by Giorgio Pagano

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Giorgio Pagano, for many years a militant European federalist and Esperantist, is currently a member of the Federal Council of the Radical Party and Secretary of the "Esperanto" Radikala Asocio - Committee for Democratic European Cultural Integration (ERA-CODICE).

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The increasingly rapid internationalization of a great many problems makes it absolutely necessary for people to understand each other, even if they speak different languages, in order to respond adequately to the serious challenges we face.

In Europe, with the process of unification of the markets of 21 countries (the 12 EC countries, the 6 EFTA countries, plus Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary), communication becomes even more necessary for the very fate of democracy in the EC and across the continent, and also for the relaunching of the process of European political unification.

For example, if we want to avoid processes of economic monopolization in the Single Market and allow a real use of the EC territory and the employment opportunities it offers (a European citizen must be able to work for 2 months in France, 6 months in Germany, 4 months in Slovacchia, 12 months in Greece.... communicating DIRECTLY with all those citizens who are no longer only Greek, Italian, French, German.... but European), then linguistic union based on democratic rights is an absolute requirement.

In the context of linguistic rights, all languages have equal dignity and everyone has the right to express themselves as they wish and as they are able. These prerogatives must be protected in the major international assemblies or in the European Parliament, even if this requires exorbitant costs both in financial and in political and human terms.

In the European Parliament, for example, sessions are often delayed due to the absence of one or other of the interpreters or because emendments have not been distributed in time, and there are often complaints about the inaccuracy u2e. of written and simultaneous translations, due at times to the difficulty of finding translators or interpreters for certain combinations of languages (such as Italian-Danish) so that a third language has to be used as a "bridge". There is also no direct contact between speaker and listener, so that rhetoric, oratorial skills and humour are lost. The following statement by the Euro-deputy O'Hogan is a good illustration: in a question on "Euro-twaddle", he remarked that "the Danish always laugh last."

What is clear is that communication in many languages between the members of international assemblies is actually only guaranteed by the presence of a complex and extremely costly team of translators and interpreters, paid for, when it comes down to it, by every citizen.

What is also clear, according to the linguistic policy followed by the EC, is that European citizens, unable to use or to afford such a costly translation procedure, are forced to learn as many languages as possible - at least nine, in theory.

The evident impracticability of this has led European citizens to choose to learn the most powerful language(s). In the war between languages for communication between people from different countries, people side with the hegemonic languages, and especially with English, the hegemonic language par excellence.

"Those who rule, name" runs an old saying. And since it is the economy, more than any other power, which has characterized the history of mankind during this century, it is no surprise that the hegemonic language is that used by the elite which has managed the great international accumulation of capital by means of multinational companies. The power of the large multinationals, which are in reality American, over world production and especially over culture has imperceptibly, almost naturally created a situation in which almost all advanced technology is designed, produced, sold, and often used in the language of America.

In many countries, moreover, there has been an acceptance of a theory that sees cultural diversity as ground to be made up in order to reach the level of development of the most advanced capitalist societies - a process we might define as self-colonization. The closer the different cultures are in terms of basic principles (even if they are only accepted as such) and the more inadequate the ruling politicians are in sustaining them, the more rapid is the process of self-colonization. The most striking example is Europe itself: u2e. modernity was born in Europe, but the political failure to understand that what is necessary in order to sustain it is not antiquated national states has meant that modernity has been appropriated by others, and that the locomotive of the world has become a federal and democratic state on the other side of the Atlantic.

A very different sensibility and response are found, on the other hand, in cultures based on completely different concepts, political ideas, and customs, including religious customs.

Here people are absolutely unable to accept, either consciously or subconsciously, such a process of destruction and abandonment of their feeling of belonging to a particular group, which explains the strong, though understandable reaction of the Islamic world and the integralist motto "Don't modernize Islam, Islamize modernity."

With regard to the progressive destruction and death of languages and cultures, Esperantists have always pointed out how history teaches us that the language of the hegemonic peoples, which always imposes itself in the role of lingua franca, envelops and gradually destroys other languages and other cultures through a process of progressive "pollution". As illustrations of this process, they have used the examples of Latin and Spanish, which destroyed the native languages and cultures of ancient Europe and Central-South America respectively.

But what seems to be returning in Europe, in a postmodern phase and on the eve of a new era, is (as happened in the pre-Nazi and pre-Fascist period) the inability of politicians to foresee and control new developments, with the consequent return of reactionary forces.

It is this decline in moral and democratic values which is at the root of the failure to grasp what is painfully clear, that political federalism must go hand in hand with linguistic federalism for peoples who wish to unite but who speak many different languages.

For political federalism, only a federal and supernational power can guarantee the control and the solution of that which is supernational. Similarly, only the adoption of a supernational language (a language, that is, which does not belong to a particular nation) can guarantee both the necessary linguistic union and the protection and promotion - rather than the destruction - of the different languages u2e. and cultures of the various peoples. This is one of the main arguments in favour of a worldwide living language of ethical rather than ethnical origins, a language such as Esperanto.

Few people know that it is a genuine process of natural selection which has allowed Esperanto to turn from an artificial language into a living language. In fact, in the 19th century alone around 500 so-called universal or international languages were created and subsequently ceased to exist.

"I come to you from a country where millions of men are now fighting desperately for freedom, for human rights (...) if we, the first soldiers of Esperanto, were forced to exclude all ideals from our work, we would tear up and burn everything we wrote for Esperanto (...), indignant, and would shout in contempt "We want nothing to do with that Esperanto, used only for trade and for practical purposes!"

This public declaration by Zamenhof, probably the statement most frequently quoted by Esperantists, is an eloquent demonstration of the fact that Esperanto has always represented the idea of human fraternity, a fraternity beyond races, languages, and nationalities. It also explains why Esperantists have always been persecuted, ridiculed and insulted, both by dictators such as Stalin and Hitler and by nationalistic, "compartmentalized" democrats.