
If you care to be kept informed about Gaither's books, sign up with our publishing house alerts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
^0America's Goal...
Make every homeless tranny
gender comfortable!
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
5 comments
A simply terrific read. That this should be going on under the noses of 99% of the US public without a complaint is a tribute to the art of propaganda practiced by US ruling orders and the legendary passivity and idiocy shown by the American population—the cross that the world must bear!
It is always a pleasure to read observations on Italy by a non-Italian. Gaither Stewart’s article is very interesting. It is, of course, the nature of any historical judgment to find its roots in a personal assessment of the characters involved.
I agree with the general thesis of the article, though I would feel somewhat different about Montanelli. That he publicly praised a character like Pinochet would be enough to confine him to the swelling rank of the historical undesirables. Nevertheless, he was one of the most independent contemporary Italian thinkers, though with a deeply skeptical attitude and sentiment towards his fellow citizens, irrespective of their political color. He understood the profoundly conservative nature, to the edge of the reactionary, of Italians at large – and this for reasons outside the scope of this comment.
“Italians – he said – know that under Communism it’s like living in a convent or a prison. But should Communists win in Italy, they would quickly turn the convent into a brothel and the prison into a discotheque.”
Furthermore, towards the end of his appearance on the stage of politics and journalism, he had actually become a darling of the popular left. For two reasons,
a) He lambasted without compunction corruption and corrupt Italian politicians, now all feeeding at the same trough.
b) He resigned from the “Il Giornale” when it was taken over by the notorious Berlusconi, epitome of any imaginable corruption, and yet still admired even now by many devout Catholics.
Montanelli, with the usual concessions to arbitrary comparisons, was an Italian “narodnik” of sorts, in the style of the Russian thinkers from the nobility, in the first part of the XIX century – though, unlike them, extremely skeptical about a redemption of the “blunt monster with the uncounted heads”. He was a monarchist, believing that monarchy can inspire nobility and nobility, in turn, a certain nobleness at large, of soul and behavior.
He was also courageous in saying that he liked Mussolini when he went to Ethiopia to bring “another Duce, another King” to the Ethiopians. Courageous, because it had become accepted to say that all Italians were anti-fascists even when they gathered in the millions to applaud Mussolini at his rallies. “Turncoatism” is anything but new, even Dante defines the prototype “Trasmutabile son per mille guise” in his Comedy.
Montanelli was skeptic about Italians to the very end, though during one of his last public appearances he said, “I am ashamed to say it, but if I were to be born again, I would still like to be born an Italian.”
In sum, Montanelli, as most men who use their mind for thinking, was a complex character, whose qualities, in my view, outweighed his defects or shortcomings. After all, he penned the most readable History of Italy, from the Greeks and Romans to the end of the XXth century. It was a novelty in style and breadth and treatment. It is still popular today, as it broke the pattern of hagiography by canonical texts or, alternatively, of ponderous and obscure critique, written by academics for other academics.
In a dramatically less ambitious vein, he who adds these notes here, wrote a history of the USA in Italian, titled “USA e Getta, Controstoria d’America” – a play on words meaning “Use and Dispose” (no disrespect) – readable on line at http://sakeritalia.it/interviste/un-regalo-per-i-nostri-lettori-usa-e-getta-un-libro-di-jimmie-moglia/
Jimmie
Note: The writer is a special contributing editor to TGP and editor in chief of The Daily Shakespeare.
Ironic that a people so stubbornly conservative also produced the largest communist party in the West. The contradictions of the Italian character, as Mr Moglia suggests, may be numberless. Perhaps this is a reflection of the old observation that no action goes without a reaction—the longstanding miserable conditions of most lower class Italians under a conservative regime of landowners and later industrialists, all sanctified by the ubiquitous Catholic church, and to detonate a leftist reaction. It is no accident that most emigrants to the USA came to escape abysmal poverty not freedom” of religion or similar goals. Raw survival and a possibility of living in a social structure that at least allowed some upward mobility became the magnet. At the same time, the humiliations of Italians at the hands of successive waves of foreigners: French crusaders and interlopers, Spanish imperialists, German knights on their way to Sicily and the Middle East, not to mention modern wars and invasions, etc. and the inability of Italy to become a unified nation until late in the 19th century, created a frame of mind in which the old adage that for Italians the family is their nationality soon took root. Indeed, after living in Italy for some time I can attest that their natural allegiances—despite some manifestations of vociferous chauvinism— radiate outward to concrete realities: family, city, region, and maybe, the nation as a whole. The attraction of fascism and Italian imperialism perhaps also belongs in the column of Italians wishing to belong to the club of “Great Powers”, a misguided concept, no doubt, but one also informed by their having been at one time the first great Western empire, followed by many centuries of slow decadence and disintegration.
I enjoyed the essay and deeply appreciate Sig. Moglia’s commentary.
Thak you all.
HG Devons
Sheffield
” declared himself and his newspaper, Il Giornale, supporters of the “little man”, something like the class on which President Donald Trump finds his base today and to which he speaks ”
I’m sorry but are you out of your gourd ? Do you beleive that Trump “bases his support on the little man” ? The median annual income of a Trump supporter in 2016 was approximately 80,000 USD ..if you think that’s working class here in America then I cant imagine how you define working class. Trumps base of support is and has always been, the most reactionary sector of the bourgeois, the insurance and finance sector parasites, and the most reactionary slice of the petibourgeois –
the, millitary and police professional leadership/management class. He has the support of the most reactionary of the working class, the white supremacists and racist fringe, but they are no one “power base. They , (like the rest of the working class in the US) are powerless . And they are tiny in number.
I am disappointed in the rather condescending comments of Jimmie Mogli when he speaks of NON-ITALIANS writing about important Italian affairs. I will not dispute this point. As far as one of of the points of my article is concerned, I understand from Jimmie’s (Jimmie?) response that I have a good grasp on Indro Montanelli ( admittedly no easy task) as does he, born and bred in Turin, have his OPINION. Neither Italy nor Italians are a closed sect, though some might think so.