Commentary
Savage power and constitutional resistance
Against the degeneration of politics, it is not enough to appeal to sacred first principles: to the equality and dignity of all human beings. What is needed – the only chance to save our democracies and with them peace, the security of humankind and our own dignity – is the expansion of the constitutional paradigm.
One fact is certain, beyond the rambling statements in Parliament by Ministers Nordio and Piantedosi on the Elmasry case and the senseless attacks on Rome prosecutor Lo Voi: Italy’s government let that criminal escape on a state flight instead of executing the order to arrest him issued by the International Criminal Court for 34 murders and 22 rapes, including one against a five-year-old child.
In doing so, the government has made itself complicit in the methods – murders, violence and torture – through which Elmasry manages to prevent migrants from leaving Libya and boarding a boat for Italy. At the same time, Italy, the proverbial holder of dubious distinctions that start with “the only civilized country where…,” has aligned itself with Donald Trump in attacking the International Criminal Court.
Our government's adoption of Trump’s ways has been total, both in its display of cruelty and its disregard for the rule of law.
The smug display of cruelty is the most conspicuous trait of the U.S. president's style: the dozens of executive decrees, many of them contrary to the U.S. Constitution, signed and then flaunted as a sign of his full powers in front of the cameras; the humiliation of dozens of migrants in chains as they are expelled from the country where they had been living fully integrated for years; the cynical plan for a gigantic ethnic cleansing aimed at evacuating more than two million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to make way for million-dollar villas and luxurious beach resorts in what would become “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Equally ostentatious is Trump's disdain for the rule of law, which is clearly nonexistent for him: from the dismissive stigmatization as a “travesty” of the trial in which he was convicted on 34 counts shortly before his inauguration, to the pardon granted to his 1,500 followers who unleashed the assault on Capitol Hill four years ago; from the ouster of the officials who investigated that assault to the astonishing decree banning the entry into the United States of all ICC personnel and freezing their assets held there because of indictments he doesn’t like, first and foremost against his friend Netanyahu.
The fact is, the Italian government is faithfully copying this Trumpian model. The display of inhumanity has been showcased long before, with the measures directed at hindering the rescues of shipwrecked people at sea, burying them under nonsensical bureaucratic requirements, and with the attempts, shot down by the courts, to deport migrants wrongfully seized at sea to Albania.
Now, the substantial complicity with Elmasry's crimes only adds to this record of cruelty, revealing what the substance of our government's migration policy actually is.
The argument that Elmasry was deported for Italy’s national security is ridiculous. Elmasry posed no danger to Italy, only to those interned in the Libyan camps, whom, of course, our government doesn’t see as people.
But the inhumanity has been compounded, just like in the displays staged by Trump, by an attack on the judiciary: first on the judges who didn’t approve the unlawful deportations to Albania, then on the Rome prosecutor Lo Voi for sending to the Tribunal of Ministers, as was his duty, a criminal complaint against the government for aiding and abetting Elmasry; then on the International Criminal Court itself, which dared to start investigating a complaint about Italy's failure to execute its arrest order.
This disregard for the rule of law and jurisdiction is the product of a primitive and anti-constitutional conception of democracy, which is becoming established and spreading in all populist regimes, which are steadily growing throughout the West.
In this conception, democracy consists solely of the power of the majority that emerged victorious from the last elections: a power that is meant to be enshrined as an expression of the will of the people, and which therefore cannot tolerate any limits, constraints or controls. Hence the reforms of the judicial system that have been carried out or attempted, in Turkey, Hungary, Israel, Mexico and Italy itself.
This is a conception that does enjoy popular support, together with the cruel practices it legitimizes. That is true. And it’s nothing new. That is exactly what happened with fascism and Nazism, which obtained mass support for their immoral and inhumane policies by twisting civic sense in a fascist direction and thus causing the collapse of morality and the sense of humanity at the mass level.
Against this degeneration of politics, it is not enough to appeal to sacred first principles: to the equality and dignity of all human beings, to their rights, to the separation of powers, the value of the rule of law and so on. In the absence of guarantees, these principles are just words, ignored or, even worse, mocked openly by the new masters of the world.
What is needed – the only chance to save our democracies and with them peace, the security of humankind and our own dignity – is the expansion of the constitutional paradigm, all the way to the level of the new savage powers-that-be. Only by bringing constitutionalism, the guarantees of rights and vital goods up to the level of today's global powers and their aggressions, is it possible to civilize these powers and make them useful for the implementation of those sacred principles, today reduced to empty rhetoric and clearly vanished from the outlook of politics and economics.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/poteri-selvaggi-e-resistenza-costituzionale on 2025-02-11