“This book wants to try to overcome the stereotypes of right and left and tell the story of the America of Trump and Biden with all its contradictions and reasons.” It’s L’impero in bilico (Solferino), or Hanging in the Balance, the new book by Antonio di Bella presented on April 18 at 6.30 pm at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò- NYU. In conversation with the author, Stefano Albertini and Chiara Basso from NYU.
Antonio Di Bella spent much of his professional life in the United States as a RAI correspondent. An adventure that began with the First War in Iraq and culminated in the assault on Capitol Hill of which he was a direct witness (the only Italian television reporter). As he says in these pages, the siege of Congress, more than the result of an improvised action, represented the eruption of a political and psychological state common to a large segment of public opinion; the desire for revanchism of a middle class that, rightly or wrongly, feels in danger in the face of the advance of the rights of immigrants and bearers of new identities who seem to have more attention than the traditional categories.
The oldest liberal democracy suffers from acute pathologies, which now spare almost no European nation (and not even India and Brazil).
But it is hard to imagine the West recovering unless the United States does so first. That is why there is an urgent need to understand what is happening across the Atlantic in the election year that sees Trump’s possible return to the White House. And to investigate, through events, anecdotes, protagonists and witnesses of the last twenty years of American history, the roots of a discontent that threatens to undermine the very cornerstones of our democratic model.
The book has a Preface by Federico Rampini.
