THE CHURCH MILITANT - BELEAGUERED BY BERGOGLIANISM

In the past year, Antonio Socci has written more about his concerns for Italy's political situation - in particular, the apparent tendency
for its leaders to surrender Italian sovereignty to the European Union in general and to Germany in particular, because of Italy's
increasingly dire economy - than with his concerns about the Church. His columns the past two Sundays have been very instructive
about what is happening in Italy, but the lessons he draws and the questions he raises are true for most Western democracies
at this time.



The Covid-19 'state of exception’ and Italy
as the crucible for a new totalitarianism

July 12, 2020

Just as Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was announcing a prolongation of the state of national emergency, philosopher Giorgio Agamben published his latest book, “A che punto siamo?” [At what point are we?](pub by Quodlibet), where he collected all of his interventions – always very controversial – written against the Coronavirus lockdown during the past few months, and in which he correctly foretold that the ‘state of exception’ would be prolonged.

Agamben is one of the most esteemed and translated of contemporary Italian philosophers. In fact, he has been interviewed by various foreign newspapers (culturally ‘left’, to be sure) during this time, but has been totally ignored by our media which cannot support views that do not confirm with the dominant thought.

What Agamben would like us to see is ‘the transformation which we have been witnessing’ in Italy’s social and political life, which was carried out “through the introduction of pure and simple health terrorism and a kind of religion of health”.

Agamben denounces "the transformation of the state of exception to a praxis which is becoming more and more ‘the normal’, which will end with liquidating Italy’s parliamentary democracy as we had known it, into something else which is still to be defined”.

Of course, one might object that the situation resulting from Covid-19 was alarming in February and March. But according to Agamben’s critics [and prevailing thought], the government could not have done other than what it did, and Agamben seems to forgot the grave danger that we were all facing. But Agamben’s reply to this deserves reflection: First of all, he points out, the first human right was seriously limited – ‘the right to truth’. Instead, Italy experienced ‘a gigantic operation in falsifying the truth’.

One might object that perhaps it was more a case of superficiality and dilettantism rather than falsification. Or at least, one hopes so. But when Agamben observes that “Data about the epidemic was provided [to the public] generically, without any accompanying scientific criterion”, and that “To cite mortality figures from Covid-19 without comparing them to mortality rates [for other diseases] in the same period, specifying the actual cause of death of reported Covid-19 victims, is meaningless”, then one must admit he raises a real problem.

He explains: “It was never made clear that death by other causes such as cardiac infarct or other conditions was counted as a Covid-19 death if the patient happened to have tested positive for Covid-19” (and the annual death rate from causes of death that are among the pre-existing pathologies that increase the risk of dying from Covid-19, and which are much higher than those from Covid-19 alone, were never provided).

One must also add
1) the lack of truth on the origin of the virus and the time for its diffusion (because Communist China lied about it for weeks);
2) the confusing and conflicting instructions given to the public by authorities (for example, on the use of facial masks); and finally, 3) major questions on possible therapies and medications.
4) Not to mention the role of health budget cuts over the past several years.

Agamben says, in effect, that to decide on such a drastic suspension of fundamental rights, the government could and should have first explained clearly, with extreme precision and accuracy, all the aspects of the problem to the Italian people and its representatives, because certain measures of protection could be taken only by evaluating the authentic reality of facts, in a time and manner that is democratically deliberated and checked (for instance, by daily updates on the efficacy of therapeutic measures undertaken in the hospitals).

But it was not done that way. Yet it cannot be said there was not enough time, because the government decreed a state of emergency at the end of January, but for more than a month, practically nothing was done, then suddenly passing from a substantial undervaluation of the emergency to apocalyptic alarm.

The generic alarm produced a collective panic which made everything possible. Agamben notes: “The spread of health terrorism needed the help of a media apparatus that was in total agreement and failsafe”.

One could therefore confirm that fear of death “makes men disposed to accept limitations of freedom they would never have thought they could possibly tolerate, not even during the two world wars or under totalitarian dictatorship”.

The state of exception declared by the Italian government due to Covid-19, says Agamben, “will be remembered as the longest suspension of legality in the country’s history, which was actuated without giving the citizens nor, above all, their elected representatives, any opportunity to object”.

