Why We Need to Return to Patriarchy

The feminist struggle against "patriarchy" led to the dissolution of the father figure and the family

A murder case is causing a stir in Italy. Certain forces are trying to exploit the tragic case for their political ends. Since the same mechanisms are also used in the German-speaking world, we document this case, which only at first glance seems to be an Italian problem, but in reality concerns a far-reaching culture war.

By Roberto de Mattei*

After the murder of the young woman, Giulia Cecchettin, on 11 November, Italy declared that it was threatened by "patriarchy". The title of a dossier in the daily newspaper La Repubblica on 24 November is telling: "Femicides: let's stop the carnage". The thesis, which has been disseminated by the media, social media and all sorts of influencers, is that there is a veritable femicide slaughter and the responsibility for it must be attributed to the still prevailing culture of "patriarchy". Patriarchy must be fought to end violence against women.

Patriarchy was a social system that sanctioned the authority of the man and the distribution of roles within the family. Except for the present time, paternal authority has always been regarded as one of the immutable elements of the social order, necessary for all peoples and at all times. For centuries, the father has exercised the role that the sovereign has in political society in the family (the word fatherland itself derives from father) and that the pope, the "Holy Father", exercises in the Church. Fifty years ago, this was still the Italian family model: the father had to manage the family and provide its financial support, while the mother took care of the household and the upbringing of the numerous children. The family unit often included the grandparents, who kept alive a tradition that was passed down from generation to generation.

This social system was destroyed by the Cultural Revolution of 1968 and by the laws that followed: laws such as divorce, abortion and in Italy, above all, the law, with the new family law of April 22, 1975, which decapitated paternal authority, abolished the legal primacy of the father and contributed to the disappearance of authority and identity in Italian families.

Among the ideologues of 1968 are the theoreticians of "anti-psychiatry", such as David Cooper, author of a book published several times by the Einaudi publishing house with the significant title "The Death of the Family". This was the belief that began to spread at the end of the 1960s: the imminent and inevitable extinction of the institution of the family. In this essay, Cooper proposed replacing the paternal role with the fraternal one, thus hoping for a paradoxical society of brothers without fathers, or rather brothers because they are patricides: as had happened in 1793 with the assassination of the French king and as Nietzsche hoped by prophesying the murder of God the Father.

The process of democratization of the Church, of society and of the family is one and the same. The destruction of the family had to be based above all on the "liberation" of the woman. Feminism claimed to abolish the distinction between male and female roles and to destroy the natural vocation to motherhood and womanhood. The "right" to abortion and contraception was propagated as a woman's right to self-determination over her own body and sexuality to free herself from male authority and the "yoke" of motherhood. The masculinization of women goes hand in hand with the degradation of men, which is fully promoted by fashion, advertising and music. Gender theory is a starting point, but the slogans against the culture of patriarchy that resound today have their origins in feminist demonstrations such as the one of December 6, 1975 in Rome, in which about twenty thousand women participated, chanting slogans like these: "No more wives, mothers, daughters! Let's destroy the families!".

And the family was destroyed. The father's authority has dissolved, gender roles have been suppressed, and all family members, father, mother, and children, are suffering from a deep identity crisis. The patriarchal family no longer exists in Italy, apart from a few happy islands. And on these few islands, which we should not call patriarchal, but natural, the woman respects her husband and the children respect their parents, and the woman is not killed, but loved and respected. The murderer of Giulia Cecchettin is not a child of patriarchal culture, but of the relativistic and feminist culture of the 68s, which today permeates the whole of society and for which everyone is both responsible and a victim.

However, the crisis of the family goes beyond the end of the patriarchal family. Italy is on its way to becoming a single-person society in which there are no more families. According to the latest report on the social situation of the country by the statistics office CENSIS, in 2040 only one in four couples, i.e. 25.8 percent of the total population, will have children, and the share of one-person households will be 37 percent. 34 percent of Italians will be old and alone. This is because today it is not only the family that is in crisis, but also the existence of the couples themselves. Not only are people marrying less and less likely to have fewer children, but they are also living together less because they shy away from the idea of taking on any responsibility for a partner or significant other that they are afraid of keeping for too long.

The so-called femicide is not the result of the old patriarchal culture, but of the new anti-patriarchal culture, which confuses ideas, makes feelings fragile and destabilizes the psyche, depriving it of the natural support that the family, with its paternal and maternal points of security, offered from birth. The man is alone with his nightmares, his fears, his fears, on the edge of an abyss: the abyss of emptiness into which one falls when one renounces being what one is, when one gives up his unchanging and permanent nature as man, woman, father, mother, child. And when everyone talks about femicide, no one is talking about a far more widespread and diffuse crime: infanticide, committed every day in Italy, in Europe and in the world by fathers and mothers who perpetrate maximum violence against their innocent child before it sees the light of day. A society that kills its children is condemned to death, and the breath of death, in every form, not just that of femicide, is felt more and more. Life, the restoration of society, is possible only when we rediscover the natural and divine model of the family. To put a stop to the madness that is destroying our society, we must, with God's help, return to the patriarchal model of the family, based on the authority of the father, the head of the family, and on the holiness of the mother, who is at her heart: both united in the task of begetting and educating children to make them citizens of heaven. The alternative is Hell, which already begins on this earth.

*Roberto de Mattei, historian, father of five children, Professor of Modern History and History of Christianity at the European University of Rome, Chairman of the Lepanto Foundation, author of numerous books, most recently in German translation: Defense of Tradition: The Invincible Truth of Christ, with a foreword by Martin Mosebach, Altötting 2017, and The Second Vatican Council. A hitherto unwritten history, 2. Edition, Bobingen 2011.

Books by Prof. Roberto de Mattei in German translation and the books by Martin Mosebach can be obtained from our partner bookstore.

Translation: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Corrispondenza Romana

Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com

AMDG