Opinion Sur
In the military, to shorten the agony of a man condemned to death but poorly shot, an officer was called upon to apply the merciful coup de grace. The civilian equivalent exists in an old Sardinian custom –now largely gone—in which a specialized woman –the accabadora– was called to the deathbed of a patient and finished him or her off. The European Union is dying if we are to listen to the majority of prognosis. Willingly or not, a number of politicians, driven by an angry populace, are now playing this terminal role. Despite attempts to exonerate Europe with ever weaker arguments, struggles to replace the union with a revival of nations, the wrath of voting populations, and the rise to prominence of demagogues, it looks like a never-ending agony. Little surprise then to witness actions seeking to call the whole thing off. But what will follow this new and enigmatic Finnegan’s Wake?
In the month of May I sailed on a small sailboat along the coasts of Italy, from the Gulf of Venice to the Bay of Naples that is from the Adriatic to the Ionian, and finally the Tyrrhenian seas. I visited numerous small ports, most of them charming, with echoes of a life without stress and with simpler values that are quickly fading from the world.
With my Italian sailor friends we traded stories and jokes as sailors are wont to do. As we approached the coast of Sicily, one of the stories struck me most. It is a legend from the two largest islands of Italy: Sardinia and Sicily. Over the centuries the two islands were ravaged by invasions of all kinds: Saracens and Crusaders, pirates and popists, and many others too. The villagers protected themselves by leaving the coasts and running for the hills where a peculiar culture of diffidence, suspicion and silence (the famous omertà) emerged. Even today these are people of few words, for fear of denunciation and retaliation. One of their traditions has persisted and is still passed along sotto voce. American scholars have called this Southern culture “amoral familism”. It can be summed up thus: for our family everything; for everybody else silence and suspicion.
Here is the story. In the old days, when a member of the family –usually very old—declined in health and entered a very prolonged agony, the relatives convened and with few words and solemn gestures decided to put the ailing loved one out of his or her misery. It was time “to call her.”
She was referred to as la accabadora, the midwife of the moribund. She came with a wooden hammer. She was left alone with the dying person. Then quickly and expertly she applied a precise blow to the back of the cranium, and the patient was gone. The priest had already been called to administer the viaticum and the holy oils. Now the wailing could begin, the goods of the departed could be distributed, and the wake proceeded until the procession moved through the village and the corpse was laid to rest when the response was said.
The legend is now better known thanks to a successful novel by Michela Murgia, with the title La Accabadora. In it she portrays an angel of mercy who tends to the chronically sick and dying, acting as a kind of midwife between life here below and the great Beyond. In other words, someone who practices euthanasia.
One of the story’s main characters, Bonaria Urrai, is the accabadora of the area, the woman who, according to the old Sardinian tradition, was called by the families to the bedside of the terminally ill. The accabadora had to help the ailing avoid further suffering by speeding up their last transition into the realm of the dead. As gentle mores spread with the passing of time, a tranquilizer and the gentler asphyxiating pillow replaced the crude hammer as the instrument of choice.
The English referendum favoring Brexit is one more spasm in the long agony of the European Union. An inept prime minister made the fatal mistake of calling for a vote, and was hoist with his own petard, as Shakespeare would say. Those who voted “Leave” acted as the accabadors. What is not clear yet is whether their blow was decisive enough. But if not, other accabadors will finish the job, following the pied piper Nigel Farage. Like the rat catcher of Hamelin, he tells his followers that no rat should be told to stay in a sinking ship. But the water awaits them, and do they know how and where to swim?
There have been other such attempts before, as with the Greek attempt to secede under then Prime Minister Papandreu (he was forced to resign) followed by a semi-coma imposed with the help of a financial respirator. Later on, when a leftist party came to power, the colorful Greek finance minister Ianis Varoufakis was not allowed to stay in the European family room for fear by the Eurocrats that he too might become an unwanted accabador.
As for other “weaker” members of the Union like Spain, they are condemned to preside over the sacrifice of an entire generation that will soon cease to be young. Meanwhile, Spain cannot be governed any more, and new forces like Podemos are still carrying the hammer of the accabadora. In England they were largely old; in the case of Spain they are mostly young.
Of the healthier “core” European economies, Holland is tempted to secede as well. The right-wing populist Geert Wilders is the accabador-in-waiting for the Dutch. A domino effect is underway, as the European Union fades into the past like a distant dream: a sort of utopia for tired men that have been “dreamed out”. Better put this last phrase in philosophic German: as Edmund Husserl once said of Western culture, “der Traum ist ausgeträumt” (“This dream is over”)
After Brexit what’s Nexit? The anger at the global elite has exploded but continues to seethe, and the people’s spleen (mostly older working people) has been expressed. British politicians like Boris Johnson are already trying to back paddle, as they wait their turn at Downing Street. They feel like Christian Scientists with appendicitis.
The Eurocrats in Brussels are frantic doing what they do best: convening emergency meetings that result in tepid banalities. They are hatching new bureaucratic conspiracies. Those on the deck of the Titanic at least were having fun dancing their way towards the invisible iceberg, while the joyless Eurocrats chit chat about the visible peril but are unable to act, in extremis as well as in other, more ignorable crises, as when they sacked those Greek politicians who dared call a referendum. Democracy has never been the strong suit of Eurocrats.
What about the Italians? Soon the Italians too may bolt, re-adopt the lira and thus become all millionaires in devalued currency and quasi defaulted debt, as in yesteryear. For an analysis of possible scenarios see the recent article by Wolfgang Munchau (“Italy will be the next domino to fall,” Financial Times, 28 June 2016). For Italians, Beppe Grillo will play the role of accabador, especially if Matteo Renzi, the prime minister, in calling a referendum on reform (which will be a referendum on his government) makes a bet as disastrous as David Cameron’s in the UK.
What will the French do? Under president Hollande they follow the Germans; but with the rise of Marine LePen, or with their own exit referendum, will they follow the example of those she calls the “brave” English? That would give us the strange spectacle of two historic rivals joining in the same suicidal mission, disguised as a courageous jump over the trenches, as in World War One.
This litany leaves us to consider the center pivot of the EU: a powerful nation that initially benefitted from the euro by merrily sponsoring debt among the lesser members so they could buy its products. When the giddy dance of debt stopped and the clients went broke, their Teutonic master imposed austerity on them, telling them to become “like us” and not to “burden us” with bailouts from the profligacy “we” once endorsed. Now Germany stands alone: a European superpower too big for the Continent and too small for the world, guided by a schoolmarm. Their markets in Europe are running dry; their austerity recipes are unviable and unenviable. Germany has become a reluctant and isolated Fourth Reich in a Europe that cannot and does not want to be a German Europe any more. Eventually it too will “exit” either by a Germanic triumph of the will or more meekly by letting the rest disintegrate. It will, as in the past, look east for an accommodation with the Russian “near abroad” and with Russia itself. Merkel will be gone and a new (kinder, gentler) Joachim von Ribbentrop may emerge.
The new fragmented Europe will consist of pettier nationalisms, immigration barriers (their version of Trump walls), and local (devalued) currencies as a means to enact more elegant defaults with a different name, and a beggar-thy-neighbor set of economic policies. What else can follow the hour of the accabadors?
What a terrible geopolitical distraction at a historic turning point! The Americans are puzzled; the Europeans fret and the Chinese smile, serenely and inscrutably from afar. But the axis of world history inexorably moves east.
