In this Olympic summer, Italy is more interested in the behind-the-scenes of the competitions than in the sporting performances. In one week, no less than three controversies have risen to the podium of the news, saturating the transalpine media space.
The latest, but the first if we consider the flood of indignant reactions and political positions: Angela Carini’s withdrawal. The Neapolitan athlete threw down her gloves a few seconds after the start of the round of 16 of the women’s boxing tournament, this Thursday, August 1, 2024. Facing her was an Algerian, Imane Khelif, the target of unprecedented online harassment from ordinary Internet users but also from leading figures of the Italian far right.
The hardest blows were dealt by Matteo Salvini, vice-president of the council and leader of the Northern League, relaying fake news of Russian origin. “This scene is really not Olympic,” he believes. Shame on these bureaucrats who allowed a match that was obviously not on equal terms. The participation of the Algerian trans boxer is a slap in the face to the ethics of sport and the credibility of the Olympics. Let’s stop with the madness of woke ideology!”
The photographs of Giorgia Meloni consoling Angela Carini were widely shared on social networks, accompanied by the comment of the President of the Italian Council judging that “athletes who have male genetic characteristics should not be admitted to women’s competitions”. She also met with the IOC leaders demanding explanations.
“The Twilight of the West”
Imane Khelif, who had been disqualified from the 2023 World Boxing Championships, is neither a man nor a trans athlete as his detractors denounce, but a hyperandrogenic woman, that is to say with high levels of male hormones. A precision that Elon Musk does not bother to make. The owner of X fueled the controversy by reposting a publication according to which “men have no place in women’s sports”, followed by a hashtag in support of Angela Carini.
Harry Potter author JK Rowling chimed in. “Explain to me why you accept a man hitting a woman in public for entertainment. It’s not sport,” she tweeted.
X is a ring where anything goes. It was raining heavily the day after the Olympic opening ceremony. Here again, the Italian far right stood as the standard-bearer for those who were outraged by the LGBT+ misappropriation of “The Last Supper”, a famous painting depicting Christ’s last meal, although the ceremony’s director Thomas Jolly saw it more as a nod to a painting centered around Dionysus.
“Opening the Olympics by insulting billions of Christians around the world was a really bad start, dear French people. Sordid,” Matteo Salvini lambasted. “This is the twilight of the West,” echoed Tommaso Foti, leader of Giorgia Meloni’s party group in the Senate. “We didn’t know it was necessary to put blasphemous images instead of athletes at the center of the event,” he denounced on Facebook.
The Italian government is mainly seeking to place identity and societal issues at the centre of the debate. Despite the rise of the extreme right, Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini suffered a humiliating defeat in their fight to conquer a pivotal role in the new balances of European institutions. They thus prefer to play on a terrain that is more favourable to them and which has the advantage of remobilising their camp without forcing them to honour onerous promises. These politically instrumentalised sporting controversies make it easy to score points in the “culture wars” currently shaking the West, pitting “progressives” against “reactionaries”. Giorgia Meloni does not forget that she built her success on the slogans “God, Family, Fatherland”, haranguing the crowd and claiming her pride in being “a woman, a mother, Italian, a Christian…”. Better to rekindle the tricolour flame than the Olympic one.