La Première ministre Giorgia Meloni lors des communications de la Première ministre avant le Conseil européen du 19 décembre, au Sénat. Rome (Italie), 18 décembre 2024 (Photo de Massimo Di Vita/Archivio Massimo Di Vita/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)
Les grands processus d’unification de la fin du XIXe siècle ont inspiré certains des auteurs les plus célèbres du monde. En 1886, Henry James a exploré la relation triangulaire entre un vétéran de la guerre confédérée du Mississippi et deux abolitionnistes féministes de la Nouvelle-Angleterre dans Les Bostoniens. Quinze ans plus tard, Buddenbrooks de Thomas Mann a fait la chronique non seulement la chute d’une famille de marchands hanséatiques, mais aussi le fossé persistant entre le nord et le sud en Allemagne.
Si Henry James et Thomas Mann écrivaient relativement près de la période qu’ils décrivaient, Le guépard de Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958) a été écrit près d’un siècle après l’événement. Il est néanmoins considéré comme un récit classique du Risorgimento italien, l’examinant à travers le Prince de Salina, un aristocrate sicilien d’une quarantaine d’années qui lutte contre les forces déchaînées sur l’île par l’effondrement de l’ancien régime bourbonien en 1860. Et la version cinématographique de Luchino Visconti (1963) reste l’une des œuvres cinématographiques les plus puissantes jamais créées.
Le guépard est une œuvre d’art extraordinairement ambivalente et complexe, mais du point de vue historique et politique, elle est dominée par deux thèmes. D’abord, il y a la tension entre continuité et changement. Le Prince, initialement loyal au Roi de Naples, est persuadé par son jeune neveu impétueux, Tancredi, qu’il devrait embrasser la révolution et ce faisant, la neutraliser. « À moins que nous ne prenions nous-mêmes les choses en main maintenant, » avertit fameusementTancredi, « ils nous imposeront une République. Si nous voulons que les choses restent telles qu’elles sont, les choses devront changer. »
Du moins en surface, il semble que le pari du Prince porte ses fruits. Les zélotes révolutionnaires de Garibaldi sont bientôt remplacés par les officiers piémontais raffinés de la nouvelle armée italienne unie. Les habitants de la retraite estivale du Prince à Donnafugata l’accueillent comme si rien n’avait changé. Tancredi épouse la fille du riche maire, le parvenu Don Calogero, et se lance en politique.
Deuxièmement, Le guépard expose l’échec de l’unification italienne. Lampedusa montre qu’il s’agissait essentiellement d’une prise de contrôle du sud par le nord. L’envoyé piémontais envoyé pour persuader le Prince de devenir sénateur dans la nouvelle législature unie fait référence à l’ « heureuse annexation » avant de se corriger rapidement en « union » tandis que le Prince lui-même prédit que cela « signifiera simplement un dialecte torinois plutôt qu’un dialecte napolitain, c’est tout ». L’unification a également été entravée dès le départ par la malhonnêteté des nationalistes libéraux qui ont simplement rejeté les votes contraires lors du référendum sur l’unification. Dans le film, l’annonce du résultat truqué devient farcesque alors que le groupe désaccordé continue d’interrompre le discours plat de Don Calogero.
La pertinence durable du Guépard pour l’Italie est évidente. Près de 175 ans après l’unification, le pays reste fondamentalement divisé entre le nord et le sud, et plus que tout autre pays européen. Le Mezzogiorno — comme on appelle souvent le sud du pays — est toujours très en retard par rapport au nord plus développé. Un grand parti politique contemporain, la Lega, anciennement Lega Nord, a prôné la sécession par le passé. Pas étonnant que Le guépard soit un texte de référence dans les écoles italiennes.
