so if he pretends to speak our own language, and uses our words as 
a further instrument of deception. There is no worse slave than he who 
builds his own chains.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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