Invisible Power and Systemic Inertia: Who Really Decides Our Future?

From elites planning for tomorrow to organizations unable to change course, power does not always reside with those who formally make the decisions.

Is the future designed by someone, or is it the product of systems no one fully controls?

Every so often, claims resurface that certain events unfolding today were predicted, if not actually planned, decades ago by secret societies or small circles of influential people. Such claims range from historical interpretations to retrospective speculation and conspiracy theories. Dismissing them all as fantasies would be simplistic, but accepting them without evidence would be equally naive. There is, however, a more interesting question than whether someone is secretly controlling the world: to what extent can elites shape the future through long-term strategies, personal networks, and forms of influence that operate outside formal democratic institutions?

Organizations such as the Bilderberg Meetings and the Trilateral Commission provide examples of forums where influential figures from politics, business, and international affairs come together. Their existence and their ability to connect powerful people do not prove that they control governments and parliaments, let alone that they follow a secret agenda capable of determining world events. They do, however, illustrate why it is reasonable to examine the role informal networks play in shaping ideas, priorities, and political agendas.

Power, after all, is not exercised solely through explicit commands. It can also consist of determining which problems deserve attention, which solutions are considered realistic, and which alternatives are ruled out before public debate even begins. Those who help define the boundaries of what is politically possible can exert considerable influence without directly controlling every decision that follows.

Yet it would be a mistake to assume that every convergence of interests conceals a secret agreement. Individuals and organizations can pursue similar goals without ever coordinating their actions, simply because they share economic interests, cultural backgrounds, professional circles, and interpretations of reality. Sometimes, what appears to be the work of a single guiding hand is actually the result of different forces pushing in the same direction.

Long-Term Planning and the Trap of Past Decisions

There is another phenomenon, seemingly unrelated but equally worthy of attention. In everyday life, we often see political parties, public administrations, and large corporations pursue strategies developed months or years earlier, even when circumstances have changed and the results no longer match their original expectations.

An individual facing an obstacle can decide to change course relatively quickly. An organization, however, does not enjoy the same flexibility. A decision that initially seems limited in scope can generate procedures, commitments, investments, power relationships, and expectations that eventually constrain every subsequent choice. Abandoning that course means more than simply admitting a mistake: it means challenging part of the structure that has grown around the original decision.

In the social sciences, this phenomenon is known as path dependence. Past choices progressively narrow the options available in the present, sometimes making change prohibitively expensive or politically risky.

Within a political party, revising a strategy may mean admitting that a leader has failed or strengthening a rival faction. In public administration, changing a program may require revisiting procedures, responsibilities, and existing commitments. In a corporation, abandoning a failed investment may force management to acknowledge that substantial resources have been wasted.

In each case, continuing to pursue an objective can become more advantageous for those in power than changing course. The interests of individuals and those of the organization as a whole begin to diverge.

An organization can make decisions that are rational from the standpoint of its leaders while producing irrational results overall.

This is not necessarily a matter of incompetence. It may reflect a system of incentives that rewards loyalty to an established course more than the ability to recognize when it has failed.

When the System Becomes More Important Than the People

This dynamic reveals a fundamental characteristic of large organizations: they accumulate the past. Every decision changes, at least to some extent, the conditions under which subsequent decisions will be made.

A form of inertia emerges that cannot be explained solely by individual choices. Even a leader convinced that change is necessary may encounter insurmountable obstacles if they lack sufficient support, if authority is dispersed among different departments, or if revising a strategy threatens established power arrangements.

There is also an information problem. Hierarchical organizations can gradually lose touch with reality. Bad news gets softened as it moves up the chain of command, employees learn which messages their superiors want to hear, and official performance indicators sometimes replace a more direct assessment of results.

The system continues to collect information but loses its ability to learn from it.

By the time corrective action is finally taken, it may be too late. Or nothing changes at all, and the organization continues until an external shock—a financial crisis, an electoral defeat, or a shift in the broader environment—forces it to do what it could have done much earlier.

This pattern affects both public institutions and private companies. The difference lies not simply in the size of an organization, but in its ability to acknowledge mistakes without turning every revision into a personal or political defeat.

The Paradox of Power: Shaping the Future Without Controlling It

At this point, our two initial questions begin to converge. Elites can develop long-term strategies, build networks, and promote particular visions of society. Yet the structures they help create can eventually acquire a momentum of their own, constraining even those who originally set them in motion.

A project may begin with a deliberate plan and produce consequences that no one anticipated. Other groups may adopt it, adapt it to their own interests, or keep it alive for reasons entirely different from those that originally inspired it. Future generations may inherit its institutions and procedures without even knowing the circumstances in which they arose.

The result can appear coherent, almost as though it had been designed by a superior intelligence. Yet that coherence may simply emerge from the accumulation of partial decisions, each of which has narrowed the range of available alternatives.

This does not rule out coordinated strategies, confidential agreements, or deliberate attempts to influence the course of events. It does, however, require us to distinguish between what can be documented and what is merely inferred from the sequence of events.

