Politics & Power Quote by Dario Fo

Power, Fo reminds us, is not a moral achievement; it is a reflex. Even democracy, sold as the system that tames authority, still contains an authority class that knows how to flinch, snarl, and defend its turf. The line’s bite is in its leveling move: “even” democratic power gets lumped in with every other kind, stripped of its self-congratulatory halo. Consent doesn’t dissolve power’s survival instincts; it just gives those instincts better branding.

Fo’s phrasing is deliberately clinical - “react,” “attacked,” “target” - as if he’s describing an immune system rather than a parliament. That matters because it shifts blame away from individual villains and toward a pattern: institutions respond to threat the way bodies respond to infection. It’s a warning to anyone who thinks exposing hypocrisy will be met with gratitude, or that a “good” system will politely absorb critique. When scrutiny lands, the machinery tightens: prosecutions, media pile-ons, bureaucratic choke points, the quiet social punishment that makes dissent expensive.

Context is everything with Fo: a satirist who made theater into a weapon, he lived through Italy’s postwar volatility, the Years of Lead, and the constant tango between political legitimacy and state force. His work needles the respectable center by showing how quickly it borrows tactics from the extremes when challenged. Subtext: if you want to confront power, don’t mistake its democratic vocabulary for softness. Expect counterpressure, and measure democracy not by its ideals, but by how it treats the people who make its leaders “a target.”