Giving Facebook Another Chance

Learning from the Italian "Aventino Secession"

I am not leaving Facebook, not yet at least. On the contrary, I opened a new group on it dedicated to my book “Exterminations”.

In a previous post, last year, I wrote that I was thoroughly disgusted by Facebook, that I was planning to leave it for good, and that it was so bad that it seriously risked disappearing from the Web as it had happened to its predecessor, “Friendster.”

Things haven’t changed so much nowadays, Facebook remains a terribly bad piece of software, nasty and inefficient at the same time. But Facebook’s lord, Mark Zuckerberg, has at least issued a half-apology for the bunch of monsters he had unleashed in the form of “fact checkers” and accepted to send them to make a living as clerks at their local fast food joint.

So, I haven’t kept my promise to leave Facebook. One of the reasons was how other social platforms developed. One of my ideas was to move to “X,” supposed not to censor you. But I am more and more appalled by the level of violence and racism expanding on X — and they censor people anyway. I tried “Bluesky,” but it to be little more than a playground for middle-aged leftists. I am still exploring but, so far, it seems that Facebook still plays a role in information dissemination on the Web.

More in depth to the question, I am thinking of a somewhat analogous case that took place in Italy one century ago: the Aventino Secession.

In 1924, two years after the “March on Rome,” the Italian Fascist party had gained an absolute majority in the Italian parliament in the election of that year. In June, one of Mussolini’s opponents in parliament, Giulio Matteotti, was murdered by a band of Fascists, and Mussolini was widely accused of being the instigator of the crime. Approximately 150 members of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, representing various opposition parties, withdrew from the chamber in protest. This group became known as the “Aventine Group,” in allusion to the Aventine Hill in ancient Rome, where the plebeians had once staged a similar protest.

The “Aventino Secession” was disastrous in political terms. The parliamentarians who participated in it were ignored, and in Nov. 1926, they were declared disqualified from holding parliamentary office. By 1925, Mussolini had effectively established a dictatorship.

It was probably unavoidable, but the Aventino secession worsened the situation. Just as it would be for the opposition to the winning Trumpism to retire in the virtual equivalent of the Aventino: Bluesky.

So, for the time being, I am staying both on X and Facebook while trying to maintain a certain level of sanity by avoiding the silly flames typical of those platforms. I even opened a new FB group titled “Exterminations” to disseminate the concepts I expose in my book with the same title. And we’ll see how things will move.

Never give up the fight!