Dim Bulbs
“Dunce,” Norman Cabrera
A few days ago – (here) – we spoke slightingly of the intellectual powers of certain members of the current Italian Government. Since that was only en passant, we didn’t bother to explain that we did not mean that they aren’t intelligent in some abstract way, but rather that they aren’t clever, that they are unable to apply their intelligence. The Italian language is quite careful about this distinction and so are we.
At any rate, chance has offered us a possible explanation for the phenomenon. Mr. Gianni Cuperla, a Deputy elected in the lists of the Democratici di Sinistra – the “Left Democrats” – outlined the other day in a conference the mechanism of intellectual succession that used to apply in the old Italian Communist Party (PCI), of which his present formation is the principal heir.
As Cuperla tells it, when as a very young man he first reached the PCI’s national headquarters in Rome, a high-ranking insider took him aside to explain how the place functioned. The Party Secretary, he was told, always chose as his designated heir in the organization someone he judged to be less intelligent than himself so as to reduce the threat of being pushed out of office before time. When, later, his successor moved to the top slot, that man did the same, choosing as his deputy someone he judged a notch lower in intellectual wattage as protection against an internal coup.
This deputy as well then chose as his own heir a still dimmer bulb; someone not quite clever enough to be a problem. On and on the cycle ran, intelligence successively dripping away, until the surviving Party Secretary reached such a level of general idiocy that when he moved to chose his own successor, he was no longer able to clearly distinguish what he was doing and picked an heir he thought to be a fool, but who was in fact a genius – who then of course immediately bumped him out of the way, starting the whole cycle all over again.
Though Cuperla probably told this story to reflect – possibly not positively – on the abilities of his own Party Secretary, Mr. Piero Fassino, “Upper Italy” cannot help but remember that the Democratici di Sinistra is not the only party which derives somehow from the solidly stalinist tradition of the defunct Italian Communist Party.
In many respects, the purest strain is conserved within the ranks of an organization called Rifondazione Communista – the “Refounded” Communist Party. Rifondazione is present in the Prodi Government with a Ministry or two. The “historical” rifondista leader, Mr. Fausto Bertinotti, is in fact the President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies – roughly, the “Speaker of the House” – and his Deputy, Mr. Franco Giordano, has taken over as party leader.
Giordano the other day found himself in a televised debate on the presence of Italian troops in Afghanistan, a hot issue here. Another participant, General Carlo Jean – a retired military man who also managed to receive the “Ghandi” peace prize from Unesco and is not a hawk – asked the leader of Rifondazione what Italian troops serving against the Taleban should do if these last managed to trap a British patrol. Should they go to the aid of the Brits?
Mr. Giordano thought that over for a while and then said “No.”
Though this exchange did not attract much attention – Idiots say idiotic things; where’s the news? – we suspect there are probably better political answers to General Jean’s question even if, like Giordano, you believe all capitalists ought to die in a fire.
Taking this back to what we said above, it may then be possible to hazard an hypothesis; Rifondazione Comunista is for the moment no threat at all. It’s next leader though is liable to be a genius and we had all better watch out.