A prediction that comes true does not, by itself, prove that someone caused the predicted event. The persistence of a policy does not necessarily establish the existence of a secret plan. And a convergence of interests is not automatically a conspiracy.

The more useful question is not merely who made a particular decision, but through what mechanisms that decision acquired the power to shape the future.

Formal Democracy and the Power to Define the Available Choices

In a democracy, formal authority belongs to the institutions established by law: governments, parliaments, public administrations, and oversight bodies. Yet the decision-making process is also influenced by actors who do not necessarily hold public office.

Business groups, professional associations, research institutes, media organizations, and personal networks can all help determine which issues make it onto the political agenda and which proposals gain credibility.

Not all such influence is illegitimate. Democracy needs associations, organized interests, expertise, and debate. The problem arises when access to public decision-making becomes disproportionately unequal, when certain interests can shape outcomes without adequate transparency, or when potentially valuable alternatives are excluded not because their merits have been properly assessed, but because they threaten established arrangements.

In this sense, the most consequential form of power may not be the ability to impose a decision, but the ability to determine which decisions are even considered possible.

And yet, even those who wield this kind of influence are not omnipotent. Elites are divided, they compete with one another, they make mistakes, and they can be overwhelmed by unforeseen events. They may shape the conditions in which the future unfolds without being able to determine its outcome entirely.

The power to influence is not the same as the power to control.

The Real Question: Who Can Still Change Course?

Perhaps, then, the most important lesson has less to do with the existence of secret societies supposedly planning the world and more to do with a less dramatic, but more observable, feature of collective life: the difficulty human beings face in escaping the consequences of their own decisions once they become organized into systems.

Organizations can be powerful and rigid at the same time. They can command enormous resources yet fail to solve relatively simple problems. They can devise sophisticated strategies without possessing the means to revise them when reality proves them wrong.

Sometimes there is a deliberate plan. At other times, competing groups have converging interests. In still other cases, no one actually wants the final outcome, yet everyone contributes to producing it because each person is defending their position, their procedures, or their immediate interests.

That is the contradiction: the future can be shaped by deliberate decisions, but also by mechanisms that no one fully controls. A system may continue moving in the same direction not because someone is constantly issuing orders, but because changing course has become too costly for those who would need to do so.

To understand power, therefore, it is not enough to look for the person issuing orders behind the scenes. We must also examine who sets priorities, who benefits from continuity, who can block change, and who pays the price for mistakes that no one is willing to acknowledge.

The decisive question is not merely who runs the system, but whether anyone within it is still free—and capable—of changing its course.

Because the greatest danger is not necessarily that someone planned everything. It may be that, at a certain point, no one has the power to change what has already been set in motion.

And so one question remains: Are we really governed by those who have a plan for the future, or are we prisoners of systems that keep reproducing themselves even when they no longer work, while those who could change them have too much to lose by trying?

Hitler Never Really Left

We like to believe history ends.

It doesn’t.

We defeat a dictator, bury a generation, sign treaties, build institutions, raise monuments, and teach our children that the nightmare is over. Then we congratulate ourselves for having learned the lesson.

But history does not care about our lessons.

Taking your medicine last year never stopped anyone from catching a cold the next.

The Myth of “Never Again”

Since 1945, the world has been at war again and again. Revolutions. Military coups. Civil wars. Dictatorships. Invasions. Ethnic cleansing.

We simply learned how to look away.

For decades, Western Europe enjoyed the luxury of watching much of this from behind a political and geographical glass wall. The wars were somewhere else: Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East. They were “regional conflicts.” They belonged to other people.

Then Yugoslavia exploded.

War returned to the European continent. Nationalism became a weapon. Cities were besieged. Populations were displaced. Ethnic cleansing became a reality not in some distant history book, but in Europe itself.

The glass wall cracked.

And suddenly, the comforting idea that certain horrors belonged to another age became much harder to defend.

History had not disappeared.

We had simply moved it out of the frame.

Hitler Never Really Left

No, Hitler did not survive 1945 as a man.

But the political conditions he exploited did not disappear from human nature.

Fear did not disappear. Economic insecurity did not disappear. National humiliation did not disappear. The desire for simple answers to complicated problems did not disappear. Neither did the temptation to blame someone else.

That is what “Hitler never really left” means.

Not that history repeats itself word for word. It doesn’t.

History changes its clothes.

The uniforms change. The slogans change. The technology changes. The enemies change.

But the machinery of fear can still be rebuilt.

The Democratic Shell

There is another uncomfortable reality: a democracy can survive institutionally while becoming increasingly hollow socially.

You can still have elections, parliaments, courts, constitutions, and political parties. You can preserve the machinery while losing the trust that makes the machinery legitimate.

And when people begin to believe that the system no longer represents them, protects them, or gives their children a credible future, something happens.

They start looking elsewhere.

Sometimes they look toward nationalism. Sometimes toward populism. Sometimes toward authoritarian leaders promising to cut through the institutional noise and restore order.

The response is often to condemn the symptom.

The harder question is to understand the conditions that made the symptom politically possible.

When the Market Becomes a Religion

For decades, Western societies were told that the market knew best.

