An idiot – Massimo Mantellini

It is so much and so many points of view that it would hardly be worth talking about it. It is a wrong and superficial idea, technically inapplicable and ethically dangerous given that it violates citizens' fundamental rights. It is then, wanting to quibble, a small warhorse of the right and could make one smile that is now supported not only by Marattin but also by many Italian politicians of the reformist area. Yesterday for example also Teresa Bellanova (like many others belonging to Italia Viva) invoked her on Twitter.

For those who wish to inquire about this – but I realize that it is more annoying – there are many sources, accumulated over the last twenty years, given that the anonymity on the net is a topic of discussion that was born with the Internet: it has been discussed more or less since the mid-1990s, when Marattin was 15 years old.

Now I honestly don't want to explain why an idiot is an idiot but I would use the theme to emphasize a worrying trend in Italian politics, a form of cynicism that is increasingly used, which is also clearly evident from this story.

Meanwhile, a rift sharpens: that between the informed and all the others. Among those with tools and a desire to get a personal idea and those who cannot or are not interested. And there is an increasingly violent political tendency that cynically exploits this fracture: it challenges and mocks the intelligence of the first to reach the heart of the latter. As always, this is not a new topic but digital environments have accentuated it significantly.

The paradoxical result is that people of good will explaining on Twitter to Marattin why such an idea is an idiocy contribute to accrediting that idea towards a much wider audience which is the real objective of similar initiatives. The very large group of Italians of good will who still repeat, a little amazed and almost boasting about it: "I have nothing to hide, go ahead and search."

Such an approach to political issues is even more disturbing and dangerous. It takes advantage of people's ignorance and does not care about everything else. It is a form of digital populism that often substantiates complex ethical issues. For example a few months ago the whole parliament voted a liberticidal law on television cameras in nurseries and residences for the elderly (a rule that Salvini often mentions with pride in his eternal electoral campaigns), a rule that fortunately will not have big concrete effects just because it is largely underfunded but which, if nothing else, clarifies a point: the damage to citizens' rights has always been a clear reactionary theme. Only it's so easy to use it and the complexity lends itself so well to being simplified and distorted that it becomes a good political lever for anyone.

The illusion of reformist parties – if they still exist in Italy today – is to use the same themes riding them on the opposite side of the barricade. Marattin's proposal is easily explained in a form of cynicism of the kind. On the sidelines of this, which seems to me to be the real abyss of the politics of this country where demagoguery has become the only currency of exchange for anyone, prohibiting anonymity on the net remains an idiot.

P.S. I don't link. I don't link the cretinate.