In the early 1950s Giovannino Guareschi, a (very smart) conservative from Emilia Romagna, made fun of the excessive trust that the Emilian communist militants had in their leaders and their party. He would draw and publish on “Candido”, the weekly magazine he was chief editor of, cartoons in which the party newspaper, after giving the poor militants utterly absurd instructions due to misprinting (which they tried to comply with anyway, being unthinkable that the party made mistakes), called for a “counterorder, comrades”. I decided to give this title to my blog because I sympathize with the naive, idealist communists of Emilia, my native region, and because I, too, learn new stuff by trial, error and “counterorder”. Which is not a bad system in the digital age.

«Obbedienza cieca pronta assoluta. - Contrordine compagni! La frase pubblicata sull’Unità: “Bisogna che i compagni trovino in ogni sede rionale un asino accogliente che offra ad essi la possibilità di istruirsi a di divertirsi”, contiene un errore di stampa e pertanto va letta: “Bisogna che i compagni trovino in ogni sede rionale un asilo accogliente…”»

Immagine e didascalia: grazie alla Fondazione Mondadori.