Huffpost Italy
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It was just a matter of time. There was no doubt that the first national political leader to ride the rebellion of merchants against Amazon in view of the next Christmas was Matteo Salvini. After all, the opportunity was too tempting for someone who for years – and with a wise use of social networks – knows how to ride the deepest anxieties of the country without however giving rational answers. In this case, the Northern League leader was very quick to express the fear of small neighborhood shopkeepers of being further outclassed by online commerce, especially in view of a Christmas period that promises to be meager, given the restrictions and red areas in many Italian regions .
Salvini posted on Facebook and Twitter a pseudo-poll that has nothing scientific in which he asks his followers if it was right to boycott Amazon, going to buy gifts in stores instead of on the web platform. The result, it goes without saying, is a plebiscite in favor of the neighborhood shops, so as to transform the question (rhetoric) into a clear affirmation legitimized by popular response. A trick, this, that Salvini has repeated several times in the past, starting with the complaint of never tried – and indeed denied by the numbers, the real ones – “invasion of migrants”. It must be said that Salvini did not do everything by himself this time, but he followed in the wake of none other than the French left-left that launched the petition beyond the Alps #NoelSansAmazon: to be signed by the socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, the environmentalist and former minister of the environment Delphine Batho, Greenpeace France, the association of French bookshops and so on.
Now, the problem is not so much defending Amazon, an American multinational that has generated monstrous profits in the last year thanks to lockdowns and new consumer habits. Jeff Bezos has money, lawyers, influence and enough media power to stand up for himself. The real question is another: a politician of depth should at least try to give a serious answer to a serious problem or how to help small traders not to suffer, but rather exploit, the technological revolution. Because if there is one thing that the history of humanity teaches us it is that there is no turning back from technological leaps. Responding to the challenge of online commerce by calling the masses to boycott Amazon at Christmas time is like stopping the wind with your hands. What would Salvini have done at the beginning of the twentieth century when the first ugly and smelly cars began to supplant carriages, even the largest and most luxurious ones? Would he have asked for a boycott of Ford? The only rational answer that can be given to those who are displaced by technology is another: take advantage of it and adapt your business to it. After all, the web is a free space where even small traders can offer their products and services, perhaps associating themselves and making economies of scale. Otherwise, all that remains is to let oneself be taken by instinct and irrationality and do like those workers who at the beginning of the nineteenth century destroyed the first machines of the industrial revolution because they took away work. They called themselves Luddites. Here, Salvini, First Luddite of Italy.
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