Italians should stop being Italian and caring about their National interest

In 1927, Julien Benda denounced ‘’The treason of intellectuals”, or the pursuit of excessive nationalist preferences by his contemporaries over universal values. Ninety years later, roles have been reversed. The intellectual class of the West has a new religion, globalisation, and has completely forsaken the native communities of the West.

If the working class of the West is suffering or if the middle class is shrinking, it does not matter because globalisation has brought ‘’global economic growth” and the rest of the world is better off. Similarly, when Western intellectuals lose their leveraged bets in the global financial casino, and the whole casino crashes, it is up to the average Westerner to ‘’save the world” at its expense. A cry of horror rises when Donald Trump wants to protect manufacturing jobs instead of ‘’saving the world” from climate change. Westerners do not like Islamic terrorist attacks? That’s too bad for them; investment from Gulf countries that sponsor Wahhabism or the Muslim Brotherhood, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are more important than the lives of Western citizens. The priority should be to let Gulf countries fund mosques and cultural centres and make sure they are not offended whenever one of their own murders Western citizens.

The lower classes of the West should just take all the problems deriving from globalization, and they do not have the right to complain; otherwise, they are ignorant and bigots for failing to appreciate the greatness of universalism.

The future of the EU: from “United in diversity” to “Destroy European diversity”
Article 2, paragraph 3 of the Treaty of Lisbon reads: “The EU shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity and shall ensure that Europe’s cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.”

This is not true anymore. Emboldened by the victory of Macron in France, globalist intellectuals are now in need of a scapegoat for the shortcomings of their project. When old-fashioned xenophobia or an imaginary threat from Russian isn’t enough to convince European citizens, then the blame is shifted to national identities.

In a recent article appearing on Voxeu, the portal of the Center for Economic Policy Research, Italian academics Alesina, Trebbi, and Tabellini identified “nationalism” as the obstacle to “European integration” (Europe as an optimal political area: New findings, CEPR 2017-06-02), specifically the fact that citizens identify with their own national community due to shared history, language, and traditions. Hence, these need to go. The authors specifically name education as the vehicle to dissolve the cultural identities of different European people and, thus, their loyalty to the local community.

Equally important, politicians shouldn’t feel pressured to defend the national interest in European meetings: if the Euro currency ends up damaging Southern European economies, it doesn’t matter; unity should be preserved over the economic interests of Southerners – impoverished and unemployed. If the latter want to be better off, maybe they should just forget who they are, move to Germany, and let their homeland fall apart. After all, it’s what globalist liberal intellectuals do: as long as there is a seat in Bruxelles, who cares about Naples?

If the United States of America really is the model European integration has to follow, then European people should be wary of what’s next. A quick analysis of last year’s U.S. election showed on one side the coastal liberal elites and on the other, the central states of the common man – forsaken, mocked, and then berated for not appreciating a system that sees him as the regular victim of the problems of globalisation. Is it really the model we want to build ‘’united Europe” on? – a group of isolated cities of bureaucrats, politicians and intellectual frauds completely detached from reality and the problems of the common man?

Most importantly, if academics not only have no loyalty toward their national community but want to eradicate that sense of loyalty, then should citizens still look at them for answers to their problems?