It opened on social networks, on television, at political meetings. not a very quiet war Italy. Italian art, culture and entertainment extreme rightEmbodied by Fratelli D’Italia (Sisters of Italy) the favorite post-fascist party Giorgia Meloni, which won the crucial general election on September 25. Numerous writers, thinkers, historians, documentarians, various intellectuals and above all artists (singers, actors, cartoonists) despise him. Y the feeling is mutual.
As an example, the words of Meloni are valid, he is a politician who is skilful in using language like a machine gun and always gets into the mud. “Every day a name from the entertainment world insults me. Is it possible that there is not a single person among them who thinks like us?” said. “Or because they think the democratic left can no longer employ them? Is this perhaps democratic?” he added.
There has been no isolated case. at the end of August, Fratelli Vice-President of Culture and Federico Mollicone accused the prestigious Venice film festival of “propaganda” to include in your programming ‘March in Rome’ documentary by Irish Mark Cousins. In the work on the founding myth of fascism and his senior representative, Benito Mussolini, Cousins juxtaposes archival footage of the dictator’s rise with clips of nationalist figures of our time such as Meloni, Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and Víktor Orbán.
Therefore, Mollicone asked the Italian Ministry of Culture, which partially finances the festival, to explain why the film was released a few weeks before the elections. The far-right added, “It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth to see an important institution being used as a political propaganda tool.” In another section, Mollicone also opposed the possibility of RAI broadcasting the “non-performative show” of the Pride Parade live. and previously requested that the same public television not broadcast an episode of Peppa Pig in which an anthropomorphic polar bear appears with two mothers.
This interventionism coincides with the chain reaction that multiplied the warning messages about the future of the country following the early elections in July. Perhaps this explains why pop culture artists who tend to reach the most people, particularly through television and the internet, are the ones who make the most of their stand. “Will Meloni become prime minister? “Help, how scary,” said Italian actress Ornella Muti, an icon of European cinema. Meloni denounces rapper Fedez, ‘who says Mussolini does good too’, ‘influential’ Chiara Ferragni’s husband (he spoke many times against the far right, most recently this Wednesday).
Dacia Maraini, a well-known Italian poet and close friend of the late Pierpaolo Pasolini, is not surprised. “While we do not yet know to what extent a Meloni-led government will affect freedom of expression, Italian artists are very worried because they know that the right has always been against freedom of the press and freedom of thought.”, he confirms in an interview with El Periódico. “God, country and family is his motto (Meloni). This means conservative and reactionary stances that reject ideas that break with the tradition of the art world,” says Maraini.
Others have been even more direct and provocative. Singer Loredana Berté, wife of former tennis champion Bjorn Borg, confirmed that Meloni should be “ashamed” and urged her to remove the tricolor flame from her party’s logo, a symbol of the now-extinct Italian Social Movement founded in 1946. When asked by ex-fascists about a possible victory for Meloni, cartoonist Makkox said the Fratelli victory was “what the country wanted”. We are a community of ignorant people, and ignorance is the manure of the right.”
Famous singer Ariete said, “Let’s not let someone crush us who says what job offers we should accept, how we should raise our children, who we should love, when and how we should do it.” The youngest. “Meloni has many gestures that testify to an existential continuity with the date of her arrival,” the author added. Antonio Scurati, author of a well-documented biography of Mussolini, calls Meloni’s alleged departure from fascism a “hoax.”
This attitude, of course, has not been monolithic. There have also been representatives of the right or liberals who have spoken to the contrary. The status of this historian Ernesto Galli della Loggia, stating that Fratelli is no longer a “fascist party”. Something celebrated by other conservative thinkers like Marcello Veneziani or Pierangelo Buttafuoco, who are not as concerned with free speech as others.