The elections in Italy and the Carnivalesque figures* |
By NANOS VALAORITIS |
IT SEEMS that people have forgotten though they may have read him,
to apply Bakhtin to the present circumstances. In a nutshell the CARNIVAL which according to Bakhtin in his famous Rabelais and the Carnivalesque, consisted of the reaction of people under dire regimes such as slavery in the ancient world or the Aristocracy and the Church in the Middle Ages, sanctioned or not by the powers that be. They were given absolute liberty for a certain period to overturn the rules that applied for the whole year which varied from a week in the new year or a day or two in spring and on other ritual occasions. They had then complete freedom to replace their masters or even elect a mock king or high priest, a carnivalesque figure of fun or a transgression pope such as Pope Joan etc.
This period was marked by a return to chaos, as Mircea Eliade named it, or the renewal, by dipping in it of energies for the rest of the year. It was so to speak a canonical revolt, not a real overthrow, which ended in some cases in the execution of the mock monarch. These are well documented ceremonies by anthropologists and historians of religion. Today this has degenerated in the pittoresque disguises and parades with music in most countries especialy in Brazil and elsewhere. I witnessed such an event in Zurich with a million people arriving mainly from Germany to celebrate by the lake on the bridges in the middle of town. A formidable event, in such a quiet country otherwise. Let’s not forget that Dada was born in same city in 1916.
Loki is a carnivalesque figure
No doubt that Loki the trickster god is a carnivalesque figure undermining the powers and seriousness of the other gods through pranks tricks and gossip. These seriocomical events as Bahktin would call them are beginning to appear recently in Europe at a time of very serious economic crisis while people are suffering under imposed rules of austerity paralysing the economic life of the society. High taxes, reductions of salaries and pensions unemployment, inability to buy or sell, all emanating from a central power that imposes savage austerity in a time of crisis. This power is called the German programme of austerity adopted by the main parties in that country, the Christian democrats the Social Democrats and the Greens, and applied through their organ the European Central Bank that tightens the money to “avoid they believe, inflation”.
All this is disputed by serious economists as a remedy for a time of crisis. Along with Germany came some countries with tidy economics such as Holland, Finland, and Austria with the tacit support of other Scandinavian countries. This program was seen as devastating for the more feeble economies in Europe, mainly in the south beginning with Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and even the out on a limb, Ireland. And the truth is it only profited Germany whose production and exports even with a high euro never flagged, because of draconian low salaries imposed on their workers german and foreign. This became eventually with the backing of the EU, a form of oppression with the utopian promise of a distant recovery in the future, somewhat like the promise of Paradise in religion, economic religion in this case applied with dogmatic rigidity, like fasting before Easter Resurrection. These methods were applied long before by totalitarian regimes such as Russia and have their theoretical source there.
The elections in Italy point to a revolt
The recent results of elections in Italy point to a revolt of this kind similar to the tax revolt in the Colonies, America, the Carabian, Latin America, India and the various peasant revolts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
When the people reach a point when there is no money no employment, no future their only outlet is to revolt and in a democratic country this revolt takes the form of voting down the parties of austerity, responding to the irrationality of these programs. By supporting an equally irrational canditate and party in opposition, even a clown or comedian, named populistic by the so called “serious” parties, behaving no more seriously or even humanely, as the most cruel of autocrats. Autocracy arouses its opposite and we see this in various recent performances of the “Fema”, the feminist movement, even in Russia suffering from an autocracy, as the recent blasphemous event by a group of pop or rock women, in a church. This simmering revolt has never ceased under any regime, and all regimes and religions have given it a way to express itself as a safety valve in the past.
The young Italians by following the lead of a clown or mime or comedian call him what you want but his appeal is far more serious than that, and points directly at Germany and its stiff selfish dogmatic policies verging on the psychotic, whose main aim seems to be only in their own interests, since they thrive with austerity, after having imposed these draconian measures of low salaries for many years to their own and foreign workers. As they followed Hitler the Germans followed the policies of the combined Social democrats and Christian democrats deeply nationalistic parties themselves, very little european, and seconded by the german Green’s equally nationalistic and contradictory attitudes. One has only to remember the support of Fischer and Con Bendit for the bombardment of Serbia to have no doubts that their loyalties lie, very little with the environment
The German nationalism and the cult of power
Strange fruit this German nationalism pervading even people of Jewish and many other origins . It seems to me that we have to do with the cult of power, irresistible for many even great people like Nietsche. Power has been always a problem for all types of societies from the great theocratic civilisations of the Middle and Near East to the medieval baronies and kingdoms. The oppressed people often needed an outlet and the one offered was a carnavalesque overturning of the rules once a year , when as in Greece and Rome the slaves became for three days masters, and their masters served them as slaves, the origin of our carnival that Michael Bakhtin brought out so forcefully in his Rabelais.