Deregulation. Privatization. Flexibility. Competitiveness. Efficiency. Less government. More market.

These were not merely economic policies. They became a worldview.

The individual was increasingly expected to absorb risks once shared by society. The worker became “flexible.” The welfare state became “expensive.” Public services became “inefficient.” Inequality could be explained away as the unavoidable price of modernization.

For those who prospered, the system could look like freedom.

For those who lost security, bargaining power, community, or a sense of control over their future, it could look very different.

And here lies one of the great political contradictions of our time.

The same societies that embraced decades of neoliberal economics can now find themselves frightened by the political backlash produced by the social consequences of that economic order.

Enter Atlas

This is where Atlas comes in.

In the ancient myth, Atlas carries the heavens on his shoulders. He does not get to put the burden down. He simply carries it.

Forever.

That image has become strangely relevant to the modern West.

For decades, ordinary people were asked to carry the weight of globalization, technological disruption, labor-market transformation, fiscal restraint, international competition, and shrinking economic security.

They were told that this was the price of progress.

Keep carrying.

Keep adapting.

Keep competing.

Keep consuming.

Keep believing.

And now something has changed.

Atlas is tired.

Worse, Atlas has started asking a dangerous question:

Why am I still carrying the sky?

When Atlas Moves

That question is politically explosive.

Because if the people carrying the system stop believing in the system, the system itself begins to shake.

The backlash can take many forms: nationalism, protectionism, anti-establishment politics, isolationism, immigration restrictions, distrust of elites, nostalgia for a stronger state, and anger at international institutions.

Some of these responses may be contradictory. Some may be destructive. Some may be based on false assumptions.

But dismissing them as irrational does not make them disappear.

People do not become politically discontented in a vacuum. They respond to the world they believe they are living in.

And when enough people conclude that the existing order is no longer working for them, someone will eventually promise to tear that order apart.

The Dangerous Mistake

The dangerous mistake is to believe that defending democracy means defending every economic arrangement that currently exists within it.

It doesn’t.

Democracy is not a stock market index. It is not a balance sheet. It is not a permanent guarantee that tomorrow will resemble yesterday.

Democracy survives when people believe they have a meaningful stake in the society they inhabit.

Take that belief away for long enough, and formal institutions may remain standing while something much more important begins to collapse underneath them.

Trust.

Belonging.

Hope.

History Does Not Repeat. It Rhymes.

The twenty-first century will not reproduce the twentieth century.

There will be no perfect replay of 1933.

There doesn’t need to be.

History rarely repeats itself exactly.

It rhymes.

The danger is not that another Hitler will suddenly appear wearing Hitler’s clothes. The danger is that a society can once again create the conditions in which someone offering fear, certainty, enemies, and absolute solutions becomes politically attractive.

That is why “never again” cannot simply mean remembering the past.

It has to mean recognizing the mechanisms that made the past possible.

Otherwise, remembrance becomes ritual.

And ritual without understanding is little more than decoration.

The Sky Is Already Moving

Perhaps the most important question is not whether authoritarianism is returning.

Perhaps it is this:

What happens when the people holding up the existing order decide they no longer want to hold it?

That is the question behind the revolt of Atlas.

For decades, he carried the sky because he was told there was no alternative.

Now he is looking upward.

He sees the weight. He sees who benefits from the structure above him. And he is beginning to wonder whether the sky really has to remain where it is.

We can condemn Atlas for moving. We can fear what might happen if he lets go. We can insist that the old order is the only protection against chaos.

But there is one question we cannot avoid forever:

Why did Atlas become willing to drop the sky in the first place?

Because taking the medicine yesterday never made anyone immune to tomorrow’s fever.

When Money Starts Writing Politics

There is a transformation taking place in contemporary politics that we perhaps talk about far too little. It is not simply a question of left or right, nor is it confined to one particular country. And it cannot be explained merely in terms of corruption or lobbying. Something deeper is happening: the relationship between politics and economics has gradually been turned upside down.

For much of the twentieth century, politics, for better or worse, claimed to have a direction. There were major ideologies, major parties, and competing visions of society. Communists, socialists, liberals, conservatives, Christian democrats and nationalists could have radically different ideas about society, the economy, the role of the state and even human nature. But they had at least one thing in common: they knew where they wanted society to go.

The great ideologies also produced tragedies, mistakes, authoritarian regimes and spectacular failures. There is therefore no reason to romanticise them as though the past were somehow better. Yet they served one important function: they placed politics before interests. First came the vision of society; then came the economic policies needed to pursue that vision.

With the decline of the great ideologies and the transformation of political parties into increasingly electoral and media-driven organisations, something changed. Politics gradually lost part of its ability to define an independent direction. And when politics loses its vision, it inevitably becomes more dependent on those who possess what politics needs in order to survive: money, organisation, access to the media, networks of influence and the ability to mobilise support.

The problem, then, is not simply that political parties have donors. The real problem is the relationship that develops between the donor and the politician.

In a healthy democracy, politics should be able to say: this is the society I want to build; these are my principles; these are the objectives I consider important. Then, on the basis of that vision, it should seek the support of citizens and the resources necessary to put its programme into practice.

