Granitic in the defense of human rights and united in the battle for the United States of Europe, but pulverized in a sea of acronyms, small associations and movements that glare at each other. The 'radical galaxy' definitively imploded after the death of the historic leader Marco Pannella in 2016 and since then the exponents of the ancient Rosa nel Pugno have taken parallel paths that rarely converge, moving from alliances with the left to agreements with Berlusconi.
On the other hand, if you want to summarize brutally, the movement has always had two souls: the radical-socialist one and the radical-liberal one. Emma Bonino was closest to second.
It is almost impossible to describe the radical flow since its birth in the post-war period when a very young Pannella had 'liberal' experience with PLI defectors such as Mario Pannunzio, Ernesto Rossi and Leo Valiani. It was a liberal, libertarian, secular and anti-clerical world. Which from then on, little by little, was shaped by Pannella's personality and his unsettling vision of politics. A world in which for years he was accompanied by Bonino with whom there was a progressive, painful, political separation.
Today that political legacy can be summed up in three fundamental acronyms: +Europa, founded by Bonino, which embodies the parliamentary area, the Italian Radicals which represent the choice to move on major issues outside the institutions and the 'transnational and trans-party Radical Party' which owns Radio Radical. In addition, of course, to a series of associations such as the one bearing the name of Luca Coscioni, led by Marco Cappato, which fights for the end of life.
In recent years the radical idea of the origins has experienced dramas and recompositions, furious and even judicial arguments as happens to brothers whose father died without a will. Pannella's anarchic energy caused revolutions in Italian society and riots among his faithful. Riots in which Bonino also found himself. Already in the early 1960s, under the pressure of Pannella, the radical party accentuated its anticlerical, anti-militarist and anti-prohibitionist ideas, dedicating itself, through a large series of thematic associations, to the referendum objectives, promoting the Gandhian idea of finding space with provocative and non-violent actions.
Bonino forcefully enters the scene with the referendum battles on abortion and divorce. We then take the scene with the turning point of 1989 when the party decided to no longer participate in the elections and transformed itself into a transnational party, or rather, into a "transnational and transpartite nonviolent radical party". He became president and since then intensified his international action which was the premise of the disagreements with Pannella.
In 1994, on the recommendation of Berlusconi who had just arrived in government, she was appointed European Commissioner for humanitarian aid, consumer policy and fisheries. In 1999, with the 'Bonino list' he presented himself in the European elections, obtaining a flattering result. Later, in 2006 she joined the Prodi government as minister for International Trade and European Policies. The distance with the explosive Pannella worsened under the radar and the traumatic break with the more institutional Bonino occurred publicly in 2015, a year before the death of the radical leader.
In the former galaxy today more than one person wonders whether Emma's disappearance will have the power to unite the radical world or accelerate its dissolution.