C’est en ce qui concerne l’Europe dans son ensemble, cependant, que le livre résonne le plus puissamment aujourd’hui. Avant de pouvoir comprendre pourquoi, nous devons mieux comprendre les croyances et les intentions de l’auteur. La phrase cynique selon laquelle les choses changent pour que tout reste pareil était certainement la croyance de Tancredi et l’espoir du Prince, mais elle ne reflétait ni le programme de Lampedusa, ni ce qu’il essayait de transmettre sur la nature du Risorgimento. Elle a été largement mal interprétée.
L’auteur désespérait non seulement de l’aristocratie sicilienne dont il était issu, mais aussi de l’île dans son ensemble. Nous savons grâce à son excellent biographe David Gilmour que Lampedusa n’était pas un réactionnaire, mais un whig anglofile. Il souhaitait ardemment que ses ancêtres aient saisi, par exemple, les possibilités qui leur étaient offertes par la constitution sicilienne de 1812, négociée par les Britanniques. Il ne voulait rien de plus que voir ses compatriotes se réveiller de leur torpeur et rejoindre ce qu’il appelait dans le roman « le flux de l’histoire universelle ». Visconti a bien capturé cette inertie avec les deux grandes scènes qui encadrent son film : la longue récitation d’ouverture du rosaire, si brutalement interrompue par la nouvelle de l’atterrissage de Garibaldi ; et les séquences de danse interminables, une sorte de rosaire aristocratique, à la fin, ponctuées par des coups de feu marquant l’exécution de quelques révolutionnaires désormais redondants.
C’était en fait le Prince lui-même qui a livré l’accusation la plus dévastatrice de l’échec de la Sicile à progresser. Certainement, le genre d’envoyé piémontais naïf demande : « Les Siciliens doivent-ils vouloir s’améliorer ? » Le Prince répond que « les Siciliens ne veulent jamais s’améliorer pour la simple raison qu’ils se croient parfaits ; leur vanité est plus forte que leur misère ». Leur « fierté », continue-t-il, n’est que « cécité ». Ce que les Siciliens veulent de la politique, dit le Prince, c’est « dormir et ils détesteront toujours quiconque essaie de les réveiller ». C’est pourquoi, explique-t-il, l’île a toujours été une « colonie » et, nous supputons, le sera toujours.
Sans surprise, Le Guépard a choqué les parents aristocratiques de Lampedusa lorsqu’il est sorti, et a indigné l’opinion publique en Sicile. Le livre était clairement une accusation de l’île et de son histoire. Leonardo Sciascia, alors le plus grand écrivain vivant de Sicile, l’a attaqué avec amertume sur ces bases. S’il a ensuite fait amende honorable, c’était seulement parce qu’il en était venu à être d’accord avec Lampedusa.
L’auteur ne croyait pas que les choses ne changeaient pas. Elles changeaient clairement, même dans le roman. Le pouvoir du Prince, et celui de sa classe, s’évanouit de mille manières. Lui-même reconnaît dans un échange célèbre avec son confesseur, le Père Pirrone, que la noblesse n’a obtenu qu’un sursis, sans développer une stratégie viable pour la survie à long terme. En temps voulu, Mussolini a plongé la nation dans une guerre catastrophique, à laquelle Lampedusa fait allusion seulement en passant, dans une remarque sur la bombe américaine fabriquée à Pittsburgh qui a ensuite détruit le palais où le bal a eu lieu. Lorsque Lampedusa écrivait dans les années cinquante, les derniers conquérants de la Sicile étaient les Anglo-Américains qui ont débarqué sur l’île en 1943, chassé les nazis et réduit en miettes sa maison d’enfance à Palerme.
L’Europe aujourd’hui est l’Italie d’hier (et d’aujourd’hui). Le continent, a déploré Henry Kissinger en 2019 lors d’un événement politique, avait « démissionné » et ne faisait ni une contribution financière suffisante ni une contribution intellectuelle adéquate à la défense commune. S’il persistait dans cette position, Kissinger a également averti, le continent finirait par devenir un « appendice stratégique de l’Eurasie », du cartel sino-russe — effectivement, une colonie.
