From a recent interview with Carlo Ginzburg:
"....universities are pockets of resistance. Pockets of logic, of criticism and dialogue."
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/of-honor-and-shame-1.325590
"The term 'fascism' is used often, and sometimes in an absurd way. One can use the term in an analogical way, but only if we define, exactly, the elements of the historical fascism that are part of the analogy. Let us say that someone claims that 'a fascist regime exists in Italy.' That is illogical. Are there elements of fascism? Perhaps. Has power been seized by force? Definitely not. Only if someone can detail the elements of fascist-style behavior in present-day Italy would I be in a position to answer him."
Ginzburg recalls at length a scene from Federico Fellini's 1973 film "Amarcord," in which a young couple marries in front of Mussolini's image. "My mother says that Fellini understood an element of fascism. She did not say what that element was. I think that the element is the masses' infantilization, the transformation of public opinion into a single block, into an infantile discourse. All this is happening in present-day Italy. Even the opposition newspapers are caught in its web. It seems to me very grave and it will continue to be so for a while. The problems in Italian society are very severe. It is not the first time that Italy has opened the door to shameful phenomena."
'Which state is mine?'
This word, "shame," prompts an entire speech from Ginzburg. "We have a prime minister whom I prefer not to name. Why am I not ashamed for him but of him? It is odd. I thought about it and even wrote a short article about shame and the roots of the word. Which state is mine? The state in which I am ashamed. I realized this while I was in the United States. When I lived there, I realized that I was not ashamed of the United States."
The lectures Ginzburg delivers in the Senate Hall of Ben-Gurion University, in Be'er Sheva, are packed with hundreds of young students and veteran historians alike, all of whom have come to listen to someone who is a living monument of the second half of the 20th century. When the moderator of the event, Prof. Dror Zeevi, gives him the floor, it is clear that Ginzburg is excited. "It is a great honor to be here," he says.
Precisely as one who is considered part and parcel of Italy's radical left, Ginzburg did not think for even a minute of boycotting the Negev university. Even the question almost embarrasses him. "Of course, I am against a boycott. When a political power controls universities, one could support a boycott, but that is not the case in Israel." Yes, he says, in everything that has to do with the Israeli regime's actions, "I find a combination of colossal mistakes and unacceptable activities." But at the same time, he maintains, "the universities are pockets of resistance. Pockets of logic, of criticism and dialogue. Isolating Israel is totally unacceptable to me."