In Italy last week a riotous and clearly ongoing scandal emerged following the birthday of notorious Rapper, Fedez. Organized by his partner Chiara Ferragni, the continued story resounds louder than his own music. The reasons for this are as simple as they are shocking.
Carrefour Italia, the multi-billion-dollar supermarket chain were approached by Ferragni to host and celebrate Fedez’s now questionable accomplishment. Infamous for their forcefully imposed 24/7 work schedule, Carrerfor Italia also deserve a vertiable gold medal in shame, due to the exploitation and literal encampment of their workforce. Battery humans, or crazed bisons, primed for slaughter who are subject to these despots of food and retail, greasing the reputation of all we Italians consume and appreciate in a desperate search for populism.
However, the story and its resonance do not by any means, end there.
Under the guise of a surprise party, organized with a precise attention to detail by a seemingly gracious Chiara and Fedez’s mother, social media reports that the CI management gave permission to guests to take everything they wanted from the shelves of the supermarket (in a supposed nod to a free market no doubt – which to this reporter at least, acted as an insult to the tortuous labours of their employees). Fedez compounded this act of jaded generosity by throwing one product to the floor in an act of either disgust or indulgence, rightly triggering the wrath of the people.
It was from that moment that the situation rapidly degenerated: the bottles of drinks and alcohol consumed were returned to their place, while fruits, vegetables and other perishables were rubbed across naked bodies. Other items of food were trampled and smeared on the floors, while people rode carts, kicking and lashing out at others in acts of frenzied abandon.
Chiara Ferragni: “Party at supermarket – We can take what we want”
Once you peel back the wrapper, the rapper it seems is revealed. Our once beloved Fedez and his lovely companion Chiara had no option but to raise their complicit hands up, offering the shameful excuse that the intention was to denote all profits of purchases from the initial celebration to charity, before things got out of hand. This sad statement was later confirmed on video and followed by a couple of hurried excuses on social media, along with an absence of one hour from the probing eyes of the internet. That was seen as a large enough act of repentance, hopefully bringing the story to its unfortunate close.
If we believe and accept this, we are the same sort of idiot as Fedez and Chiara have shown themselves to be. A story like this, if accepted, does nothing more than reduce us and our perception of society. We become the dustbins for their shit and waste, truly inferior beings to a class of super rich, who have no concern for the economic requirements we must measure our lives by. As far as they are concerned, a few desultory words will shut us up and placate. There will be deception and no donation.
All that truly matters to them is the restoration of their image. Conscience plays no part. And all the while the country is full of parents who barely arrive at the end of the month with enough to feed their children. Fuelled by soul-breaking work, a badly rhymed shadow of representation and his shaky consort supersede normal, embattled human effort.
What truly appals however, is not only the total lack of respect for the primal and natural resources of food, but for that same workforce who then had to spend hours cleaning and fixing the results of what is quite simply an act of vandalism. Here then, are disengaged, self-centred and monstrous people unable to express even the simplest form of respect for others. Fedez sets a supposed example for thousands of young people. Surely this idolization can now be seen as totally unwarranted and unjustified. The present is doomed and the future uncertain if such people are heroes in the minds of the young.
Events like this reveal a social virus, coming directly from the infected body of the economy. The results of what Fedez and his harridan have done are mirrored by the exploitation of agricultural workers, subjugated the world over to crime syndicates like the mafia and their various labour bosses. Workers are forced to live in pitiful conditions to earn little money and thus waste of any kind from their efforts must be seen as a criminal act. We see this situation repeated over the world’s most unfortunate and exploited areas, part of a system that corrupts clerks and cashiers working to restore and manage the effects of massacres of and on all sorts of levels, often in inhuman, unsustainable shifts. It is a course of action and effect that allows half the world to go hungry, while 1% of the population maintains and holds its overall wealth.
This, then, is the disturbing reality of capitalism: A worker who spits blood, their flesh blistering under a scorching sun, has their dignity and soul literally and figuratively smeared with mud. In the tired and tearful eyes of this nearly sacrificial worker, we see reflected those of the rich parasite, an image made all the more obscene as he steals from the cart to fill the empty spaces in both his conscience and his underwear.
Elena Caldera
Translated and adapted by David Erdos
All the pics from the web