It could only be the zeal of the ministerial scribe, but it is instead the indication of an archaic culture, well rooted among Italians.
The definition of "relatives" contained in the Dpcm of 4 May 2020 was this:
«Travels are allowed to meet only one's relatives, who must be considered among the movements justified by necessity» and, apart from the shaky syntax, he specifies: «The area to which the term "relatives" can refer can indirectly be obtained, systematically, by the rules on kinship and affinity, as well as by the jurisprudence on the subject of civil liability. In the light of these references, it must be considered that the "relatives" referred to in the Dpcm include: spouses, cohabiting partners, partners in civil unions, people who are linked by a stable emotional bond, as well as relatives up to the sixth degree (such as, for example, the children of cousins to each other) and the related up to the fourth degree (such as, for example, the spouse's cousins)».
The very choice of the word "relatives" reveals the distance from the modern lexicon known to the multitudes. In France - what a difference - since 11 May "relatives and friends" have been meeting, full stop. It will soon happen to us too, but it is worth dwelling on the Italian distinctions, precisely because they reveal a more oppressive and less liberal culture.
Might as well adopt a neutral rule like that of alternating, even and odd number plates, as in the 1973 oil crisis? No, the insistence on "relatives" is anything but neutral, he reveals the vision of a society ordered according to blood and earth, Blut und Boden dear to Goebbels, inherited by the Italian Northern League and widespread among millions of Italians. In this vision we would be linked to biological relatives and similar but not to friends, to fellow villagers but not to foreigners or workmates or neighbors. È a racist culture, good for ancient times, but overtaken by the free and perhaps fluctuating relations created, in theory, by the revolutionary motto of 1798 «liberté, égalité, fraternité» and, in practice, by the industrial revolution which needs an open and democratic society.
In the twenty-first century we are immersed in globalization, which opens all the doors of the world, referring to "blood and earth" is equivalent to denying the evolution of human relationships and to oppose personal affinities, with the pretension of regulating private habits. In his name, and in the terror of disorder, homosexual couples are forbidden to adopt, prescriptions are overturned on citizens as if they were children to be "straightened" or objects to be put in order on the shelves.
The episode of the "relatives" in the Dpcm is the pearl of a traditional series of censures and vetoes that penetrate private lives, born from the mentality of an ethical state - and not a democratic one - who punctually proposes to resurrect brothels, who adores censorship, who criminally punished female adultery until 1968 and rocked the crime of honor until 1981, who hinders the choice of when and how to end earthly life in case of extreme suffering, which perpetuates gender differences at home, where mostly women struggle, or at work where women's access and wage inequality are the most shameful in Europe.
The ethical state is lurking there, ready to smooth out the personal responsibility that takes away power from the powerful and control from the controllers (and leaves ministerial scribes idle). The second half of the twentieth century demolished the ethical state in the Western world with a pickaxe in a triumph that in 1969 Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau summarized in the memorable phrase "there is no more room for the state in the bedrooms". But the adepts of the blood, of the earth, of the ethical state do not give up and are now close to us, ready to dictate the rules for tomorrow's coexistence, after the Covid 19 disaster.
Every pandemic is traumatic, history tells it and the wise men say it (who will soon impose "changes in individual behavior, social habits" Salvatore Rossi reminds FIRSTonline readers of this, president of TIM). After the plagues of the fourteenth century, with the European population almost halved, the shortage of manpower allowed peasants to negotiate their wages and demographic necessity allowed women to marry without the consent of the feudal lord. A century ago, the massacre of males in the Great War and the devastation of the Spanish flu upset the marriage market, dominated by the few surviving males and left millions of young women alone and childless.
What will happen after the pandemic is not known, and the prophetic exercises are not very credible because they prefer gloomy colors and focus on the economic scenario. Sure, economic factors will shape the new society, but if we start off already weighed down by the prejudices that limit the freedom of relationship and action, we will remain prisoners of the little head of a ministerial scribe. Focusing attention on the GDP is misleading, as David Pilling explains well in his book on the illusion of growth, precisely because it neglects every other aspect of civil coexistence. It would be useful to reflect on the value and power of personal relationships, trust and solidarity: the survey conducted in Oxford by Timothy Garton-Ash reveals that 53 per cent of young Europeans want strong power to tackle the climate crisis and distrust the a little anarchic, a little individualistic but above all ineffective democracy that he has before his eyes. Ineffective because it is anchored in the patterns of the past, and one of these patterns forcefully includes the discipline of human relationships. Italian society is usually surprised, taken aback by the changes: in 1970, with the advent of divorce, the catastrophe of millions of abandoned wives was envisaged, but since then, the majority of wives have asked for freedom. Ministerial clerks thrive under the umbrella of the ethical state, but that umbrella, stiffened on the models of the past and on the prejudices of great-grandparents, must be closed, avoided like a virus, because the recovery of civil life after the pandemic needs fresh air and creative imagination.
