Ancient Technology

Adam wrote an excellent piece on this here, and I urge you all to read it.

Adam is a proper Catholic (Sedevacantist) and has got this point about race and religion right.

Nevertheless, I, as a Venetian, have some more nuanced view (or extremist, take your pick).

My country, my nation, has been usurped and annexed first by the French under that megalomaniac Napoleon, and essentially dissolved by the French on 12 May 1797,

He then gave it to the Austrians, who then gave it to the Italians in 1805 (under Napoleon still) but then took it back by force in 1814 with help of the English. Between then and 1866 it went back to independence, then back to Austria, then back to France, then finally to the Italian Kingdom in 1866. Despite this, there has been an undercurrent of Venetian wish for return to independence that has never ended, and that will never end.

On April 25th 2016 I was in St. Mark’s Square during the traditional feast for the patron Saint of Venice. The mayor started out strong claiming Venetian nationality but then went full diversity and the crowd pretty much turned their backs on him with not a few shouts of “bastard” and “traitor”.

It was more than the Catholic religion that held those people together and that calls to me too. Despite my having never felt any loyalty to Italy as a country in general, I feel one towards Venice.

I grew up all over the world and when I lived in Cape Town for over a decade, I loved that city, and the sea, and when I would come back to it after a trip, driving in, seeing the Ocean below I always wondered “Is this my place?“ I liked it and I had chosen it, but it never felt truly mine, even though I liked it more than any place I had been before. It was much later, in 2004 or so when I worked in Aviano’s US base that on one of my forthrightly trips to London, when the plane took a turn over it and I saw the waterways and laguna not close to the city really, that instinctively, powerfully, seeing that desolate and water-logged land from the porthole-like window of the plane, I felt a pull in my chest and the words came into my mind unbidden:

That is my land.

I was shocked by it. I had been a nomad all my life and spent more time in various countries in Africa than I ever had in Europe. I had refused and avoided military service in Italy thanks to having lived overseas since a young age, but on principle I hated the idea of being enrolled in a military if not by my own choice.

I knew my grandfather was Venetian and I went there on holiday with him and my grandmother as a little boy of 2 and 3 years old, where they (both champion swimmers) taught me to swim.

I loved the sea, unlike my brother who was scared of it as a little boy.

But I barely had ever taught of Venice or being Venetian. But from that day, that visceral, instinctive pull made me aware of it.

Then in 2016 I lived in Venice for a year and there it become clear. This was, my city. And the Venetians, ornery critters that they are, are recognisably my people, both in the things I detest about them as well as those I like.

There is more to it than mere religion, though I agree it is the main glue that binds a people.

And there is more to it than race, for it has never prevented me from loving a person I cared about, although differences are undeniable, even if we happen to share a religion.

But there is a deeper sense yet, and it might be in the blood, genetics, or maybe there is even a link to the soil, because I can no more explain why a place I was not born or lived in for my entire life other than one year in 2016 should have ever had such a pull on me, in 2004, and when seen from the air that. And not the city or the glory of it, but the swamps and waterways unpopulated by anyone other than birds and fish.

So, yes, while religion binds us above all, so does race and even nation.

Venetians have always been a mixed breed of bastards, because we travelled and explored and traded with the whole world, and we partook of pretty women wherever we went and the Venetian girls were known throughout Europe for being if not easy to keep, certainly adventurous.

We are not phased by difference from us. I certainly have never been. But that is not to say we don’t recognise it.

We are a nation of explorers, and explorers try and do and see. And they learn to appreciate it all; even as we remain ourselves.

My children have a Venetian father and an English mother, and already, I can see, like me, (and their mother too) they are curious and explorers at heart, and like us, they too, are people of the sea.

And I will teach them their ancient history. And see they ignore the lies of the demons trying to conquer us all and make us all the same.