Naturally, a donor may share that vision. A company, an association, a professional organisation or a wealthy individual may decide to support a particular political movement because they believe in its ideas or because they consider those ideas compatible with their own interests. There is not necessarily anything scandalous about that.

The problem begins when the process is reversed.

When the politician no longer has a project and looks for people willing to support it, but someone with financial resources looks for a politician without a sufficiently strong vision and provides the resources necessary to make that politician advance an agenda that did not originate in politics, but in the interests of the donor.

At that point, politics risks becoming a profession devoted to representing someone else's interests.

The politician continues to speak to voters, make speeches, appear on television and publish messages on social media. Formally, he continues to make decisions through democratic institutions. But the fundamental question becomes a different one: how much of what he does actually comes from his own idea of the country, and how much comes from the interests of those on whom he depends financially and politically?

There is no need to imagine secret conspiracies or dark rooms where a handful of people decide the fate of the world. Reality can be much more ordinary and, precisely for that reason, much harder to confront.

Organised economic interests naturally seek to influence politics. That is what they do. The energy industry defends its interests, the automotive industry does the same, as do agriculture, pharmaceuticals, finance, technology and defence. Environmental groups, trade unions and social organisations also seek to influence public policy. In a free society, it is perfectly normal for organised interests to exist.

Their existence is not, in itself, the democratic problem.

The problem arises when those interests become stronger than the political system they are supposed merely to persuade.

If a politician supports renewable energy, for example, there is nothing inherently illegitimate about receiving support from people or companies operating in the renewable-energy sector. But the principle should work the other way around: the politician should support renewable energy because he believes it is in the country's interest and, precisely for that reason, seek support from people and businesses whose interests are compatible with that vision.

The difference may seem subtle, but it is fundamental.

In the first case, the politician has a conviction and finds donors who are compatible with it.

In the second, the donor finds a politician and asks, explicitly or implicitly, for an economic interest to be turned into public policy.

The same principle applies to every other sector.

A politician who wants to protect livestock farming should not seek funding from the plant-based food industry and then adjust his programme to its interests. Conversely, a politician who genuinely believes that meat consumption should be dramatically reduced should be able to seek support from those who share that vision, rather than pretending to believe something else in order to obtain funding from interests fundamentally opposed to his programme.

The point, therefore, is not to decide which interests are good and which are bad.

The point is to decide who comes first.

Politics or the donor?

This question becomes even more important when we consider modern finance and the growing concentration of capital. Large financial institutions, investment funds and major corporations can possess enormous economic influence. That does not mean that every large investor directly controls a government, nor that every political decision is the result of an order issued by some giant investment fund. Such claims would be simplistic and, in many cases, simply untrue.

But the problem of concentrated economic power remains.

When an increasing share of the resources required for political competition passes through a relatively small number of powerful actors, the risk inevitably grows that politicians will begin to regard the interests of those who provide the resources necessary to sustain them as political priorities.

And that is how democracy can continue to exist formally while gradually becoming hollow in substance.

People still vote, but the alternatives become increasingly similar.

Governments change, but certain major economic directions remain essentially untouched.

The people change, the slogans change, the colours of the parties change, but the boundaries of what is considered politically possible are increasingly defined by economic interests that politics is either unable or unwilling to challenge.

This is also where we can understand the problem created by the decline of ideology.

The old ideologies had at least one characteristic that we may be missing today: they were demanding. They forced politicians to declare where they stood. They imposed a certain degree of consistency. They offered answers about the economy, the state, property, work, family, society and international relations.

Today, politicians can change positions with remarkable speed, political parties can reshape their programmes according to the electoral climate, and political campaigns can be built more around communication than around a coherent vision.

This does not mean that we should return to the ideologies of the twentieth century.

Perhaps what we need is something different: not absolute ideologies, but principles strong enough to prevent politics from becoming a blank surface on which economic interests can simply write their own agenda.

Politics needs to recover its own idea of the future.

It should be able to say: this is the kind of economy we want, this is the kind of society we want, this is how we believe the relationship between state and market should work, this is the energy model we consider desirable, this is our industrial policy, this is our vision of welfare, this is where we believe our country should stand in the world.

Only then should it ask who can help finance that project.

That reversal of perspective could restore dignity to politics.

We do not necessarily have to eliminate political donors.

We have to make sure that donors cannot purchase a political agenda from politicians who have no agenda of their own.

The difference is enormous.

A democracy can tolerate lobbying. It can even benefit from organised competition between different interests, because a complex society needs its various groups to have the opportunity to make themselves heard.

What democracy cannot afford is for a lobby to become so indispensable that it can determine what political agenda must be pursued.

That is why transparency over political funding matters. So do traceable financial flows, strict conflict-of-interest rules, limits on the concentration of political funding and, above all, a different political culture.

Because no law can ever completely replace the individual responsibility of politicians.

A politician should be able to look a donor in the eye and say:

"You can support my project, but you cannot write it for me."

That should be the real dividing line.