Agamben harshly judges what has happened – “To future historians, this period will appear as one of the most shameful episodes in Italian history” – and he is even more harsh with “those who led and governed like irresponsible persons devoid of any ethical scruple”. One could think that there may have been improvisation and a lack of democratic sensibility and of common sense among the authorities, but regardless, posterity will take the arduous consequences.

However, the most important point in Agamben’s reflections is something else. He says that, “After China, Italy has been for the West the laboratory in which the new technique of governing has been experimented in its most extreme form”.

The very fact that a totalitarian regime like China’s was the model is emblematic, Agamben says: “If the powers that govern the world decided to take the pretext of a pandemic – and at this point, it does not matter if it was totally authentic or on some ways simulated – in order to transform from top to bottom the paradigms for governing men and nations, it means that in their eyes, those paradigms were already in progressive inexorable decline and were no longer adequate to new demands”.

We can dissent, but it is clear for years that liberalism was no longer synonymous to liberal democracy, that marketism and the great financial powers that dominate states today have devastated national economies, the productive industrial fabric of the West and the bourgeoisie, the middle class that was always an important pillar of democracy.

And it has been clear for years that marketism (greatly propagandized by the media in all its forms, not the least that of Maastrichtian Europe [the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht created the European Union and the euro] has always hated the democracies, parliaments, popular sovereignty and nation-states which represent such obstacles to its unopposed dominion. [Marketism is unregulated free-market fundamentalism.]

In Italy, it has been glaringly obvious for years that Parliament and voters have counted less and less, and that there have been increasing attempts for Italy to be placed under receivership [i.e., under custodial responsibility of an outside person or entity- what the Bergoglio pontificate has done with religious orders, including the Sovereign Order of Malta, that it wants to bring to heel], which would be to govern us through an intermediary who will end up governing us totally from Berlin or Brussels (or from the stock markets). This is what Italians have to reflect on.

Finally, Agamben leaves us with two thoughts.
First, “Biosecurity has shown itself capable of absolutely halting every political activity, making some form of social relationship as the maximum form of civic participation. We have therefore witnessed the paradox of leftist organizations, who traditionally claim all sorts of rights and denounce violations of the Constitution, now accepting without reservations every limitation of freedom decided by ministerial decrees devoid of any legality and which not even fascism would have dreamt of imposing”.

We have to ask: What would have happened if it had been a center-right government which had imposed these restrictions?

Agamben’s second point: “The pandemic has demonstrated without doubt that the citizen can be reduced to his bare biological existence, in which he resembles the refugee more and more, almost to be confounded with him”.

The philosopher was asked is he was embarrassed that the most critical of the lockdown a la China have been ‘rightist’ leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro.

His answer: “Even in this case, one can measure the degree of confusion to which the state of emergency has thrown off the minds of those who ought to remain lucid, as well as to what point the opposition between right and left has been completely emptied of every real political content. Truth is truth whether it is said by the left or by the right.”

The hate machine unleashed on those not aligned
to the (new) Communism 'with a humanitarian face',
while spreading the old Communism (China)
Translated from

July 5, 2020

In an eloquent document by Benedict XVI, we read:

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“At times, one has the impression that our society needs at least one group towards whom no tolerance at all is allowed, against whom anyone may unleash hate with all tranquillity. And if anyone dares to be associated with that group… he, too, loses the right to tolerance and even he can then be treated with hate, without fear or reservation”.

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The political debate, media reports and the social networks daily confirm that there are persons against which, it is now tranquilly admitted, anyone can express contempt and hatred – indeed, it has become obligatory to do so.

Let us look at the treatment reserved for Matteo Salvini [recent Interior Minister, who stopped the mass entry of undocumented foreigners into Italy, and leader of the conservative Lega party and Giorgia Meloni [born 1977, Italian journalist and current member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, leader of the Brothers of Italy, a national conservative party] - this, of course, scandalizes no one.

Or beyond our borders, at Donald Trump, who is submerged in hatred and contempt by his opponents in a way heretofore unprecedented for any US President, the more obvious when one compares this to the attitude of ‘regard’ for known tyrants, like Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But beyond individuals, there are entire categories targeted for contempt by the dominant ideology, the media, and a system that unites all those who have power of some kind, from street demonstrators and rioters to governments and multinationals.

