💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › anonymous-misleading-appearances.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:18:32. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-07-09)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Misleading Appearances Author: Anonymous Date: Autumn 2019 Language: en Topics: censorship, attack, sabotage, communication, the media, Finimondo, The Local Kids, The Local Kids #5 Source: Translated for The Local Kids, Issue 5 Notes: First appeared as Ingannare le apparenze on the website of Finimondo, September 2019
"With reference to current provisions prohibiting the publication of
investigative acts, I call your attention to the serious disruption that
occurs on a daily basis thanks to the press - through the reproduction
of photographs of offenders arrested with serious charges [...] who are
thus elevated to the honour of the most reprehensible notoriety". -
Luigi Federzoni, Minister of the Interior, telegram 17916, July 31, 1925
(sent nation-wide to the provincial prefects)
The use of censorship during fascism is a sadly know fact. Once the
voices of the opposition had been eliminated, the regime assigned to the
propaganda machine a practically exclusive task, in order to favour the
spreading and deepening of fascist ideology. Within the country, there
was no longer the need to crush a hostile enemy, but to shape, or
rather, to produce, a faithful friend. It was a matter of imposing in
all corners of life, a social perception of reality corresponding to the
interests and the logic of the State, in order to capture, practically
automatically and unanimously, complete consensus. An impossible project
to achieve without an incessant manipulation and distortion of a
significant part of the news. A multi-faceted reality, one with all its
chaotic and conflicting nuances, needed to be selected, dissected,
amputated, calibrated, regulated and packaged, to make it look
unambiguous and easily presentable. One of the main objectives of this
veiling of reality was to eliminate any trace of disorder, not only on
the streets but also in the mind.
The first measure taken in this sense was the law decree proposed to the
king by Mussolini in 1923, which provided official warnings to any
newspaper editor found guilty of spreading news relating to disruption
of public order, class hatred or disobedience of laws. Then came the
establishment of the national press office managed directly by the
ministry, then the monopoly on all information admitted for publication
entrusted to a single agency, then the formation of an order of
journalists (still operating)... Language needed to be coded, the news
properly filtered: particular attention needed to be paid to the
financial situation (which could only be exulted), the imprisonment of
the opposition had to be silenced, any crime news was minimized (in some
cases the newspapers La Stampa or L'Unione sarda were confiscated for
having given too much coverage to certain murders). In other words,
Mussolini’s censorship aimed at giving Italians the impression that
under fascism social life was stable and in order.
These are known facts from the past, almost trivial to remember today.
However… today we can ask ourselves, what is the use of censorship under
democratic totalitarianism? Do we really think that the reality that
emerges from today’s mass media is the same one that we live in? Do we
really think that the new technologies, which have made available to
those in power deadly means to “format” minds, to prepare them for
obedience, have not been completely taken advantage of?
To what extent does something that we consider reality correspond to
something that actually happened, tangible, rather than to a perceived,
virtual, artificial fact? Let us here make a small concrete example:
individual acts of revolt, sabotages. According to mass media, here in
Italy they occur very rarely, sporadically. Publicly known facts are
usually the ones which are claimed by the authors, best if in a roaring
manner, or the ones that have such visible and resounding consequences
that it would be simply impossible to silence. In other words, those
acts that for institutional reasons – sometimes for obvious and other
times unknown – are not neutralized in the most simple and summary way:
filed away under “technical failure”. Isn’t it perhaps too obvious to
whom it is most convenient to affirm that a given fire is the result of
an unfortunate short circuit rather than a single match, and for which
reasons? Who will ever notice the news of a technical failure? Unlike a
sabotage, a malfunction does not run the risk of catching the eye and
especially not of giving a bad example.
Let’s be clear, we are not saying that here in Italy the wild fires of
subversion are uncontrollably spreading – this would mean falling into
the opposite perception error – just that today, more than in the past,
what we call reality is most often a construction. Configurable,
correctable, extendible and reducible, marketable. This is made
abundantly clear by taking a look at the misadventures that transpired
over the last year to the structures that supply with energy the world
in which we survive. The ones mentioned in the mass media. Those which,
eluding the eye, escape reflection.
So, after a minimal search, to our surprise, we discover that: on 26
February there is a fire in the inverter cabin of a wind turbine park in
Girifalco (Catanzaro); on 20 March an underground Enel [multinational
energy company] cabin goes up in flames in Loseto (Bari); on 14 April
there is a fire in an electricity distribution cabin in Cremona; on 23
April an Enel cabin goes up in flames in Villanova di Bernareggio
(Monza); on 3 May, in Livorno, a fire in an Enel cabin causes a blackout
along the seafront and in the southern neighbourhoods of the city; on 5
May, an Enel cabin goes up in smoke in Palermo; on 9 May, a fire starts
in an Enel cabin near Feltre; on 10 May, in Riglione (Pisa), a Telecom
relay goes up in flames (the official cause… a short circuit); on May
15, in Florence, a telephone relay flares up; on June 12, an Enel cabin
in Forlì burns down; on June 17, another fire devastates the umpteenth
electric cabin in Afragola (Naples); on June 18, four Enel cabins catch
fire in Corchiano (Viterbo); on June 20, a fire shuts down an Enel cabin
in Vasto Marina (Chieti); on June 22, an Enel cabin is literally struck
by lightning in Asolo (Treviso); on June 26, in Sassuolo (Modena), a
fire to an electric cabin causes yet another distress; on July 10, an
Enel cabin catches fire in Cagliari; the next day, July 11, the same
thing happens in Orco Feligno (Savona); on July 21, a telephone relay
burns down in Pieve di Compito (Lucca); on August 7, Enel loses another
cabin in Germignaga (Varese); on August 24, an electric cabin goes up in
smoke near a wind park in ArquĂ Polesine (Rovigo); on August 25, another
electric cabin catches fire in Manocalzati (Avellino); on 27 August, the
centre of Pescara is affected by a blackout due to a fire that breaks
out in an Enel cabin; on 9 September yet another Enel electric cabin
goes up in smoke in Prato Perillo di Teggiano (Salerno), and we all read
that on 13 September, in Rome, a blackout blocked most of the subway
lines.
Now, all these facts (we want to point out once again that this list is
not exhaustive and was put together rather hastily, making it justified
to wonder how many more similar “accidents” have occurred) were the
result of “technical failures” or “short circuits”, according to mass
media. However, at least in the case of the one which took place in Pisa
on 10 May, we can find online an anonymous claim. Although this
certainly does not mean that all these fires are the result of
sabotages, the exact opposite can also be argued: it is not true that
they are all the result of short circuits. And where the State’s lie
begins and where it ends is impossible to define. If on top of all this
we add the many failed arson attempts (because they didn’t spark, or
were immediately contained or were thwarted in advance), which obviously
don’t make it on the pages of the mainstream press, the number of
incidents that took place, but were never reported, increase in a way
that is beyond our calculation.
No, we certainly don’t want to force a glimpse or a dream of a reality
that is practically overtaken by incendiary acts. We (attempt to)
demonstrate that what appears, on mass media and on counter-information
channels, is a dismal point of reference, a weak criteria, to try to
grasp what is really moving and its potentiality. To grieve or regret
“that nothing ever happens” makes little sense. It makes much more sense
to ask oneself how (and where and why) to make something happen and, if
it is deemed necessary, how to attempt to communicate it, piercing the
techno-democratic censorship and attempting to give everyone a bad
example. And once having found a possible answer, going for it.