«Bro, he’s in a coma, so he doesn’t talk. I’ll disconnect all the cables.” “I hope he dies.” “I want to see if I hit hard.” “I don’t know if you can see the video where we scan him.”

These are some of the utterances of the “Corso Como gang” intercepted by investigators after the group, made up of three minors and two just adults, stabbed and left a twenty-two-year-old student dying to steal fifty euros from him. He will probably remain disabled for life, while they will have to pay for their actions.

“Let’s hope he dies”: pack violence

The profound discomfort

An episode of violence and total lack of empathy which should lead us to reflect deeply on the discomfort and psycho-emotional drift of the new generations. We are faced with an action that would hardly have been committed alone. Here the pack acted as a single entity, lowering the perception of individual responsibility. Adolescents act a lot by imitation: they are constantly looking for social approval and a sense of belonging. They move away from their blood family, from their parents, and try to build a new family based on character affinity and common purpose. That “Bro”, which obviously stands for brother, is not a simple interlayer, but the expression of a profound complicity, which cannot be betrayed even in error.

Because we human beings are often hypocritical and inconsistent when it comes to defending our groups (whether represented by gender, political orientation or even sports support), while we are less empathetic and understanding towards those we perceive as different from us. I don’t think the fact that the boy attacked was a Bocconi student is a coincidence. The group probably “eyed” him because he was dressed in a certain way, perhaps because (as in the case of the recent attack that occurred in the Gae Aulenti area) he embodied the economic power of the city in their eyes.

An excuse for aggression

The stolen fifty euros were just a pretext to consume one’s revenge and exercise one’s power, which in that specific context, in that precise point of Milan and at that precise moment, was not given by money, but by aggression, violence and the availability of a weapon. That knife, which wounded and almost killed, represents the premeditation of an act that was anything but impulsive or casual. It expresses the will to destroy and take what one cannot have by following the canonical path. The myth of “everything at once”, of the fast life, so narrated by the youth role models that today we call, trivializing their role, “trappers”.

For a minor with antisocial predispositions that is not art, it is not a story, a fiction: it is an aspiration, it is their world, their moral code, that of the street. Responsibility for actions is always individual, and therefore these kids will pay for what they have done; and rightly so. But from a preventive perspective we must ask ourselves where the adults have been lacking, where they have failed. We do not know the families or teachers of these children and, for this reason, we must be careful in throwing the cross on them, also because they will already be suffering a lot. However, we can ask ourselves questions, to which every educator, in conscience, will have to give an answer. Do I really know my child or student? If my son or one of my students found himself in a situation of strong group pressure, like that of the Corso Como gang, would he tell me? Would he find in me a present and emotionally mature interlocutor, capable of supporting him? The future of the new generations also depends on these questions.