Right, indeed obligatory to undertake to deceive the hoaxes put into circulation by the no vax. But, in the meantime, it is also necessary to take a bath of humility and a sort of coming out. Because there is no person in his life who has not believed in a fake news. To an urban legend, so to speak. And, coincidentally, the journey among these fascinating stories arises precisely from an anti-green pass intervention by the philosopher Giorgio Agamben: to criticize the measures taken by governments against Covid-19, the philosopher cites the mass suicides of lemmings (which would life jumping off the cliffs), graceful herbivorous rodents that live in northern Europe and northern Canada.
An urban legend that everyone has heard. And that comes from a colossal fake created by James Algar, director of the documentary “White Wilderness”: in 1958, his film, produced by Walt Disney, saw the Oscar and the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Too bad the images of that mass suicide were blatantly false: the film was shot in Alberta, a region where lemmings don't live. Not only that, in that region there is no sea. And so there aren't any cliffs to jump off either.
To reveal the truth about this (and many other) urban legends is the book by Severino Colombo "101 bullshit we have all believed at least once in our life". Lemmings, explains the author, have a great reproductive capacity: even a female can have up to eighty pups a year. The reproductive cycle, however, is four years: obviously the population fluctuations within the colony are great.
And when a group becomes particularly large, one part goes in search of food in another place. It may happen that, during these movements, they find themselves in front of watercourses that they cannot cross. Or, perhaps, they arrive right behind cliffs: probably, those coming from behind push those in front, causing some rodents to fall.
The good Agamben has to come to terms with this: to justify his aversion to the green pass he has chosen the wrong example.
But he would have made a worse figure if he had mentioned other animals protagonists of an urban legend: the white crocodiles in the sewers of New York. A story that was born in 1935, the date of the first, alleged, sighting of a crocodile (still of its natural color) by some boys who, frightened, took it with shovels. The confirmation, some time later, even came from the superintendent of the sewers of New York Teddy May who claimed to have identified, during an inspection, a colony of small alligators. And, thanks to these words, the urban legend took on even more substance. And, in the meantime, the color of the alligators changed, becoming white because, probably, they were born and raised in environments without light.
A story that has come down to our times. And that continues to survive despite the fact that there is no evidence of the existence of these strange animals. Even “Monster Quest”, broadcast by a US broadcaster, sent a crew to plumb the sewer canals of New York. Obviously, she came back empty-handed. Or, to be precise, he found an absolutely unexpected guest, a salamander. But no white crocodile.
On the other hand, the alleged crocodiles identified in the sewers of large European cities, in particular, Naples and Rome, would be of their natural color. Obviously, neither in the Tiber nor in the sewer system of the Campania capital have these disturbing presences been recorded. On the other hand, a crocodile in flesh, bone and skin was indeed found in Campania. On the terrace with tub of a condominium in Orta di Atella, in the province of Caserta. To find him the agents of the Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate, intervened to arrest Antonio Cristofaro, nephew of a boss. The reptile one meter and seventy long, weighing 40 kilos, did not only have an "ornamental" function: fed on live rabbits and mice, it was used to intimidate entrepreneurs who did not pay the lace.