Let us take the most recent case. The peaceful protests against the terrible killing of George Floyd by a white policeman [while his 3 colleagues, 2 of them of Asian ancestry, looked on and did nothing to stop the killing] were completely right, and those responsible for his death must be brought to justice. But there soon followed violent manifestations by elements who took the case as a pretext to accuse white Western people as such [for supposed ‘systemic racism’] and to subject them to expiatory rites such as genuflection to them and the destruction of statues in what amounts to an attempt to cancel the white man’s history [at least in the USA].

Things reached a point where ‘white’ itself was considered a synonym for evil, to the absurd extent of denouncing the game of chess ‘because White makes the first move’. And, the Oreal cosmetics group forthwith cancelled the word ‘white’ or ‘whitening’ from the description of their products.

This terrible tendency began in American universities in the 1980s, when Marxism, having been discredited with the fall of the Soviet Union and Eastern Euroean Communism, became recycled into ‘political correctness’, and multi-culturalists gained hegemony by questioning the cultural canons of the West, made up for the most part, they claimed, by “dead white Europeans” and advocating “an adequate representation of all possible minorities – ethnic, religious, and obviously, gender minorities”.

The great literary critic Harold Bloom rebelled against this ideology, and wrote his great masterwork “The Western Canon” precisely to defend the likes of Shakespeare, Dante, Homer and all the pillars of Western civilization. He wrote with desolation: “Today I find myself surrounded by professors of hip-hop, by clones of the Gallico-German theory, of gender ideologies and various sexual creeds, by numberless multi-culturalists, and I have come to realize that the balkanization of literary studies is irreversible”.

With this also came the balkanization of politics and the media, widely disseminated through the Internet and social networks. Therefore, today, contempt is ‘authorized’ against males, whites, heterosexuals, which in Europe, is worse if one if also Italian.

And in Italy, one is looked down upon if one has ideas that are considered center-right or right, if one is against the European Union and the euro, and if one opposes uncontrolled immigration. In which case, one cannot even be considered part of the civil consortium.

If, further, one expresses any sympathy for Trump and critizes the celebratory choir in praise of Greta, then one is considered nothing less than an enemy of humanity.

Finally, if one also happens to be an orthodox, non-progressivist -Catholic, then the dominant thought believes you should be muzzled or re-educated. This is the thinking of the advocates of the proposed law on homophobia pending in Parliament [About which, not a word so far from the pope.]

In a recent dialog with Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Senator Gaetano Quagliarello said: “Its advocates do not have the courage to admit what that bill contains. It is not about punishing violence, even if only verbal violence. That bill provides for a crime of opinion, in which certain opinions can be punished criminally. In this respect, some of its provisions could have been made within the Rocco Code [the Italian Penal Code promulgated by the Mussolini regime in 1930, and still in force], which is itself an expression of an authoritarian if not totalitarian regime, thoroughly X-rayed for political correctness. But the proposed law would create crimes of opinion.”

The senator, after having described his indignation, concluded: “What is truly grave is that whoever expresses an opinion [that is considered offensive to LGBT], even without using violence, becomes incriminated, and at least, in theory, be liable for several years in prison”.

Cardinal Ruini noted: “This is a typical example of the dictatorship of relativism - when, in the name of certain ideas, the right is claimed not just to express those ideas, but to criminalize ideas that are different. It is a relativism that actually becomes an absolutism. And in this, we must defend freedom of expression, and woe to us if we yield on this!”

Ruini also added a criticism of ‘Catholic periodicals’ like Avvenire [daily general newspaper published by the Italian bishops’ conference] “who continue to be deliberately ambiguous… choosing not to say that if we concede this possibility of juridically, penally censuring not offenses, not instigations to violence, but simply of anthropological and moral opinions, then freedom is truly in danger… It is ridiculous that the intrinsic difference between man and woman is ultimately criminalized”.

In effect, under the proposed law, that a human being is born male or female, that he is born of the union of a man and a woman, and that every child needs a mother and a father, are becoming prohibited truths! But this is what happens when one discards common sense [and what the majority of Italians believe].

Benedict XVI recently wrote that “the true danger – even for the Church – “lies in the global dictatorship of apparently humanitarian ideologies, opposition to which signifies exclusion from the fundamental consensus” [i.e., the ONE THOUGHT].

Not too long ago, he continued, “everyone would have thought it absurd to speak of homosexual ‘marriage’. But today, whoever opposes it becomes socially excommunicated. The same thing goes for abortion and the production of human beings in the laboratory. Modern society has formulated an anti-Christ creed, in which opponents are punished with social excommunication”.