Giovanni De Luna on the generation of 1968

During a speech delivered before members of his party, the French Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy severely criticised the generation of 1968, who he accuses of being at the bottom of the school debacle. Diovanni De Luna, History professor at the University of Turin, accuses the French political leader of cynically manipulating the ideology of the time: sexual freedom, support for Mao and Castro, care-free behaviour. He explains what this generation has become in Italy. "For 'sixty-eighters', youth had an existential dimension, free from the constraints imposed by the register. ... Militants of 68 never knew how to bid farewell to their youth. As a result they are somewhat spell-bound to their youth, remaining young, as if imprisoned in a past that does not past. This eternal past renders any rupture more difficult and risks stalling transmission from old to young."

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