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(en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria: Criticism of electoral environmentalism -- JUST TO HAVE A PLACE AT THE TABLE... (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Date Sun, 11 Aug 2024 07:17:42 +0300


And we got the piss out of this election too. However, not before having endured the usual complaints and the usual apocalyptic appeals on the importance of voting. This year's European elections, however, had an aspect that, if not completely new, was certainly remarkable: the commitment of those who, to put it in a stale formula, care about the environment. ---- The journalist Ferdinando Cotugno defined them as "the first climate elections of our lives", as if the previous ones had had no consequences on the climate. Yes, I know very well that he meant to refer to awareness on the topic, yet if we want to seriously address the issues we cannot be satisfied with catchy and good formulas for social media (of which Cotugno is a master). What we have recorded is a renewed environmentalist fervor, which has mainly flowed into the votes for the Green and Left Alliance and, to a much lesser extent, for the Democratic Party. The delegation mechanism, however, held together two apparently contrasting factors: disillusionment with the party system and trust in European institutions, almost a messianic hope of salvation. The thread that has held all this together is the individualism of those who continue to vote because they believe they are on the right side without taking into account that environmental policies, even more so for cumbersome and distant institutions like the European ones, are children, to put it in Marxist terms, of power relations not only between states but above all between power groups and interest groups.

The ones who obtained good numbers were candidates recognizable for their activism well before the European elections, which in this way generated risings of hope that had already been dashed (Giovanni Mori, for example, kept out of the counts of the Alleanza Verdi and Sinistra) or which will be widely downsized soon. In the European Union that has emerged - once again governed by an artificial alliance between conservatives, socialists and liberals (with the greens jostling to act as a crutch) - attention to the environment is destined to be sacrificed on the altars of interests financial, military and industrial forces of an old continent, still attached to the US breasts, especially in the energy field. In order to have a seat at the table, electoral environmentalism is once again willing to come to terms with Ursula von der Leyen, reconfirmed as head of the Commission. A right-wing woman without any ifs or buts, as can be observed from the migration management and the funding towards the defense sector, in the first phase of her previous mandate von der Leyen was even exalted by electoral environmentalism. Ignoring the banal observation that the authoritarian imposition of perhaps shareable policies could only create a phase of rejection towards everything that is relevant to the environment. An attitude that will leave large consequences and which must, on the contrary, be addressed immediately.

What does electoral environmentalism do instead? He mocks people who, for example, rail against the European obligation for plastic caps, which will no longer be able to detach from the bottle, as already happens with cans, in order to avoid, at least in theory, a greater dispersion of waste. Whether the measure is right or not, can we be surprised if our local fascists then ride on discontent of this kind, talking about "Europe's green madness" - and also for this reason they are voted for significantly more? For electoral environmentalism, what matters is the rhetoric of good feelings: "we need a just transition that leaves no one behind", "the rich emit more than the poor and for this reason they must be taxed", "we need more public transport and more renewables". One has to reply: what if it were that easy wouldn't we have done it already? Opposite, however, is a European Union in decline (economically, industrially, even demographically), hostage to nationalist pressures and to a real power that has nothing shared or supportive about it, hyper-centralised and emblematic of a financial capitalism that has commodified even nature, through deleterious mechanisms such as carbon credits and emissions offsets, made through the neo-colonization of African states. And is this the beautiful Europe that should protect the environment, the one that should be reformed through a presence in institutions condemned to be marginal?

To answer this rhetorical question we first need to make another admission. The European Union of the Green Deal (even the most important environmental plan in EU history apes the USA, a subordination that is disgusting) was born in the aftermath of the Fridays For Future protests and is strengthened by the most important environmentalist mobilization of recent years , ditto for the electoral success of the Greens in the last legislature. In this round, however, the idea was to overturn the paradigm: in the absence of grassroots struggles, electoral environmentalism preferred to take refuge in the most putrid party calculations. Who should we ally ourselves with? Who should nominate? They even got the votes, for goodness sake, but, let's repeat, they are destined not to touch the ball. There is a sort of anxiety about the majority, let's call it that, on the part of a good portion of Italian environmentalism: that is to say that the desire to be a majority is pursued through the electoral shortcut when instead one should calmly accept being a minority, and also restricted, of the "real country". And from this perspective try to take care of the environment and those who live in it. To fight power and not to conquer it. Instead, electoral environmentalism is dominated by an unhealthy dogma of democracy which must at least be called into question. Otherwise, in every electoral competition we will find environmentalist candidacies, increasingly faded and increasingly ineffective figurines.

Andrea Turco

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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