Political funding should not buy politics.

It should fund politics that already exists.

Politics must come before money.

First there should be a vision. Then a programme. Then public support. And only after that should come the search for the resources required to put that programme into practice.

Not the other way around.

Money should not be allowed to search for a politician without ideas and turn him into its institutional representative.

It should be the politician — or the political party — with a clear idea of what it wants to achieve who seeks out citizens, businesses, associations and organised groups that share that vision and are willing to support it.

In the end, the problem facing contemporary democracy may be reduced to a single question:

Who should hire whom?

Should politics hire money, putting capital at the service of a collective project?

Or should money hire politics, turning politicians into the executors of private interests?

The answer should be obvious.

If we want to preserve democracy, politics must remain capable of deciding where society is going.

It can then look for people willing to pay for the journey.

But we cannot allow those who pay for the journey to decide the destination.

The Democracy of Indifference

The problem is not that we have somehow become a nation of losers. That would be an easy, superficial explanation that shifts all the blame onto individuals. The real issue is far more profound: society itself has changed, and not for the better. What truly defines our age is not the existence of power, inequality, or injustice—those have always been part of human history—but the gradual disappearance of collective outrage.

We live in a time when almost nothing is capable of shocking us anymore. Every event is consumed within hours before being replaced by the next headline. Outrage has become a short-lived emotion, rarely evolving into civic engagement or meaningful political action.

Meanwhile, politics increasingly resembles a mathematical exercise. Polls, algorithms, electoral marketing, statistical models, and voter segmentation have largely replaced long-term vision and political ideals. Managing public opinion has become more important than pursuing the common good. Decisions often appear to emerge from tightly connected networks of political, economic, and bureaucratic interests, while most citizens remain passive spectators.

More than a century ago, Alexis de Tocqueville warned about this danger. In his study of modern democracy, he argued that the greatest threat was not necessarily authoritarian government but excessive individualism. When citizens retreat into their private lives and abandon public affairs, political power naturally becomes concentrated in the hands of a few. Freedom is not always taken away; sometimes it simply ceases to be exercised.

A similar concern can be found in the work of José Ortega y Gasset. In The Revolt of the Masses, he described the emergence of the "mass man"—an individual who demands rights while avoiding responsibilities, who follows prevailing trends instead of developing independent judgment. Such a society becomes increasingly vulnerable to manipulation because critical thinking gradually gives way to conformity.

The reflections of Hannah Arendt are perhaps even more relevant today. Arendt argued that genuine politics exists only when citizens actively participate in the public sphere. Freedom is not merely the absence of oppression or the ability to cast a vote every few years; it is the capacity to act together, deliberate, and assume responsibility for the community. When isolation and passivity prevail, democracy may retain its institutions while steadily losing its democratic spirit.

From a psychological perspective, Gustave Le Bon demonstrated how crowds can be shaped by emotion and suggestion. Yet today's phenomenon is somewhat different. Rather than emotionally driven crowds gathering in public squares, we increasingly encounter isolated individuals connected through digital platforms—people who react instantly, express fleeting outrage online, and then quickly move on without creating lasting forms of civic participation.

These ideas are complemented by the elite theory developed by Gaetano Mosca. Mosca argued that every society, regardless of its political system, is governed by an organized minority. The difference between a healthy democracy and a declining one is not the absence of elites, but whether those elites remain accountable to vigilant citizens and robust institutions. When the majority becomes indifferent, organized minorities inevitably accumulate greater influence.

Likewise, Antonio Gramsci emphasized that power depends not only on coercion but also on cultural hegemony. Those who shape what society considers normal, acceptable, or even worthy of attention exercise a subtle yet extraordinarily effective form of power. Indifference rarely emerges on its own; it is often cultivated within a cultural environment where everything appears inevitable and nothing seems worth challenging.

The work of Zygmunt Bauman offers another important perspective. In what he called "liquid modernity," relationships become fragile, commitments temporary, and identities increasingly unstable. Political participation follows the same pattern: people mobilize for a few days, sign an online petition, share a post, and then move on. Commitment dissolves as quickly as it appears.

Finally, Erich Fromm argued that modern individuals often seek refuge in conformity to escape the burden of freedom. Genuine freedom requires responsibility, courage, and the willingness to take a stand. Many people find it easier to blend into the crowd and allow others to make decisions on their behalf.

Perhaps this is the defining feature of our era. We are not necessarily living under a more oppressive political system than previous generations. Rather, we are living in a society where an increasing number of citizens have voluntarily withdrawn from public life. They observe, consume information, comment, and complain—but rarely organize, participate, or assume responsibility for the common good.

History reminds us that democracies do not collapse only through coups or revolutions. They can also erode gradually through everyday indifference. When citizens stop viewing public life as a shared responsibility, power encounters fewer obstacles, less scrutiny, and weaker accountability.

The central question, then, is not whether we have become weaker as individuals. The real question is whether we are forgetting that democracy survives only as long as citizens are willing to participate, dissent, hold power accountable, and protect the common good. Once that civic spirit disappears, what remains is no longer a true political community, but a passive multitude grazing quietly while others decide its future.

