We are a nation of dyscalculic ultras

This article is published in issue 47 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 22 November 2022

I can’t believe we went back to Papeete earlier. When we kept talking about security decrees, an iron fist, denied landings, migrants hostage to politics. Yet what has happened in these three years – pandemic, war in Ukraine, worsening climate crisis – has made us well understand that it is not migrants we should be afraid of. That the alarms around the landings have always been a decoy to distract us from the real problems, those that no one wants to talk about, because it is much easier to play cops and robbers on the skin of a suffering and unfortunate humanity than to to reason. And instead here is a right-wing government that raises its voice with the weak to distract us from the problems of the economy, work, school, health, the climate: and we bite happily. To add a little spice to the usual soup, they have now put in a few quarrels with France and Germany, ideal for making even those who have never been a nationalist become a nationalist. While in the newspapers, on TV and in bars there is talk of denied landings again as if we were all experts in maritime law. It must be admitted that on the right they know how to do with communication: as if they had studied at the Dams with Umberto Eco. While the numbers, those are of no interest to anyone. It goes without saying that in 2021 there were 45,200 asylum requests in Italy, more than double in France and more than triple in Germany, because most migrants do not want to stop with us, but just transit. Or that in relation to residents, for asylum requests Italy is 15th in Europe. Or that compared to the numbers of Ukrainian refugees, those of refugees arriving from Africa are negligible. We are a nation of dyscalculic ultras. We like to cheer and we don’t like math, we want the story of the good guys and the bad guys, to pontificate, and we don’t want to make the effort to reason. Our governors know this and give us what we want: to distract ourselves and not think about the real problems, which are so boring and tiring, please.

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