Illiberal fashion: it was against the charter | Libero Quotidiano.it

There is a question that few have asked themselves in these years of almost uncontested dominance of the “single thought”: is the so-called “political correctness” in line with the principles and values of our Constitution? Very significant is the circumstance that the political faction that brandished the Charter as a sort of club, or improper weapon, to sideline and delegitimize, in a instrumental and false way, its opponents, thus transformed into political enemies and even morally abject beings, did not ask itself this question. That it was not a far-fetched question is now demonstrated, with compelling arguments and a remarkable mastery of texts and documents, by Ginevra Cerrina Feroni, professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Florence and vice president of the Authority aimed at protecting privacy, in a book published by Rubbettino with the posthumous preface by Natalino Irti: Il pensiero conforme. Per una critica costituzionale del “politicamente corretto.

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Cerrina Feroni’s book maintains a scientific level but is easy to read. There is no doubt, however, that the conclusions it reaches are important also for the political debate on woke, rekindled these days after the alleged distancing precisely by those on the left who have championed it for a long time, starting from the Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Five Star leader Giuseppe Conte in Italy. In fact, political correctness, taken to the extreme, not only denies the spirit of the Constitution but is in clear contrast with one of the cornerstone articles of the fundamental charter of our country: that article 21 which solemnly states that “everyone has the right to freely express their thoughts through speech, writing, and any other means of discussion.” With the triumph of woke, instead, a “network of taboos, forbidden words, unspeakable thoughts that delegitimized dissent” has been built, according to the Florentine scholar. It has thus been forgotten that “freedom of expression does not only apply to ideas we like. It applies, above all, to those that disturb us.”

POLITICAL MORALISM
This evident liberal principle, which informs our Constitution, is all the more surprising when one reflects on the fact that the political forces that contributed to its drafting were not exactly liberal in many respects. However, there was then a happy convergence of interests certainly due to the vivid memory of what the fascist dictatorship had been, but also to the realistic acknowledgment of the plurality of political cultures that survived the regime and the necessity that each of them was not hindered in the subsequent political struggle.

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In any case, the result was that of our democracy which, despite many defects and distortions, guaranteed freedom of speech and competitive pluralism of ideas. What is even more astonishing, in the eyes of the historian, is how political correctness could grow and strengthen even in a country like ours where the left was characterized for a long time by strong adherence to political realism. Probably this happened due to the need to recover an ideal tension after the exhaustion of what Enrico Berlinguer defined as the propulsive drive of the October Revolution.

At that point, political moralism, which besides hypocritically hiding unconfessed feelings of power, served to rebuild a community of ideas that was falling apart, prevented the former communists from facing their past and the failure of the God they had believed in. On the left, it was the comeback, so to speak, of the political culture of the small and defunct Action Party over the communist one that was no longer viable. Eugenio Scalfari with his Repubblica and the interview with Berlinguer on the “moral question” played the role of ferryman, while Mani Pulite and the criticism of the Caste would later do the rest. On this trunk of anti-politics and political moralism, woke has fit wonderfully. It is a recent story of which the Five Star Movement has been an integral part. A stroke of a pen certainly cannot erase their past.

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