Italy Does Not Need a Coach

Let us be clear: Italy does not need a coach. Not because the country is perfect as it is — far from it — but because, within the geopolitical framework of the Western world, Italy has such limited influence that its political class can afford to survive without being truly held accountable for results.

The perception is that, especially since the end of the Second World War, Italy's room for strategic autonomy has often been constrained by international, economic, and geopolitical factors. From this perspective, it becomes easier to understand why politics can turn into a self-referential system, capable of reproducing itself regardless of its actual effectiveness. When the most important decisions appear to be heavily influenced by external forces, political competition risks becoming a matter of managing the status quo rather than shaping the future.

At this point, it is impossible not to refer to Gaetano Mosca, the Sicilian political theorist who was one of the founders of modern political science. More than a century ago, Mosca developed the theory of the political class, arguing that every society — regardless of whether it calls itself a monarchy, a republic, or a democracy — is ultimately governed by an organized minority over a largely unorganized majority.

According to Mosca, the essential difference between political systems is not simply found in their formal institutions, but in the ability of ruling minorities to organize themselves, occupy positions of power, and preserve their influence over time. Political elites are inevitable; the real question is their quality, their openness to renewal, and their ability to serve society rather than themselves.

Mosca also introduced the concept of the "political formula": the set of ideas, values, and principles through which a ruling class justifies its authority and presents its power as legitimate. Ideologies may change, political language may evolve, and slogans may be replaced, but the underlying mechanism often remains the same: a governing elite creates a narrative capable of maintaining consensus.

Seen through Mosca's perspective, contemporary Italy offers a striking example. The Right speaks of national sovereignty and tradition. The Left speaks of progress, equality, and rights. The Centre presents itself as the voice of moderation and responsibility. Each side has its own political formula, yet they often appear unable to challenge the deeper structures that allow the system to reproduce itself.

Meanwhile, citizens continue to finance an increasingly expensive political machine. After the abolition of direct public funding for political parties, the relationship between politics and interest groups has remained at the centre of public debate. Parliament is often perceived as a place where party discipline prevails over individual responsibility, with representatives following the instructions of party leadership rather than engaging in genuine independent evaluation of every legislative proposal.

Years ago, Sergio Rizzo and Gian Antonio Stella exposed the phenomenon known as the "casta", highlighting the privileges and self-referential nature of political elites. Later, the events surrounding Luca Palamara contributed to a broader debate about the internal dynamics of the judiciary and the influence of professional networks within it. For many citizens, politics and the judiciary have come to symbolize two powerful institutions that, despite their different roles, may share a tendency toward self-preservation.

From this point of view, Italy's problem is not the absence of a ruling class. Mosca would argue that every society inevitably produces one. The real problem is the quality of its renewal. When an organized minority stops allowing new talent, competence, and fresh ideas to enter, it risks becoming a closed oligarchy, more interested in managing its own survival than in leading the country.

This is perhaps the deepest crisis of Italian politics: not simply a crisis of ideology, but a crisis of circulation among elites.

Neither of the major political camps seems capable of offering a genuine path of renewal. A part of the Right continues to speak as if Italy were still a major international power, while the country's actual weight in the global system is much more limited. On the other side, a part of the Left remains attached to cultural categories inherited from the Cold War, even though many of its economic policies have gradually aligned with the dominant neoliberal framework. It is a significant contradiction: a twentieth-century vocabulary combined with twenty-first-century economic practices.

Then there is the Centre, the transformed heir of the old Christian Democratic tradition, which struggles to define a clear identity and is often perceived more as a permanent mechanism of mediation than as a force capable of proposing a long-term vision.

In such a scenario, talking about a "coach" who can awaken Italy risks becoming an illusion. A coach can help someone who is willing to question themselves. But Italian politics often appears trapped inside a vast echo chamber, where every faction believes its own narrative is sufficient to explain reality.

This is where Gaetano Mosca becomes surprisingly relevant again. If his theory is correct, no coach can truly transform a country as long as its political class remains an organized minority speaking mainly to itself, while the majority of citizens remains fragmented, passive, and unable to exert continuous pressure for genuine change.

The problem, therefore, is not finding a coach for Italy.

The real question is whether Italian society still possesses enough awareness, organization, and determination to force its ruling class to renew itself.

Because history shows that nations do not decline only when they lack leaders. They decline when their elites stop being challenged.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain: An Example of a Voluntary Society of Silence

Censorship in the 21st century no longer resembles the censorship of the past.

It does not necessarily arrive with the sound of printing presses being destroyed, books being burned, or newspapers being shut down. In the digital society, it takes on a subtler form: it does not always prevent people from speaking, but it encourages many to ask themselves whether it is truly worth doing so.

Freedom of expression continues to be celebrated in official speeches as one of the pillars of democracy. No one openly declares the end of pluralism. No one claims to want to abolish dissent.

Yet, slowly, the boundary between a controversial opinion and an unacceptable opinion appears to be becoming increasingly narrow.