Kissinger aurait facilement pu élargir l’accusation. Au moment de ses remarques, l’Union européenne tentait de gérer une monnaie commune sans un État commun ni même une politique économique commune, provoquant une crise de la dette souveraine qui a failli détruire l’euro. Elle avait créé une zone de voyage commune sans passeport sans sécuriser correctement sa frontière extérieure, entraînant une crise migratoire sans précédent. Pendant ce temps, le continent perdait rapidement son avantage économique au profit de l’Indo-Pacifique. Dans le domaine de la sécurité, l’Europe ne parvenait pas seulement à se mobiliser contre les ambitions de Vladimir Poutine, mais approfondissait en réalité sa dépendance à l’énergie russe par la construction d’un second pipeline à travers la mer Baltique.
Depuis lors, la situation s’est encore détériorée. Même l’attaque à grande échelle de Poutine contre l’Ukraine, bien qu’elle ait produit la plus grande réponse européenne à ce jour, n’a pas entraîné de changement radical. En fait, certains pays européens comme l’Allemagne commencent à se retirer des positions fermes qu’ils avaient adoptées au départ. Le très médiatisé Zeitenwende d’Olaf Scholz a donc rejoint la longue liste des tournants où l’histoire allemande (et européenne) a échoué à tourner. Le gouvernement de Scholz voulait changer les choses juste assez pour qu’elles puissent rester les mêmes. En termes de sécurité, la plupart de l’Europe n’est encore guère plus qu’une colonie américaine, complètement dépendante de la protection militaire des États-Unis. Mais alors que la guerre en Ukraine atteint son dénouement et que le président élu Donald Trump menace de retirer, ou du moins de renégocier, le parapluie de défense américain, le continent doit se réveiller de son profond sommeil sicilien.
Si les Européens veulent vraiment que les choses restent à peu près les mêmes, en d’autres termes, maintenir leur niveau de vie, leur sécurité et leur intégrité territoriale, ils devront apporter des changements très profonds. Comme l’ont répété des observateurs britanniques et américains, y compris l’auteur actuel, il y a fondamentalement deux options. L’Europe peut former une union politique complète rassemblant toutes les ressources du continent sur le modèle du Royaume-Uni ou des États-Unis. Alternativement, le continent peut se reconfigurer en une confédération plus lâche d’États-nations souverains chacun véritablement engagé dans sa propre défense et celle collective à travers l’OTAN. Jusqu’à présent, les Européens n’ont fait ni l’un ni l’autre, non pas parce que quelqu’un les en empêche, mais parce que, comme les Siciliens du Guépard, ils préfèrent le reste de l’oubli à l’effort d’action.
Il est fort probable que ni l’élection de Donald Trump, ni la situation désastreuse en Ukraine ne parviennent réellement à sortir l’Europe de sa torpeur. Alors que la Russie avance, les Européens réciteront des rosaires interminables sur la nécessité de « passer à l’action », mais ils n’entreprendront pas la réforme fondamentale nécessaire. La vanité de l’Europe est plus forte que son sens de la misère stratégique. Comme la Sicile de Lampedusa, le continent se pense déjà parfait, et certainement bien supérieur à ses enseignants anglo-américains. Mais l’idée que les Européens doivent juste changer un peu pour que les choses restent les mêmes est une illusion. Pendant que le continent dort, les choses changent, et continueront de changer, mais pas en mieux.
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SubscribeAgree that Wes Streeting’s decision is only a step, albeit an important step, in returning the NHS to sanity when it comes to Trans ideology. Sensible article.
It’s really the most important area of concern. Compared to the risks involved in destroying lives, referring to pregnant women who think they are men, as men, is pretty small beer.
If calling an individual pregnant woman “sir” because she demands it was all that was implied by the undermining of sex based language then you might have a point.
