Year XXXVIII, Number 1, March 2025

MIchele Serra
Journalist and writer

The world is changing at an unexpected pace, history is galloping and allows no rest even for the laziest and most inattentive. Disorientation, and even an unusual level of fear, are widespread states of mind: we can all sense them in everyday conversations. You don't need a political scientist or a philosopher; all it takes is a friend at the bar to know that people are looking at the present with bewilderment, and at the future with apprehension.

Does the political and strategic concept of "the West" in which the latest generations of “Westerners” have grown up still exist? What will happen to Europe, which today feels like a clay pot squeezed between two iron pots filled with atomic bombs? Will the European way of life survive the pressure, which is challenging what we reductively call democracy, that is the separation of powers, equal rights and responsibilities for all, religious freedom and a secular state, equal dignity and equal serenity for those in government and those in opposition?

And if autocracies speak simply and clearly (and lie freely, thanks to the relentless technology-assisted distortion of reality), what language will Europe have to adopt in order for its voice to be not only audible, but also as loud, convincing, and seductive as the voice of its enemies?

I just answered these questions instinctively. Maybe even sentimentally – after all emotions do exist, and living without them is miserable. In my “L’amaca” (article in La Repubblica) a few days ago, entitled "Say Something European," and in my newsletter in Il Post, I wondered why we don't organize a big demonstration of citizens for Europe, for European unity and freedom. With no party flags, just European flags. Something that says, as only slogans with their impelling shorthand can do, "here we build Europe or we die." Ideally on the same day at the same time in all European capitals. At home and easier to organise, in Rome and/or Milan, hoping it spreads to the rest of Europe.

In both cases, the number of emails and messages saying "I'm in, I'll be there, just tell me where and when" was amazing. Nothing like this had ever happened to me in decades of public writing. It was as if I looked out of the two little windows I have to see if there was anyone in the street below to chat with, and saw a square already full of demonstrators. Not summoned, not organized, but with a will to be there that is not just a desire: it is a necessity. And even though my media audience is limited, as I know better than anyone, I said to myself that maybe it's time to persist. To give it a try. Not least because to do nothing, at such a grave and feverish moment in history, would be unforgivable.

I have no idea how to organize a demonstration. It is not my job. Unlike the ‘Sardines’ I don’t have the cultural and social dexterity to convene an event fast and widely. I can't even tell you what exactly the point of a demonstration of real-life people is in this new age: whether it is an out-of-date, pedestrian ritual in the face of the lightning-fast spread of gatherings arranged by algorithms; or a generous movement destined to fall apart when faced with the obvious political difficulties (unite Europe, but how? But when? And which of the hundred obstacles should we step over first without then stumbling on the second?).

But I think that a demonstration with only European flags, with the sole aim (no matter how far-reaching: the vision matters, the value matters) of the freedom and unity of European peoples, would be profoundly reassuring for those who take part, who would feel less alone and less powerless in the face of events. And it would not be an insignificant signal, it might even be an important signal, for those who hold the political agenda; they could not ignore that there is also a “bottom up” European identity in the field, an innovative and revolutionary political project that does not look to the past, but speaks to tomorrow. It speaks to our children and grandchildren.

So I appeal to anyone who has any idea how to do it, be it the last among those who vote or the first of the members of parliament, the best known public figure or the most anonymous citizen. Associations, unions, parties, as long as they are willing then to disappear, one by one, into the monochrome blue of the pro-European square. I have thrown my pebble in the pond, let's hope it rains stones.

*Article published on la Repubblica on February 27^th, 2025