A joke, a comment, or a sentence written impulsively on social media can turn into a public controversy. A message can be taken out of context, shared thousands of times, and become the symbol of a much broader cultural conflict.

The result is not necessarily a society in which everyone is persecuted.

It is something more subtle: a society in which many people begin to police themselves.

The fear of consequences — legal, professional, or social — produces a new form of behaviour. People learn to modify their language, avoid certain topics, and choose their words more carefully. The most effective form of censorship is not always the one imposed from outside: it is the one that enters people’s minds and becomes permanent self-control.

In this way, public debate slowly transforms into a territory where certain issues become almost impossible to discuss calmly: immigration, religion, cultural identity, the relationship between majorities and minorities, and social transformations.

Each political side accuses the other of attempting to impose its own form of conformity.

Progressives fear the return of old prejudices and hate speech.

Conservatives, on the other hand, denounce the emergence of a new cultural orthodoxy, in which certain ideas are protected not by the strength of their arguments, but by social pressure.

Within this climate, the phenomenon of digital exile emerges.

Even in continental Europe, conservative writers, doctors, journalists, academics, and commentators describe a growing distance from the major digital public squares. Some report restrictions or controversies connected to their accounts; others simply claim to have withdrawn because they are tired of having to weigh every single word.

Thus, a migration towards alternative spaces begins to take shape.

Not a conquest of new territories, but a search for places perceived as freer.

Telegram has become, in the imagination of many dissidents, a modern “Ultima Thule”: not the land of victory, but the final refuge before silence. A digital frontier where conversations can be preserved that, according to its inhabitants, no longer find room in the great public arenas.

The central question is not only whether this perception is always accurate.

History shows, in fact, that collective perceptions can also produce real consequences.

When a growing number of people believe that certain opinions may carry too high a cost, they spontaneously alter their behaviour. No censor needs to stand at the door. The anticipation of a possible consequence may be enough.

This is the paradox of digital society: power does not necessarily need to order silence.

It may be sufficient to create an environment in which speaking becomes a risk.

And when a society reaches the point where the first censor is the citizen’s own inner fear, the fundamental question is no longer only about what is forbidden.

It is about what no one dares to say anymore.

Remigration: When a Word Should Alarm Europe

History's greatest tragedies do not begin with massacres.

They begin with words.

Words change the way a society sees part of itself. They redefine who belongs and who is viewed as an outsider. That is why the growing use of the term "remigration" in European political discourse should concern everyone, regardless of political affiliation.

Before asking whether such a policy is feasible, we should first ask what it actually means.

Remigration—for whom?

Listening to much of Europe's emerging right-wing rhetoric, the answer appears increasingly clear. The issue is not immigration as such. Immigrants from China, India, or Latin America are rarely presented as the central problem. Instead, the focus overwhelmingly falls on people from Muslim-majority countries. The debate, therefore, is no longer simply about immigration; it is about an alleged incompatibility between Islam and Western civilization.

Europe undeniably faces serious integration challenges. Pretending otherwise would be intellectually dishonest. Across the continent there are neighborhoods marked by social exclusion, crime, religious radicalization, unemployment, and the failure of integration policies. Ignoring these realities only strengthens political extremism.

But acknowledging these problems is fundamentally different from treating millions of people as a single, inherently suspect group.

This is where history deserves our attention.

In 1940, Nazi Germany developed the so-called Madagascar Plan, a proposal to deport Europe's Jewish population to the island of Madagascar, effectively treating an entire people as a geographical problem to be removed. The plan proved unworkable for military and logistical reasons. It was later abandoned, and the regime ultimately implemented the "Final Solution," leading to the systematic murder of six million Jews.

Mentioning this episode is not to suggest that contemporary advocates of remigration pursue the same objectives as the Nazi regime. Such a comparison would be historically inaccurate. Rather, it serves as a reminder of a broader lesson: whenever societies begin discussing entire groups of people primarily in terms of removal rather than as individuals with rights, responsibilities, and human dignity, they enter dangerous territory.

History offers other warnings.

In 1492, Spain expelled its Jewish population. More than a century later, it expelled the Moriscos—Muslims who had converted to Christianity. The goal was to create a religiously homogeneous kingdom. The result was immense human suffering and the loss of valuable economic, scientific, and cultural contributions.

In 1923, Greece and Turkey carried out a compulsory population exchange based almost entirely on religion. More than one and a half million people were forced from their homes. It was presented as a permanent solution to ethnic conflict, yet it left deep scars that endured for generations.

In 1947, the Partition of India triggered one of the largest forced migrations in modern history. Millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs crossed newly drawn borders in opposite directions. The promise was peace through separation. The outcome was mass violence, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees.

More recently, during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, Europe witnessed how rapidly multiethnic societies could collapse into brutality. Nationalist rhetoric transformed neighbors into enemies. Ethnic and religious identities became markers of exclusion, persecution, and murder. The Srebrenica genocide remains one of the darkest reminders of how quickly coexistence can unravel.

None of these historical episodes proves that today's Europe is destined to repeat the past. History never repeats itself in exactly the same way.

