When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
LA STAMPA

Bicycle Thieves Of Italy, Yesterday and Today

The 1948 neo-realist cinematic masterpiece can be a key to understand Italian society today. With a digital twist.

Riding (not stealing) a bicycle in Bologna
Riding (not stealing) a bicycle in Bologna
Gabriele Romagnoli

-Essay-

BOLOGNA — "This is not a movie, it's reality..." A filmgoer in Milan wrote those words to director Vittorio De Sica after watching Bicycle Thieves when it was released 71 years ago. I for one had always thought the same: that the 1948 neorealist masterpiece movie was a good representation of reality of how life was back then — neorealism as a mirror of the past that cannot be applied to the future. I was wrong.

A few days ago, I went to the Lumière Cinema in Bologna to watch the film restored by the Film Archive. I went with a friend from school, who arrived with a bright blue bicycle and tied it to a pole. When we left the theater after the movie, the bike was gone. My friend seemed unfazed, telling me that bicycles disappear continuously in the city.

"I'll look for it tomorrow," he said.

I imagined him searching street by street through outlying neighborhoods like the desperate Antonio Ricci does in the film, but then he added: "On the Internet."

bicycle_thieves_ladri_di_bicicletta

Original poster for the movie Bicycle Thieves – Photo: Wikimedia Commons

He explained the two options: either post the photo on the Bikewatch.com website and wait for an alert, or go through the used bike announcements and see if someone was already (he thought the term was appropriate) "recycling" it. He knows someone who went to the seller of his own bike with the carabinieri police. The guy defended himself by saying that he had bought the bike from a stranger for 15 euros and got away with a citation. The stories are endless, including the one where a bare-chested 40-year-old got on the bus carrying a bicycle from the city's bike-sharing system that he intended to sell on the other side of town.

I started thinking that in order to understand reality in Italy in 2019, we could simply start with the bicycle thieves, like in 1948. Figures show the consistent occurrence of the phenomenon. The last survey, conducted in 2012, shows there were 320,000 bike thefts that year. Last year there were more than 400,000 for a value of 100 million euros. Half of bike owners had theirs stolen at least once. They became fatalist and disheartened, since most avoid reporting it, thinking police investigations will not help them recover their belonging. A third of the thefts are the work of drug addicts, another third of organizations that carry out mass nocturnal withdrawals with vans, the last third is pure improvisation. As a man in Parabiago told the policemen who arrested him while he was climbing over a fence with somebody else's bike on his shoulder: "Oh well, come on, I screwed up!"

There is a bicycle theft every day and everyone has a story to tell.

I needed to identify the epicenter of this phenomenon and I think I unexpectedly found it in Saronno, a quiet town in Lombardy about 30 kilometers from the border with Switzerland. It has about 40,000 inhabitants, 12% of whom are foreign residents with legal papers, and it is run by the far-right League party after a long period of center-left administration. In Saronno, there is a bicycle theft every day and everyone has a story to tell and a picture of reality (didn't we start off from neorealism?).

Cameras have increased, surveillance groups have been created on Facebook, a proposal has been made to create bike plates, but all in vain: Nothing and no one is spared.

Inevitably there is someone who says: Things have gotten worse with all these migrants. It is true that a 33-year-old Tunisian man was caught loading the dismantled pieces of 30 stolen bikes into a van, to send them off to the port of Genoa and then on to Tunisia. But it is just as true that a group of migrants staying in the parish house of Piazza della Libertà had their own bikes stolen after they'd received them as a gift donation.

The most significant episode took place a month ago, late in the afternoon, next to the sanctuary of the Beata Vergine dei Miracoli. A woman saw two men struggling to break off a cable lock. They were almost done when — as Antonio Ricci did in vain in the De Sica film — the woman shouts: "Stop thief!" This is where the scene changes. The two thieves split, the woman tries to chase one, but is left behind. A young Senegalese man runs after the other, and two Ukrainians eventually catch him.

Looking at the film of reality, it seems that war and theft among poor people, no matter their nationality, have never ceased — and distrust of the justice system continues. The only difference is that today, you might catch your thief on the Internet.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Ideas

Inside Ralston College, Jordan Peterson's Quiet New Weapon In The Culture Wars

The Canadian-born psychologist Jordan B. Peterson is one of the most prominent opponents of what's been termed: left-wing cancel culture and "wokism." As part of his mission , he serves as chancellor of Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, a picturesque setting for a unique experiment that contrasts with his image of provocateur par excellence.

Photo of Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson greeting someone at Ralston College, Savannah

Jordan B. Peterson at Ralston College

Sandra Ward

This article was updated Sept. 21 at 5 p.m. with corrections*

SAVANNAH — Savannah is almost unbelievably beautiful. Fountains splash and babble in the well-tended front gardens of its town houses, which are straight out of Gone with the Wind. As you wander through its historic center, on sidewalks encrusted with oyster shells, past its countless parks, under the shadows cast by palm trees, magnolias and ancient oaks, it's as if you are walking back in time through centuries past.

Hidden behind two magnificent façades here is a sanctuary for people who want to travel even further back: to ancient Europe.

In this city of 147,000 in the U.S. state of Georgia, most locals have no idea what's inside this building. There is no sign – either on the wrought-iron gate to the front garden or on the entrance door – to suggest that this is the headquarters of a unique experiment. The motto of Ralston College, which was founded around a year ago, is "Free Speech is Life Itself."

The university's chancellor is one of the best-known figures in America’s culture wars: Jordan B. Peterson. Since 2016, the Canadian psychologist has made a name for himself with his sharp-worded attacks on feminism and gender politics, becoming public enemy No. 1 for those in the left-wing progressive camp.

Provocation and polemics, Peterson is a master of these arts, with a long list of controversies — and 4.6 million followers on X (formerly Twitter), and whose YouTube videos have been viewed by millions. Last year on Twitter he commented on a photo of a plus-size swimsuit model that she was "not beautiful," adding that "no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that."

A few years ago he sparked outrage with a tweet contesting the existence of "white privilege," the idea that all white people, whether they are aware of it or not, have unearned advantages. "There is nothing more racist," he said than this concept. He was even temporarily banned from the platform for an anti-trans tweet.

Keep reading...Show less

The latest