Personally I don’t use “preferred pronouns” for the same reason I don’t speak to their imaginary friends. I refuse to be coerced into affirming something I know is not true. However, I understand that, for example, midwives have to focus on the safe delivery of the child and mother, not fixing the mental health of delusional people.
But that’s not where it ends is it.
Accommodating these fantastical beliefs has led to the attempted “de-sexing” the language of health information, making it confusing or even unintelligible to people not familiar with the current Newspeak. In circumstances where clarity of information is fundamentally important, the NHS is asking people to navigate an ideological language which seeks to obscure and overturn basic biological facts.
And as I mention above, prioritisation of gender over sex in record keeping is playing havoc with the data and statistics which public services, including health, rely on for planning.
What started with “being kind” and respecting people’s identity has very quickly (and predictably) led to clinicians not being able to do their jobs properly and an astonishing rise in the number of female rapists being processed by the courts.
I agree that accurate data is important. So something like F(S) M(G) would make sense.
I get your point, but we all collude in this sort of stuff all the time. Have you never been to a leaving do where everyone applauds as the speaker says that an obnoxious and useless member of staff will be “sorely missed”. It’s a language game.
That’s a false equivalence in multiple ways.
In the circumstances you describe we are expected to abide by the vague social convention of applauding, but nobody is being forced to do so under threat of sanction.
Also, the value of that staff member is a matter of opinion. Even if they are objectively useless at their job, some may value them for other reasons.
It is also of no particular significance, because they are leaving. Please note that I would not go along with the pretence that they are valued in other circumstances where there are consequences, such as a salary or performance review.
As we are increasingly seeing (though should have been obvious all along) coercing society into affirming that men are women (and vice versa) if they say so has a demonstrable negative impact on things like women’s rights, safeguarding of children, and freedom of speech.
Excellent reply.
I thought it was a good reply too, though I wasn’t claiming an exact equivalence. Just making the point that our lives are full of fictions of all sorts. We really don’t live our lives n the pure light of truth.
That’s not even the half of it. Its about forcing everyone else to affirm what they know is a lie, that men can become women if they say so and vice versa. The bigger and more ridiculous the lie that you can coerce people into accepting, the more control you have.
As so often, Orwell saw this coming:
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
If the policy simply stopped at “respecting a patients gender identity” at a clinician-to-patient level, then it might be defendable. There are circumstances in which a doctor will legitimately judge that it is preferable to refer to a patient by preferred pronouns, for example in order to expedite treatment for a distressed patient.
But of course it doesn’t stop there. As with so many other areas, once you allow men to self-identify as women, then it becomes functionally impossible to maintain a separate women’s category. Sooner or later – normally sooner – a man will self-identify into that service, sport, refuge or whatever and it is no longer a separate women’s service.
I was at a Future of Government IT conference recently where a delegate (who turned out to be Maya Forstater) raised a point from the floor that NHS radiographers are having to double-check whether every patient might be pregnant because gender is being recorded, not sex. They simply can’t trust that the patient record contains the correct information they need for their clinical purpose any more. Not only is this a waste of valuable NHS time, it risks having a catastrophic impact on health service planning if some of the most important data can’t be relied upon.
Increasingly it is women identifying as men – hence the pregnant man stuff.
Would it really cause so much outrage if NHS staff simply asked about biological sex? They could simply ask everyone. Certainly quicker than pretending biological men can be pregnant.
It only causes outrage to the type of dimwit idealogues who think that recognising biological reality is “violence”.
Unfortunately that group has disproportionate influence.
But do we know that is the case, or are we just assuming it is?
You may well be right, and that’s my experience of activists in general. But do we know that the average trans person behaves like that?
It only takes one to complain and then all hell breaks loose.
Perhaps – but that’s our fault for taking fools seriously.
I don’t think the average trans person behaves like that at all. Certainly the limited number I have met in my life haven’t.
Just as I don’t think the average black person is bothered on a day by day basis by white privilege.
I do think that a proportion of highly vocal trans people and activist fellow travellers have had a disproportionate influence in this area.
