Right-wing extremism and the limits of community in Zerocalcare’s <i>This World Can’t Tear Me Down</i>

In this article, I critically consider the representation of right-wing extremism in This World Can’t Tear Me Down , a semi-autobiographical animated television series by the Italian graphic artist Zerocalcare. In sustained dialogue both with Zerocalcare and leading Italian political philosopher Roberto Esposito and others, I explore the origins and nature of community with a special focus on what follows from the practical impossibility of containing and expelling extremism from contemporary social and political life. My argument focuses on the importance of ‘immunity’ to establishing and maintaining a community. For Esposito, communities come into being as a consequence of immunitory practices which, among other things, mark the boundaries between what is safe (and thus socially acceptable) and what is unsafe, as well as between the familiar and the strange. While immunization does positive work by marking the limits of a community in order to protect its members, I will explain how it does so not by isolating and removing threats to a collectivity’s vitality and integrity, but rather by introducing into collective life some measure of precisely that which threatens to undermine and destroy it. It is only via such a ‘homeopathic protection practice’ that a community becomes equipped to survive, and its members able to thrive and live their lives fully.