Garibaldi, history's sexiest revolutionary?
historyextra.com
historyextra.com
But it's an invention. It never previously existed. Yes the penisula was referred to as Italy for a long time and the language is shared across the area and there are cultural similarities. But none of that automatically makes a nation - you don't have to think hard of counter examples. History could have panned out differently. It still could.
I think the bourgeoisies have been enormously successful in giving the impression that these nation states, whether it be Italy or Germany, or India, etc, that they're inevitable, they're permanent and anything else is a perversion. And Garibaldi was one such whose brilliance was to forge a nation so quickly from so many disparate states.
Many interests - not just bourgeois - have used national identity to motivate people, for better or worse.
2. Italy has been seen by Italian populations as one entity from millennia, essentially since the Roman empire when all the Italian tribes wanted to be elevated to the same status of citizenship as romans. And there's an overabundance of historical proofs of it, you're gonna find for centuries and centuries of Italian literature and diplomacy. Every single major writer in Italian history since middle ages has written openly about Italia, Dante Alighieri dedicated an entire chant in the 13th century to the woes of the Italian people "Ahi serva Italia".
3. You are absolutely right in stating that the major promoters of Italian unifications have been the elites, but that's common to most such historical events.
So really, the nostalgics of Bourbon rule are just the Italian equivalent of American Confederates: they just never got over the fact they lost.
In most cases it has to do more with the fact that the South is primarily used as a way to steer/control the elections.
Garibaldi used local (criminal) lords, the "picciotti", to achieve what he needed. A bit like today they would use local criminals to subjugate the population. Those criminals stayed until Mussolini decided to deal with them. And again they got freed by the Allies to save the country from Fascism.
You could wipe out the mafia, make the land rich and use it, but there is not just enough interest to do so.
On the contrary, the only interest is to use that land to move to the next step, never to actually use whatever is there. This is what makes people nostalgic or sad.
I'm far less sure. Italian governance is an eternal farce. Milan and Napoli would both be happier not having to deal with each other.
I'm Italian and this is absolutely false.
While any political and historical event will have people saying that it wouldn't even better if X or Y stayed Z, the overwhelming majority of Italians want a united Italy.
Federalist parties never took huge political weight (and the major one, Lega, won most votes when it dropped that narrative entirely) and separatist ones get irrelevant number of negligible votes.
Then again, if Italy still was 3-4 separate states, I don't think they'd be up for merging.
People are pretty conservative with these things.
It's very hard to imagine European and world history without a united Italy.
Italian unification success was one (albeit not the primary one, which was the rivalry with Austria) major source of pressure on Prussian elites [1].
We look at history at very abstract level, but in 1861/62 Prussian newspapers were all into "look at how Cavour did in Italy, unlike that incompetent Bismarck".
[1] https://alg.manifoldapp.org/read/contested-visions-the-histo...
That doesn't imply most want a split US.
Also, he was supposedly invited to fight in the American civil war but refused since he couldn't get the level of command he wanted, although there was a Garibaldi Guard in that war.
Queen Victoria wrote in her diary , about Garibaldi's visit to London, that most of the elite was far too fascinated with him. During the same visit, the servants at the house he was staying sold the water he used to wash himself to collectors.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/giuseppe-...
"If an entire race of human beings, subjugated into slavery by human egoism, has been restored to human dignity, to civilization and human love, this is by your doing and at the price of the most noble lives in America."He has mad game, holy hell.
You can’t get to those feats with good looks alone. This guy was rizzing [1] as hell when he was in his prime!
[1] Rizz: from the word charisma. As I understand what it means: being amazingly charismatic towards your romantic interests in order to start a conversation with them and ultimately seduce them. It’s similar to the word game in that sense. Younger people seem to use the word rizz nowadays.
I understand "rizz" as entirely a short form of "charisma" with all the same connotations -- in which case I wouldn't focus it to "romantic interests" or to the goal of "ultimately seduce[ing] them" -- but it's possible that younger people use "rizz" differently than I use "charisma".
The word "charisma" is a little gendered. You are more likely to hear a man described as "charismatic" than a woman. A woman is more likely to be -- well, honestly, the word would probably just be "hot" (or "sexy" -- as used here for Garibaldi), which would place a lot more emphasis on appearance; though to focus more on behavioral aspects, one might hear (I'm reaching here) "effervescent" or "fascinating". I suppose "magnetic" is also an option, though that seems pretty gender-neutral to me.
The slang "game" you mention seems intermediate in connotation to me. The meaning is closer to "ability to seduce", but the connotation is not quite so negative. The implication is that "the game" is simply part of life, neither good nor bad; it is what it is.
Of course, the connotations of "rizz" or "charisma" are less sexual overall. Possibly some amount of what I'm calling "positive connotations" or "negative connotations" simply reflects that, and our society's Judeo-Christian negativity towards sex (which in "conservative" places forces LGBT people at least a little into the closet; and in "liberal" places survives primarily for straight men, the bastards).
