The symbol of the chic radical left. The one who, from the warmth of the living room of the villa on the hill, dreams of a world without borders and a Europe full of immigrants. To live, obviously, in the suburbs. He made it clear in Florence, when he was a guest at an initiative by Manifattura Tabacchi, he made it official yesterday: Carola Rackete, former commander of the Sea Watch 3 ship and icon of the universe without borders, will be a candidate in the next European elections. “I feel like I have no choice but to get involved in politics. It’s the right time – he declared in an interview with the English newspaper The Guardian -. Do we want defenders of human rights and climate justice to be the majority or will we leave the decision to the right and fascists? It’s a pretty simple question we need to ask ourselves.” Rackete, and not just today, asserts that it is sheer madness to envisage ad hoc policies to support families and encourage birth rates. The thirty-five year old, to deal with the low birth rate, is convinced, on the contrary, that the landing of migrants on the Old Continent should be free of charge, a madness that, however, the local left convincingly follows.
The former Sea Watch captain decided to accept the invitation from the German party Die Linke. A movement, it is worth highlighting, that is going through a very complicated moment. Both due to some internal divisions, and because the choice to use Rackete as a symbol in the next electoral round did not convince everyone. Sahra Wagenknecht, one of the main exponents of the radical formation, created a new party which, according to polls, is gathering the support of numerous Teutonic voters. The dreadlocked environmentalist’s idea of socializing the big oil, gas and coal companies, of collecting the profits and using them to finance the ecological transition, immediately seemed extremely bizarre even to the managers of Die Linke. That they discussed, even publicly, for months. In the end, the party chose to confirm Carola’s candidacy, but as an independent entity. «When they approached me it was quite clear that the party would split. I see this as an opportunity to put it on a new and clear path, attract new members, finally abandon the nationalist rhetoric and transform it into a solid place of organization for the progressive left. I like the image of the phoenix rising from the ashes.”
The former captain of the NGO Sea Watch ship, in the summer of 2019, was arrested on charges of having rammed a financial police patrol boat. On June 29, without authorization, he forced the blockade of the port of Lampedusa, imposed by the Italian government, to disembark 42 immigrants. A choice that could have cost the lives of at least a dozen of our soldiers, but that made her the icon of a left that has never been so poor in leadership. Suffice it to say that the philosopher Donatella Di Cesare, in an article published in Zeit, compared him to Sophocles’ Antigone. «Where defending human rights becomes a crime, civil disobedience is the rule. Those who are committed to saving lives will be blamed if they don’t. Doing the opposite is not acceptable.” Last November, Rackete was the guest of honor at an event sponsored by the Tuscan Region, «The legacy of women». On that occasion, she pointed the finger at the Italian government and rode one of her horses war: environmentalism. «The party must focus on the climate issue, which is truly central to our present. We are facing a major shift to the right, even in a party like the Social Democrats. Olaf Scholz has a hard and conservative line . Anyone with a bit of intelligence knows that there is no point in making deals with someone like Giorgia Meloni.”
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
