Federico Rampini: "Thus the West risks suicide"

If a war in the heart of Europe caught us unprepared, it is because we were engaged in our self-destruction. The strategic disarmament of the West had been preceded for years by a cultural disarmament. The dominant ideology, the one that the elites spread in universities, in the media, in mass culture and in entertainment, requires us to demolish all self-esteem, to blame ourselves, to scourge ourselves. According to this ideological dictatorship we no longer have values to propose to the world and to the new generations, we only have crimes to expiate. Thus Federico Rampini , leading columnist of Corriere della Sera, tells us about the profound crisis of the contemporary West in his latest work, "Suicide West" (Mondadori, 2022, pp. 252, also e-book), a volume that tries to explain us because it is so wrong to process our history and erase our values.

These are gross errors as Federico Rampini himself tells us:

“Trying our history is wrong because the trial I am referring to - which has been going on for years - is not a balanced and intelligent criticism, it is a long chain of crimes. Only the white man seems to be the bearer of 'genetic defects' such as racism, xenophobia, the instinct of domination and oppression. Only we would have plundered the planet, exploited other peoples. It is a Manichean story, where all the others are victims and are basically innocent. Of course this way of telling the story is a sham, it is false: there are no innocent civilizations, slavery practiced by the Aztecs, the Arabs profited as much as the whites. The result of this permanent self-flagellation is evident with the Ukrainian tragedy. Convinced that only Western imperialism was a danger, we did not see the threats from powers that have a long history of aggression grow. Our cultural disarmament preceded and imposed the geopolitical disarmament of the West ”.

And why is it wrong to erase our values?

“Let's ask the Ukrainians. They are willing to even risk their lives, in order to be part of the Western family, to share values of freedom, democracy, human rights. Let's ask the young people of Hong Kong, who ended up in prison for having contested Xi Jinping's freedom-killing regime, because they dreamed more of the West in their home. Let's ask the Afghan women who could study during the military occupation of Western forces, now not anymore. "

Who is "working" to delegitimize the West and why?

“Xi Jinping and Putin have theorized for years that we are a decadent, dying civilization, unable to defend itself. They have strong allies in our house. The first Chinese delegation that met the American government after Joe Biden took office read whole passages of accusations from Black Lives Matter, the ultra anti-racism movement that describes America as the hell of human rights. The doctrine of politically correct, embraced by the giants of digital capitalism, has contributed to the madness of our democracies. For Wall Street and Silicon Valley billionaires it is fashionable to save the planet and promote transgender people in the workplace; everything to cancel the great social question, an inequitable globalization that has gutted the working class and impoverished the middle class. Thus they push masses of voters to vote for Trump or other populists, who in turn are playing Putin's game. "

How are they looking at us from China and Russia?

“As we were in the lower Roman Empire: vicious, cowardly, immoral, by now devoid of a sense of state and authority. They describe our democracies as the reign of chaos. "

Are we all agreeing to the suicide of the West?

“Yes, every time we join in the fashion of self-flagellation. Whatever disaster strikes the planet, the automatic reflex is to look for our faults: in part it is a legacy of Eurocentrism, we delude ourselves that we are still the navel of the world, we think that everything depends on us. Furthermore, ancient anti-Western traditions that we have always cultivated are reborn: fascism, communism before Berlinguer, a piece of the Catholic world have always hated America and its modernity. There is an anti-Western culture even in extremist environmentalism, the apocalyptic version of Greta Thunberg, which heralds the end of the world around the corner and exudes hostility towards the market economy. In reality, the only hope for building a clean, carbon-free economy is that capitalism invests in renewable sources. The only hope of African countries is development, not the ecological pauperism preached by this neo-pagan religion which is ultra-environmentalism. "

Do you see any hope for the western future?

“The revolt of the majority against a politically correct ideology that is imposed on us from above. I make the comparison, citing illustrious scholars, with the conversion of the Romans to Christianity: at the beginning it was an elitist and authoritarian operation; however at least the emperor Constantine respected the history of Rome, he did not tarnish it like a chain of crimes. Today the extreme forms of politically correct have been embraced by the strong powers of American capitalism (the new billionaires proclaim themselves environmentalists, pro-immigration, pro-LGBTQ), by Hollywood, by the big media, by elite universities. But when the ideological indoctrination that blamed white children as genetically racist arrived in American schools, a revolt of the parents was triggered. Italian-Americans rebel against being tried as descendants of a Christopher Columbus who is described as Hitler, the planner of a genocide. "

Aren't you afraid of being accused of excessive defeatism, of contributing in some way to the criticism of the West?

“Self-criticism is one of the strengths of the West, our freedom of speech and dissent, also the extreme ease with which we question ourselves, our past. These are values we should be proud of. Instead, I see a form of intolerance growing, first of all in the United States and England but increasingly in the rest of Europe. Politically correct is imposed on us as a single thought, whoever does not pronounce the right formulas, who does not recite the commanded liturgy, ends up at the index. It is a totalitarian trend, which masquerades as a progressive revolution but is not at all. In American universities - elite universities where the annual tuition costs 70,000 dollars - radical groups dictate the law and take away the freedom of speech from others. Forms of censorship and lynching are advancing on social media. On the right, the rebellion is subversive and anti-democratic: see the assault of the Trump ultras on the Washington Congress on January 6, 2021. But the extremist left has endorsed the violence of Black Lives Matter, and occupies the main centers of cultural power where it imposes its form of fascism. "