Put another way, "charisma" or "rizz" is work-safe, indeed desirable in a CEO (and will likely be rewarded in most employees); whereas "seduction' is not work-safe.
Hmm in pickup artist lingo, sure. Though that perspective has been eclipsed by all the <insert color> pill people anyway.
But the concept of seduction has a long history before that, so I think that that particular view is way too narrow. To seduce someone is to entice, make them fill with anticipation, and so on. I feel certain female seducers, that have a social media presence about it, explain that part relatively well.
Consider also uses like, "do not be seduced by fascism".
Or:
> Pope Francis: ‘The devil is a seducer’
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2023/12/27/pope-franci...
...
I am a little curious what you mean by
> that perspective has been eclipsed by all the <insert color> pill people anyway
though I think I get the general idea; the culture has moved on since the early 2010s.
...
> To seduce someone is to entice, make them fill with anticipation, and so on. I feel certain female seducers, that have a social media presence about it, explain that part relatively well.
I see no contradiction with what I am saying, apart from (a) the (orthogonal) emphasis on the emotional state being cultivated in the target; and (b) that these speakers are unapologetic.
Certainly I have seen efforts to reclaim "seduction" as a kind of "girl power", but there are a few issues with it. The biggest -- and I know this norms on a particular kind of relationship, but I will do so -- is that it primarily makes sense to cultivate this as a "skill" if you plan to have a large number of short term relationships. For many reasons, including the theory of repeated games, I think this is not good for the individual or for society. Instead I would encourage the formation of lifelong pair bonds -- which, yes, has sexy/fun aspects of
> entic[ing], mak[ing] them fill with anticipation
but I think that would be a little further from the archetypes of the word "seduction".
...
If we are looking for a word with positive connotations, I would be a little more comfortable with a gender-neutral use of our other word, "charisma".
This use is strongly derived from the sexual sense. E.g. the Bible is full of "Thy Maker is thine husband, and you are cheating!"
Maybe someone more versed in Latin than I am could look up "seduco" in pre-Christian contexts?
And that source seems wrong when claiming sexual use is modern, since it absolutely is used in sexual contexts in Latin, e.g. in Augustine's Confessions.
How is it used, and are you referring to the original Latin, or a translation? Since seduction includes sexual seduction by virtue of its generality, he could have used the word to mean sexual seduction specifically. If the context is clear, you can omit the adjective. Given that Augustine does talk about his sexual decadence prior to his conversion, I can imagine him using the unqualified "seduce" to mean the specifically sexual, which would be apparent from context.
This appears to be a pure assertion on your part, justified by nothing.
> Maybe someone more versed in Latin than I am could look up "seduco" in pre-Christian contexts?
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
Huh? "Charisma" is also gender-neutral.
More of an affect that induces positive feelings that inspire devotion or a desire to follow.
> our society's Judeo-Christian negativity towards sex
Christianity, certainly not Catholicism, does not have a negativity toward sex. That's a trope that's reinforced by both the sexually deviant and the prudish in their own particular ways.
Rather, if one takes the time to understand the moral presuppositions of Catholicism in this regard (which are not "sectarian", if you will, but fully accessible to ethics sans any appeals to revelation), you learn that what is recognized as vice are abuses of sex and the sexual faculties, which, where sexual seduction is concerned, is absolutely the case.
As I posted elsewhere, "seduce" is from the Latin "seducere" [0] meaning "to lead away, lead aside or astray". In this case, it involves, through the exploitation of another's weaknesses, the suspension of the rational faculties of another through the enticement of the sexual appetites for the purpose of obtaining something you should not, because it is immoral (think Mata Hari), or would not if the person were in full possession of their rational faculties. The use of sex to accomplish such an end itself entails the further abuse of the sexual faculties, as it frustrates the end(s) of the sexual faculties.
There absolutely is a sexual ethics. Being a sexually moral person isn't "sex negativity". On the contrary, only people who live sexually moral lives are able to truly enjoy the beauty of sex. The persistent lie that human beings easily believe is that you can "cheat" morality, but all this demonstrates is a profound misunderstanding of the good.
There are so many aspects which are more recently brought him about his campaign (i.e. Making deals with local lords in the south, which allowed today's mafia families to de facto remain in power).
So, if you think this article was interesting, do go dig a bit deeper as it's rather shallow.
You've got the Garibaldi of course, you've got your Bourbon, and you've got your Peek Freens Trotsky assortment!
I can imagine he’s mentioned a lot in Don Camillo since the communist and socialist parties in the first republican election of Italy joined in a coalition called “the Garibaldi front”, but Garibaldi himself was already long dead by then.
(Oh the embarrassment. My ears are burning)
So, how many?
I'm discounting the Peek Freens Trotsky assortment because Trotsky was, of course, Russian.
So, one. Which is still more than you might expect.
Which also ruled in Spain and multiple different parts of Italy (like Parma and the Two Sicilies).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_Giuseppe_Garib...
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheYoungOnes/comments/u93yfd/revolu...
Edit: and thank you, of course. :)