“I’ve been more of a friend than a father to my son. Now the left is gone. Schlein? A liberal»- Corriere.it

Fausto Bertinotti, born in Milan in 1940, Precotto district. Father Enrico, railway engineer, socialist of anarchist, anticlerical culture. Mother Rosa, housewife, Catholic. A brother, Ferruccio, also a railwayman. His wife Gabriella, Lellamarried when she was eighteen. A son, Duccio, in honor of Galimberti, assassinated by the fascists in ’44. The union, the workers’ struggles, politics, the clash with Prodi, the presidency of the House. More than that of president, he loves the definition of secretary, daughter of the years at the helm of the CGIL of Piedmont, because it gives more the sign of the collective.

Secretary, what memories do you have of your childhood?
“Many and powerful. The war, the sirens, the bombings. My father taking us to cover playing and trying to make me laugh. My mother guarantees our safety.’

A diploma as an electronic expert, taken late.

«Schools in Milan and Novara. Technical studies, to be able to work early. I didn’t love them, I wasn’t suitable. A lot of time in the library and not much time in the classroom».

Then love with Gabriella, lifelong companion.

«It was immediately Lella, to make up for my r lisping, then Lella for everyone. She united politics, committed music, the magazine New cinema by Guido Aristarco. Bergman, Eisenstein, yes the director of the battleship Potemkin, Lang, neorealism».

The marriage. In church, at the behest of her mother.

«He was a minor, the yes of the parents was needed. He celebrated my religion teacher. Cultured, highly refined, endless discussions with him. A very important priest in my training».

What relationship with faith?

“It’s constantly evolving. The permanent search for a relationship, even if never attempted to convert. Mine is the generation of the Second Vatican Council, men of good will, the no to the exploitation of man by man. The parish priest of the church of Sant’Eustachio in Rome wanted me at the inauguration of the crib. I said that it seemed too much for a non-believer, he called me “a different believer”. And after all, socialism is also a faith».

A son named Duccio, like Galimberti. What father was it?

«That name, a small gesture to “repair the wrong”, as the song goes. I haven’t been an absent father, if anything, and maybe that’s a flaw, more a friend or an older brother. I find it difficult to exercise authority, of which I am guilty.’

Even her brother Ferruccio railwayman, for her instead politics. How come?

«I breathed politics at home, a family of street intellectuals. I see my father bent over listening to Radio London, secretly hosting a partisan, I’m on his shoulders listening to Pietro Nenni, with his Basque, in a crowded Piazza del Duomo, on the eve of the defeat of the Popular Front, in ’48».

The trade union experience, the battle of Fiat, the March of the forty thousand. What did he think that day?

«I consider Rosa Luxemburg my cultural mother and I think with her that “there are defeats that teach more than a hundred resolutions of the central committee”. We had lost but we had to go on. I met hundreds of comrades. She hugged us, even crying. Politics can be great even in defeat. There are battles that must be fought. You can lose them, but if you don’t face them, you commit political suicide”.

No to Dini, the break with Prodi, no to D’Alema.

«The one with Prodi was a dramatic break. It was in those years that the route to Europe was decided. There was a choice between Maastricht and a change in social solidarity. Globalization won, on the wings of a centre-left that governed a large part of the continent. The left became liberal and no longer socialist. It was the sign of a conversion, of a genetic mutation».

Lombardi and Ingrao in his formation, Kissinger and Agnelli in that of Mario D’Urso. How was your friendship born?

“A contagious personal sympathy, and then desistance. The Ulivo supported us in some colleges, we didn’t present ourselves in others. But on Mario D’Urso candidate there was the rebellion of the Campania comrades. Mario called me: what’s going on? We respect the agreements, I said. He was elected, we won the election. The story of the legacy he left me? I’m not dealing with it, there’s the court, I’ll stick to what it decides.’

A judgment on Meloni.

“I called her a fascist. His is the first right-wing government of the Republic, in other cases it was subordinate. An ambitious ideological operation is proposed: to change the culture, to overthrow anti-fascism as the country’s civil religion. A great ideological and regressive offensive to which a liberal scheme and corporate government choices are added”.

And the left? And Elly Schlein’s Pd?

“The left is gone. She has disappeared, without soul and without body. Or rather, there is a widespread social left, devoid of institutional and political representation. Half of the country votes and the left does not make it the center of its action, it gets lost in ballets on alliances, symbols, feeble cries. He fails to understand that, despite having clearly won, the right is not the majority in the country. You can be reborn, but only by following Gramsci: “When all is lost you have to get back to work, starting over”. Schlein too is an expression of that culture which in America is reflected in the liberals. He doesn’t come out of the fence. There is war, the drama of inequality, the ecological emergency. I repeat: there are liberals and reformists, there is no left. We need a new anti-capitalism, there is more in the Laudato si’ than in what remains of the left”.

Is abolishing private property still a goal?

“It is a need of humanity, a destiny of man, like peace”.

Berlusconi. With him he shared only Milan.

“I chose silence at his death. An entrepreneur who replaced politics. Protagonist of a great counter-reform operation. Once I told him that if he had only been president of Milan he would have been perfect ».

There is a debate about justice reform.

«I am a guarantor. I think with Foucault that a society that thinks only of monitoring and punishing is horrible. I’m against wiretapping used to demonize. It is right to abolish the abuse of office”.

What about Ukraine? With Biden or with Putin?

“I don’t choose the tree from which to hang myself. Putin unleashed the war, Biden supported him. War shouldn’t have been waged and now it must be stopped, the only way is negotiation. And Europe is betraying its pacifist vocation”.

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