The European Commission has withdrawn the decalogue that wants to dictate the correct words, eliminate references to religion and gender, make even the simple “Ladies and Gentlemen” disappear. The language bureaucrats, whom history has taught to be the most dangerous, have agreed to take a step back. They will rewrite an ambiguous document which by claiming to guarantee “the right of every person to be treated equally” ends up denying the possibility of everyone to show their diversity. When the obsession with inclusion turns into a myopic cancellation.
A battle is won, but the war is still long. We need to know. It will not be easy to preserve traditions, to be able to say “father” and “mother” instead of “parent 1” and “parent 2”, to safeguard Christmas or to continue writing without asterisks. Given the times, the protection of supposed minorities could eventually overwhelm the majority. God forbid. Provided that the word “God” can be used.
The long wave of “correct speech”, the nightmare of discrimination and the desire to standardize tastes and tendencies are violent phenomena that feed on fanaticism and stupidity, which abound today. Fortunately, however, the Europeans (who are not exactly the “citizens of the European Community”) have an advantage over the Anglo-Saxon world, the United States in the first place, where the combination of politically correct, cancel culture, Woke ideology and #MeToo has sparked a crusade the end of which cannot be seen. We Europeans, and we Italians in particular, are more cautious and disenchanted. On average, our conservatives are less rigid than Republicans and progressives less intolerant than liberals. It is probable that precisely the millennial Judeo-Christian tradition will ultimately save us from the worst extremisms. Educated to respect the right differences, we will avoid destroying the person in the name of Ideology.
The hope, as always, is the young. And the fear, if anything, is that precisely the boys, understood as boys and girls, are instead the weakest in the face of those who, wanting to include at all costs, end up generating the worst discrimination. They call it the “snowflake generation”, and they are the young people, born between the 90s and the 2000s, too fragile and sensitive to the hardships of the world to accept criticism and defend values, principles and roots. So afraid of offending someone, they don’t talk about anything anymore. They don’t read bad books, they don’t see scandalous films, they don’t look at shameless pictures. Thus they risk melting into the worst of approved worlds. No guys: don’t be neutral. This is not the time.
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