But it does teach one enduring lesson: societies rarely descend into violence overnight. They get there gradually—through polarization, fear, simplistic narratives, and the progressive dehumanization of those perceived as "the other."

That is what should concern us.

The real danger lies not in a single word but in the simultaneous failure of two opposing approaches.

On one side, immigration that is too often poorly managed, with inadequate border control and unsuccessful integration policies.

On the other, the temptation to answer these failures with slogans that promise the removal of entire communities as though complex social problems could be solved through mass exclusion.

Both approaches feed extremism.

Both deepen fear.

Both weaken the foundations of democratic coexistence.

Europe deserves better.

It needs effective border management, orderly migration policies, clear distinctions between those who have the legal right to remain and those who do not, meaningful integration for those willing to embrace democratic values, and lawful, case-by-case deportation of individuals who have no legal right to stay or who commit serious crimes.

That is the essence of the rule of law: judging people by what they do, not by who they are.

The real question, then, is not whether "remigration" is an effective political slogan.

The real question is whether Europe intends to confront migration with serious, rational, and lawful policies—or whether it will allow the debate to degenerate into a clash of collective identities.

European history does not tell us that the worst is inevitable.

It does remind us, however, that the worst becomes possible when politics stops solving problems and starts dividing humanity into categories deemed incapable of living together.

And that is why a single word can sometimes become the beginning of something far more dangerous.

Where Did Italy's Fascists Go After 1943?

One of the most uncomfortable questions in Italian history is also one of the least honestly addressed: what became of the millions of Italians who had joined, supported, or simply lived within the Fascist regime?

For decades, a reassuring narrative prevailed. On one side stood the Fascists; on the other, the anti-Fascists. Then Fascism collapsed, the Resistance prevailed, and Italy supposedly became, almost overnight, a democratic Republic.

Reality is far more complex.

Millions of Italians had built their lives during the twenty years of Fascist rule. They had worked within state institutions, advanced their careers, administered public bodies, and participated in the regime's organizations. When Mussolini fell, these people did not simply vanish.

Most adapted.

Some joined the Christian Democrats, others the Italian Communist Party, still others the Socialist Party or the liberal parties. Many remained in the public administration. Only those most deeply compromised by the regime were, in general, excluded from public life or prosecuted.

This phenomenon reveals a great deal about modern Italian history.

It does not prove that every anti-Fascist had once been a Fascist. That would be a historical absurdity. It does, however, demonstrate that part of Italy's political class was remarkably adept at changing its symbols, language and political allegiance almost overnight.

Historians refer to this phenomenon as trasformismo.

Italy’s eternal tradition of political transformation continued even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tangentopoli corruption scandals.

The uniforms changed.

The methods often did not.

Clientelism, careers built through personal loyalties rather than merit, opaque party structures, the dominance of internal factions, political conformism and loyalty to powerful leaders continued to characterize broad sectors of Italian public life long after 1945.

The Fascist regime itself undoubtedly came to an end.

The Italian Constitution prohibited both the re-establishment of the Fascist Party and the public advocacy of Fascism. Given the legacy of dictatorship and a devastating war, this was an understandable choice.

Yet outlawing an organization does not automatically transform the mentality of millions of people.

Ideas can change.

Symbols can change.

Human behaviour, however, changes much more slowly.

For this reason, perhaps the more meaningful question is not where the Fascists went, but what became of certain ways of exercising power.

Intolerance toward dissent.

The belief that those outside one's own political camp are morally inferior.

The tendency to reward loyalty instead of merit.

The desire to silence those who express inconvenient opinions.

These dynamics do not belong exclusively to Fascism.

They can emerge within any political system.

The colours of the flags may change, yet the temptation of cultural authoritarianism remains.

Pier Paolo Pasolini sensed this danger when he warned against the cultural homogenization produced by consumer society and the emerging power of the mass media. His concern was that conformity could become even more effective than overt censorship, precisely because it was capable of manufacturing consent without openly resorting to force.

Today, this issue has returned to public debate.

Some speak of a "single accepted narrative"; others reject the very idea. Regardless of the terminology, one legitimate question remains: how much room do modern democracies truly leave for those who express views that fundamentally diverge from prevailing opinion?

Media campaigns, public delegitimization, and social or professional ostracism can all become instruments of pressure even without the use of physical violence.

They are different from the methods of the twentieth century.

Yet they deserve careful reflection nonetheless.

In this respect, the insight of psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, remains profoundly relevant.

Frankl argued that every human being always retains one essential freedom: the freedom to choose how to respond to circumstances.

People can become perpetrators of cruelty or examples of extraordinary humanity. Not because they are predestined to do so, but because they make choices.

Events shape our lives.

They do not determine who we are.

For this reason, it would be a mistake to regard Fascism merely as a historical phenomenon confined to the years between 1922 and 1945.

It would be equally mistaken to claim that it has survived unchanged.

The more interesting question is another.

Can democratic societies truly free themselves from authoritarian political cultures, or do such cultures inevitably re-emerge over time under different languages, symbols and political allegiances?

That is a question for Italy.

But it is equally a question for every contemporary democracy.