It seems the Germans have forgotten that domination of Europe by one superior industrial power may have its drawbacks. It will automaticaly create a generalised revolt, since the Germans keep behaving like the barons of the Middle-Ages, with the EU as their alternative arm.
Carnival will not replace politics but will do something
The carnival of the Grillini is very different from the grotesque mimicry of nazism by the Greek Golden Dawn, which is a travesti of hitlerian gestures like the raised arm, symbols like the swastika, marches in military formation, in black semi militaristic uniforms, and parades with flares in the night, as in sinister Nazi ceremonies, in Germany…The anti corrupt political establishment rhetoric may be similar, in both cases, but we know of corruption thriving in totalitarian regimes, while the aim of the Grillini is different. These want to liberate, renew and improve the democracy of its faults, The aim of the Golden Dawn is to establish a grim racist totalitarian dictatorship of violence and persecution of all opposition.
They are no better than the use of terror for social issues by the violent sectarian groups of the so called extreme left, often riddled with provocateurs, as is the Golden Dawn collaborating with police agents, which they proudly announce themselves, to turn peaceful demonstrations into riots.
I am not saying that the carnival will replace politics but will do something to its function as usual. Today in Greece we have to feed with outrageous taxes a huge useless and recalcitrant bureaucracy that behaves in very undemocratic manner. Rudeness to the public, bribes, rewards of all kinds on the sly, extra treatment of the faithful lower employees, hierarchal rule, refusal to help in complicated cases, all typical of central european bureaucracies under the rule of monarchies. But we are supposed to live in a democratic regime. Where is justice then in this amalgam of corniness and clique interests? These people execute the orders of the barons of the germanic alliance of the north in the name of improvement and restructuring, a favourite term for extreme austerity measures. The results are visible to all. Huge unemployment bordering the 30%, a frozen economy nothing sells and no one buys. Constant tax attacks on the most vulnerable for quick collection. The Quisling regimes of the Nazi Occupation were no worse.
The same threats and menaces, by the use of a fiscal, judicial, or political blackmail.
The parties that empowered this bureaucracy are trying to hide their faces, since they have appointed most of them who support such policies. Where are the Grillini in our midst…? Is there a hidden leader like Grillo somewhere? Or do we have to apply to Loki once more to do his destructive and devious work against our foes the giants?
Why is it that only the Germans got rich with the Euro?
This morning I saw the latest pronouncements of Grillo. I must say I agree entirely. He declared that Italy was already outside the Euro, and that it was only a matter of time after the lenders got their money back from their loans that they would kick Italy out the EuroZone like a useless appendage. He declared himself against the European Union as it was today not of the people but of Financiers. He asked the most pertinent metaphysical question since Heidegger’s “Why is their something and not nothing?”Why is it that only the Germans got rich with the Euro? Was it because their products were so good that none of the cash strapped countries could resist them and purchased them with the loans they concluded with high interest in order to buy them and mostly from the Germans themselves with interest so the Germany managed to make a double whammy, exploiting the poor nations of Europe, and getting rich from loans and exporting products at the same time.
No wonder they got rich and the other countries poorer and poorer until Merkel came on the scene with her suicidal austerity measures. Both the previous and these recent programmes lead to exhaustion of the economies of Europe and finally Germany herself. For as Hitler thought he could conquer Europe with his armoured divisions and Stukas, performing blitzkrieg, so the germans of today perform an economic blitzkrieg believing they could impose their imperialism on us all, in other words they make the same mistake using other means which will end in their own downfall after they have drained the rest of Europe into an impossibility of recovery. So uncovering Loki at work, only another fool jester could recognise what they were up to and denounce the foolhardy Germans, as often the fools in Shakespeare’s plays, do with their masters.
*See previous article on Loki for explanation of who he was.
Nanos Valaoritis
Athens 2-16 march 2013
Το άρθρο του Νάνου Βαλαωρίτη στα ελληνικά
Οι ιταλικές εκλογές και οι φιγούρες του καρναβαλιού
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http://www.bookbar.gr/the-hysterical-germanophile-french/classic-drinks
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