On that we agree. Though this isn’t new with trans. Activists have been up to this nonsense for as long as I can remember.
Interesting that you mention Orwell.
Current ‘wokeness’ will propel us into very dangerous conditions in the near future and beyond. Control is coming in the form of the ‘social credit system’ that is being adopted from China. Canada will unfortunately be one of the first countries to implement these draconian measures that closely parallel Orwell’s 1984…
I look forward to the law suits for “child mutilation” hitting full flow.
And watch all those doctors involved go into hiding, change their names, and scurry off overseas. Like all such people, when the tables turn, they’re the first to say it wasn’t them and that, secretly, they were against it all along. It would be a moot point to call them gutless creeps, of course!
Congratulations to Wes Streeting on doing this. I do wonder however about the design of suggested future studies. Which group of children would be selected for possible mutilation in these experiments ?
It’s an outrage that the NHS uses resources to push political ideas.
I doubt that the NHS would save much money from ditching EDI but it would, perhaps, focus minds back to their reason for being.
But when did it start doing that?
Perhaps you should read the article again
Many years ago men married women and they had babies together. Perhaps things were better then and perhaps they weren’t, but things have changed and become more complex since then. A child can now have two dads or two mums.
But I’m not sure we can really turn the clock back now to those simpler times. So why call a sudden halt only with trans? Is pretending that a child can be born of a man so different to pretending that a child can have two mothers?
Yes, it is. A child who has two mothers is not having their body pumped full of chemicals that will irreversibly alter their bodies, lead to healthy body parts being cut off for ideological reasons, and ensure that they’ll never have a satisfactory and/or fulfilling sex life. So, I would say that there is a BIG difference.
There are multiple issues here with varying degrees of seriousness. My comment is about the language issue. If we refer to two women as the mum in relation to a child, is that so different to referring to the mum as a man. Both deny biological fact.
The issue you refer to is a far more important one, and I think Wes S is right. I also think we need to know far more about what trans is as a phenomena.
It’s like I said on the Pink News story: ‘his husband’ directly led to ‘her p*nis’.
I noticed your comment, and agree.
. There’s a real misconception that this all started with trans. There are even people who treat woke and trans as synonyms. Either they were quite literally born yesterday or they have no cultural memory.
Took a Labour Minister to do the obvious. Good.
There is a degree of EDI twaddle in NHS, but it doesn’t impact vast majority anywhere near the amount commentators may suggest. We’re too busy. And furthermore managing Trans patients is not new. There have been trans patients for years and usually sensitive commons sense approach adopted.
As well as trans patients not being new it’s probably true that NHS attracted and employed a higher proportion of LGBs for decades too. Diversity per se doesn’t frighten most NHS workers in quite the way it seems to frighten others, esp the keyboard warrior types, because it’s the norm.
Thanks for a sensible post.
There have been trans patients for years and usually sensitive commons sense approach adopted.
So why did society deviate from those approaches to ones that defy common sense? It’s not ‘diversity’ to pretend that a man is a woman or that a guy can get pregnant.
The issue with Minors does seem to have been driven by a particular group of clinicians whom Cass Report rightly excoriates. The rest aren’t really new issues, although perhaps social media and greater awareness has led to some potential abusers using a Trans identity and Sturgeon got it all wrong in Scotland. However it’s wrong to lump all Trans into this. They are not new and in the NHS we’ve handled their care needs quite sensitively in the past without all the bandwagon jumpers. Most just want to quietly get on with their lives grappling with what they’ve been given. You see all types in hospital when folks are vulnerable. There is little in the human condition one doesn’t come across.
“They are not new”. They are exactly that. Before 1990 there wasn’t a single transgender person in the world.
The concept ‘transgender’ hadn’t been invented.
I don’t know about the concept, but there have been trans individuals throughout history and across cultures. You can’t base your arguments on ignorance.
For an entertaining example, read the account of Gaugins arrival in Tahiti.
