Last Saturday and Sunday, I took part in an important conference in Istanbul, Turkey, of legal scholars organized, among others, by the Bar Associations of Turkey and Jordan, dedicated to promoting justice and respect for international law for Palestine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few topics could be more timely or more difficult. International judicial bodies such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice\u2014the principal judicial organ of the United Nations responsible for upholding international law\u2014as well as independent rapporteurs such as Francesca Albanese and non-governmental organizations collecting evidence of Israel\u2019s crimes, are under fierce attack from the United States government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The West, drowning in a sea of mud, blood, and excrement, is renouncing every form of law, both domestic and international. The ICE squads of killers, strongly backed by Trump, continue to kill migrants and U.S. citizens. Trump himself, clearly defeated by Iran, which he and Netanyahu had attacked together on February 28, appears to be abandoning any intention of mediation regarding Ukraine, while Europe\u2019s dismal ruling class, serving finance and powerful lobbies, is relaunching rearmament to confront the non-existent Russian threat. In doing so, it fulfills its historic mission: massively increasing the profits of the military-industrial complex, as well as those of the oil companies, whose activities are costing us the suffering and disasters caused by the abnormal heat of these days\u2014a phenomenon destined to worsen further in the coming years until Italy and Europe become uninhabitable (far from the need to \u201cget used to a tropical climate,\u201d as unwisely suggested by Senate President La Russa).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giuseppe Conte\u2019s entirely justified remarks that Russia\u2019s alleged aggressiveness is merely a pretext have been buried beneath an avalanche of disgraceful criticism coming from every faction of the Democratic Party. It is no longer only figures such as Calenda and Fassino who justify rearmament, but also sectors close to party secretary Schlein, who appears more confused and indecisive than ever, and clearly overwhelmed by the deep and uncontrollable impulses of a decaying political machine whose only reason for continuing to exist is to feed local patronage networks (the plundering of cities from Milan to Rome), national ones (the bipartisan management of Leonardo and other pillars of the arms industry), and international ones (complete subservience to NATO, von der Leyen, and what remains of the U.S. Democratic Party).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This demonstrates the impracticality of any \u201cbroad coalition\u201d project, regardless of whether controversial figures such as Renzi and Calenda are involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is simply inconceivable to pursue an alternative political project that does not place at its center an immediate break from the West\u2019s warmongering policies and the search for a new international role for Italy\u2014one consistent with our millennia-old civilization and capable of benefiting from our central position in the Mediterranean and from the existence of strong relations of cooperation and economic complementarity with China, Russia, Iran, Brazil, and other leading countries of the Global South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This also requires a complete transformation of the model of underdevelopment adopted by our ruling classes as a consequence of their intellectual inadequacy, their opportunism driven solely by short-term profit, and their total subservience to the global centers of financial capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To emerge from our disastrous decline\u2014which is part of the broader Western decline but also has its own deeply troubling domestic characteristics\u2014we must completely reverse course. Yet no such guarantee is offered by a hypothetical \u201cbroad coalition\u201d centered on the Democratic Party, which would evidently continue to serve as the loyal and compliant servant of the West\u2019s political, economic, financial, and military power structures, both in their dominant American form and in their subordinate European version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moreover, Europe as a whole appears destined for a bleak, perhaps even catastrophic future: rearmament and military mobilization (with the Ukrainian people\u2019s resistance to conscription offering only a faint indication of what could soon happen across Europe, including Italy); environmental disaster; the sell-off of national resources to international capital (with Albania presented as the model to follow); the restriction of democratic freedoms through a new and ruthless McCarthyism targeting anyone who refuses to conform to the policies of those in power; and the rise of a brutal right wing that is by no means an alternative to the ruling classes but is instead founded on racism and the repression of all forms of diversity, and which\u2014with Le Pen, Farage, Vannacci, and Germany\u2019s neo-Nazi AfD\u2014is becoming Europe\u2019s new political and ideological beacon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of this must be opposed by an alternative political force genuinely committed\u2014not merely in words\u2014to promoting constitutional values in their proper sense. Building such an alternative is both urgent and necessary, and it must be done in a spirit of unity while rejecting every form of sectarianism, narcissism, and political marginalism, the aging and ultimately fatal diseases of the left, both in Italy and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n