Political violence does not begin today and, above all, it does not begin the moment someone throws a punch, hurls an object or physically attacks an opponent. That is merely the final link in a chain that begins much earlier. It often begins with words, but even before words there is something more insidious: intolerance.

Let us start, however, with a fundamental principle, because in times when everything seems to be turning into violence, it is worth re-establishing some basic distinctions.

Criticism – even harsh criticism – of those in power is part of democracy. It is not a degeneration of democracy: it is one of the conditions necessary for its existence. Those in power must be challenged. They must be criticised. They must be called to account. They may be booed, refuted, contradicted and, if necessary, even harshly attacked on political grounds.

That is the nature of democracy. And democracy has a wonderfully simple characteristic: it is cyclical. Those in power today may find themselves in opposition tomorrow, and those who challenge the status quo today may find themselves in government tomorrow, discovering first-hand just how irritating criticism can be. It is a sort of permanent balancing of power: you challenge me today, and tomorrow I will challenge you.

And that is precisely why protest must not be confused with violence; nor, however, can we make the opposite mistake: that of labelling any form of dissent that is unpleasant to those on the receiving end as ‘violence’.

There is, in fact, a certain tendency — which, as it happens, varies depending on who holds the parliamentary majority at the time — to regard even the simplest form of protest as violent.

It is a fairly human reaction. Those in power tend to regard criticism as a nuisance. Those in opposition tend to regard it as a right. When the sides swap places, they often swap their views as well.

But a proper democracy should be able to distinguish between challenging those in power and attacking an individual.

The real problem comes later.

Between protest and violence, there is in fact a grey area: intolerance. And that is where we should be focusing far more attention than we currently do. Because intolerance, when it becomes systematic – when it is repeated, normalised and legitimised – can turn into something far more dangerous.

First, you undermine the other person’s legitimacy; then you ridicule them; then you dehumanise them. Finally, in some cases, you even consider it legitimate to attack them.

Violence rarely comes out of nowhere.

The problem is that we no longer know how to have a proper discussion

Contemporary political debate seems to have lost one of its fundamental characteristics: debate.

There are no longer any ideas that come together, clash and perhaps influence one another.

There is one truth: my truth. The other person’s, of course, is false.

There are hardly any nuances, doubts, contradictions or grey areas left. There is only right and wrong, good and evil, us and them.

And so the language of politics, too, has gradually come to resemble that of a wrestling match: ‘So-and-so thrashes So-and-so’, ‘So-and-so destroys So-and-so’, ‘So-and-so humiliates So-and-so’.

As if a political debate were bound to produce a winner and a loser. As if the aim were not to gain a better understanding, but to overwhelm the other person. As if a person could not simply hold a different opinion, but must necessarily be defeated, torn down and humiliated. Possibly even physically, at least in the imagination of those commenting.

And woe betide anyone, then, if that opinion is backed up by complex reasoning. Woe betide anyone who introduces a nuance. Woe betide anyone who says ‘it depends’. Woe betide anyone who admits they are not sure. Woe betide anyone who tries to challenge a long-held belief.

This person now deserves, at best, a barrage of insults and, at worst, eternal digital damnatio memoriae. Because the world of viral content has one simple rule: you don’t need to know. It’s enough to be convinced that you know.

The algorithm doesn’t want citizens: it wants fans

This is perhaps the most profound transformation: intolerance no longer belongs solely to a particular political ideology. It has ceased to have a political colour. It can be found on the right or the left, among progressives or conservatives, among secularists or religious people. Because it stems from something even more fundamental: the belief that the other has nothing to teach us.

And when the other person has nothing to teach us, they are no longer a discussion partner but become an adversary. And an adversary, of course, must be defeated.

Social media has amplified this mechanism enormously. It rewards the immediate response, the catchphrase, the witty insult, the killer one-liner. It does not reward doubt. It does not reward complexity. It does not reward the ability to change one’s mind. It rewards conflict.

And so we end up living in a massive competition in which everyone is constantly trying to prove that the other person is stupider, meaner, more ignorant and more dangerous than they are.

A competition in which being right matters more than understanding.

