Lollobrigida’s defamation lawsuit ends up in the Guardian. Di Cesare: “A government strategy”
For the European Parliament, "in the first year of the Meloni government the largest number of 'strategic' lawsuits against public participation in Europe was initiated"
ROME – The defamation trials brought by Giorgia Meloni and other government officials end up in the Guardian. The English newspaper talks in particular about Donatella Di Cesare, who will appear before a criminal court in Rome on May 15, after a complaint from the Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida. The philosopher had compared one of her speeches to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
The Guardian underlines the hypothesis of a government “strategy”, taking up the accusations of the essayist herself: “The purpose of defamation trials like mine is not only to intimidate, but to push the intellectuals of left out of public discourse. Meloni was very keen to give the post-fascist movement a new and more acceptable face. Those who draw attention to the fascist roots of the movement are punished.”
The Guardian recalls the statements of Lollobrigida, “married to Meloni’s sister and considered one of the Prime Minister’s closest allies”, made in April 2023 to “DiMartedì”, in which he spoke of the danger of replacement ethnic. Di Cesare “perceived white supremacist connotations that could be found in the pages of Mein Kampf and in National Socialist ideology. The philosopher, who wrote books on the continuity between Nazi thought and modern conspiracy theories, said thatLollobrigida spoke ” as a gauleiter“, a regional leader of Hitler’s party. In his criminal complaint, Lollobrigida claims that Di Cesare had portrayed him as “a Nazi who glorifies concentration camps and espouses extermination camps as a solution to immigration problems,” which is “not only defamatory but also shameful.”
“I said that Lollobrigida spoke like a gauleiter , not that he was one,” Di Cesare tells the Guardian. “What we are seeing here is a legal proceeding against a historical confrontation”.
According to data from the Italian organization for freedom of the press Ossigeno per l’formazione, more than 5,000 lawsuits are filed every year for defamation against Italian journalists. 90% are ultimately rejected as unfounded.
An open letter in support of Di Cesare launched by four British professors from the Center for Research on Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University in London argues that cases like his are reminiscent of tactics used in “illiberal democracies” to silence opponents . “It is inconceivable that in a democratic country a minister drags a philosopher to court on political-cultural and historical-philosophical issues, on which there should instead be a democratic debate”, we read in the letter.