And I guess you would contend there were no Gay people until 1967?
Keep posting. You’re making sense, in spite of the down votes.
This will be the Wes Streeting who worked at Stonewall as Head of ‘Education’?
Perhaps journalists should ask him why children are taught LBGT+ in primary school?
‘Normalising’ LBGT+ is part of the answer.
Why is this not ever mentioned or discussed in Unherd (stupid title)?
If you teach children what it is to be trans, some will decide they are.
Once again, you’re being ridiculously negative about Unherd for no good reason.
Unherd doesn’t exist to meet your individual requirements in the commissioning and publishing of articles. If you’re unhappy with the content, you have two obvious options:
1) Unherd asks for potential writers to submit their work and credentials for publication. Why not do so yourself, perhaps on the very topic you accuse it of not dealing with?
2) Unsubscribe.
In the end, making these whingeing requests of Unherd detracts from whatever other points you’re making, so you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
1. I have done this, obviously with no success.
2. Perhaps I will one day.
But, in the meantime,
I am perfectly entitled to call out Unherd (stupid name. Replace it with Herdthinking please) on the fact they feature no writer to explain what Gender Ideology is, and by doing that, they protect that Ideology.
How many articles are you unable to read that’ve centred around gender ideology? If not since you subscribed, try looking in the archives, under Kathleen Stock, for instance.
You’re welcome…
I am waiting to see an article that will criticise Gender Ideology. I don’t count the hundreds of articles that say it is absurd or gobbledegook or nonsense etc etc. Those have about as much value as someone crying and waving their arms about.
Stock argued that gender identity is a fiction. The trouble is someone will turn round and say “for me, it isn’t”.
Stock did not explain what gender is, where it came from and why. She did not explain why academic feminists created the concept of gender and support it to this day. She did not explain why they replaced sex with gender, and why gender is now taught in schools, and how it is being taught. She did not explain how Gender intersects with Race. This is vital if you want to refute the concept. You have to set out clearly what the Ideology is before you can rebut it.
No one makes the effort in Unherd.
Although KS does touch on this in her book. Perhaps she should cover on Unherd.
BTW – wrote comment above before reading your comment. It is irritating to see some of the originators of this taking a “nothing to do with me guv” approach.
My concern on this one is that it’s too one sided. And KS excepted, too much ranting and polemic.
I think what RL might feel is missing is an honest acceptance that gender ideology is rooted in feminism. Clearly it is, but the second wave feminists who appear on here would rather sidestep that uncomfortable fact.
The midwives always had the right idea about gender. Look between their legs
It is not only staff who are impacted by “trans inclusion” policies. ——-> How typically Orwellian. The demand for including one group and its wishes necessarily means excluding another group and its beliefs. It’s how we end up with stupidity like ‘pregnant people’ and ‘chestfeeding.’ Ideological capture is never pretty but the people in its grasp are quite stubborn about staying there.
The description of ” …a tiny minority of expectant mothers who identify as transmen or non-binary, women who are apparently triggered by words like “female” but not by pushing a baby out of their vagina” well captures the absurdity of gender ideology. As a lesbian weary of seeing the gay rights movement forcibly teamed with homophobic, misogynistic trans activism, I hope the insanity perpetrated under the nonsensical guise of “LGBTQ+” is coming to an end.
Adding this 12/13, because it gave me a much-needed laugh. Nellie Bowles of The Free Press in her rollicking Friday round-up. (Bowles and wife Bari Weiss are former NY Times writers who founded TFP. Weiss recently did an excellent interview with Keme Badenoch):
Forced puberty for all: The English must now all go through puberty, per vicious and fascist new NHS policies that ban the use of puberty blockers. Yes, even if your daughter plays with trucks, you cannot sterilize her with puberty blockers. If your son wears a dress, he must still be allowed to grow to a typical adult height and bone density. Horrible. What next? Gays having children?!
Important piece.