The Salvini case and the right to protest

It is in this context that we should also view the case of the young woman who confronted Matteo Salvini during the concert in honour of Fabrizio De André at L’Agnata.

You may or may not agree with what he said (personally, I think he was simply stating the obvious: Salvini has nothing to do with De André). You may consider his protest effective or ineffective. One might even consider it out of place. But to automatically label it ‘violence’ simply because he publicly expressed his dissent is to stretch the concept of violence to the point of rendering it practically meaningless.

Challenging a politician is not violence. Challenging those in power is not violence. Publicly telling a politician that you do not approve of their presence in a particular context is not violence. And walking away after saying so is probably one of the least violent forms of protest imaginable.

One can debate the appropriateness, the tone and the choice of venue. But let us not confuse dissent with aggression.

Because if we start to label any behaviour that makes those in power feel uncomfortable as ‘violent’, we risk turning the protection of civil coexistence into a form of immunity from criticism.

And that would be far more dangerous than the protest itself.

When intolerance turns into violence

It is a different matter altogether when one moves from challenging the other to denying them.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of examples here.

Let us consider the incidents of violence and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ people, or the incidents of anti-Semitism affecting Jewish people and communities. 

These are distinct phenomena, with different histories, origins and dimensions, and they should not be artificially placed on the same level; yet they share one common element: the transformation of a real person into the embodiment of something one hates.

And this is where we need to be very strict. 

It is entirely legitimate to condemn the policies of the Israeli government. It is entirely legitimate to condemn the actions of Hamas. Criticising a government, a state, a party, a movement or an ideology is part of democratic debate.

But to hold every Jew responsible for the actions of the Israeli government is to turn a political judgement into anti-Semitism. This can even lead to the aberration of collective guilt.

Similarly, criticising a political or cultural stance does not give anyone the right to make LGBTQIA+ people the target of a hate campaign.

Criticism is directed at ideas and actions. Intolerance is directed at people simply because they belong to a particular group.

It is a fundamental distinction.

Intolerance is the real nuclear threat of our time

Perhaps we should start to regard intolerance as a kind of nuclear threat to contemporary society.

Not because it necessarily leads to immediate violence, but because, like a chain reaction, it can spread.

A phrase, an insult, a generalisation, a caricature, an imaginary enemy, a group turned into a scapegoat. A political opponent portrayed no longer as someone with the wrong ideas, but as someone who ought not to exist.

And then someone else picks up on that word, takes it to extremes and turns it into action.

It is a pattern we know all too well from history. And that is precisely why we should be much more careful about what we normalise.

Not everything that is offensive is violent. Not everything that is violent is physical. And not everything that precedes violence is already violence.

But repeated intolerance is one of the breeding grounds on which violence can flourish.

We need a treaty to prevent the spread of intolerance

In 1968, the world adopted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The threat at that time was crystal clear: humanity had built weapons capable of destroying itself and had to find a way to prevent their proliferation.

Today we have a different problem.

We do not just need to prevent the proliferation of weapons. We should learn to prevent the proliferation of intolerance.

An impossible treaty, of course. You cannot sign an agreement against hatred.

But can we at least foster a culture in which dissent is seen as normal, doubt as a virtue, complexity as a value, and debate as something other than a row?

And this brings us to the trickiest part.

Because to do that, you’d need people capable of having a vision, of thinking beyond the next poll, beyond the next post, beyond the next viral video.

People who are able to understand that politics is not a game in which someone must necessarily win and someone else lose.

It is the way in which different human beings try, often with great difficulty, to live together.

I don’t know whether we can expect Donald Trump’s United States to spearhead this change today. It would be a bit like putting Topo Gigio in charge of guarding the Parmigiano Reggiano warehouse.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t give it a go.

Because democracy does not die only when someone prevents others from speaking. It can also begin to die when no one is willing to listen any more.

And perhaps the first antidote to political violence is not to call for less dissent.

It means calling for more democracy, more dialogue and, above all, more tolerance towards those who are in the wrong — at least in our view — for thinking differently.

Because we may well be right, but the day we become convinced that we are always right – and that anyone who does not share our views is an enemy to be defeated – we will have already ceased to be a democratic community.

We’ll simply have chosen our opponent. And we’ll be waiting for someone to start attacking him.