It’s the controversy on everyone’s lips in Italy. This Thursday, on the occasion of the anniversary of the liberation of Italy from fascist power, April 25, 1945, a program on the Italian public television channel Rai chose to invite the famous writer and intellectual Antonio Scurati. The latter, author of a series of novels translated around the world on Benito Mussolini, Mr. Child of the Century, had to deliver a short monologue. With at the heart of his speech, a very direct criticism against Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and her party, Fratelli d’Italia, accusing him of manipulating history to denigrate the role of the anti-fascist resistance in bringing down Mussolini’s regime, but also of certain ambiguities as to those responsible for the crimes of the time.
But this intervention was finally… canceled this Saturday by the management of Rai, the presenter of the show revealed this weekend. Officially for economic reasons, highlighting a price of 1,800 euros claimed by Antono Scurati, which the latter forcefully rejects. But according to certain Italian media, who were able to consult an internal Rai document, it was in reality for “editorial” reasons that Scurati’s speech was canceled.
Antonio Scurati, Italian journalist and writer, in Paris in 2011.
© / Aurimages via AFP
It was enough for the Italian public channel to be accused of censorship, as the newspaper headlined this Sunday La Republica, center-left daily: “Rai censors Scurati”. Since then, the affair has been everywhere in Italy: debates on television and radio sets, publication of the complete monologue in Corriere della Serra And La Republicca, sharing and massive relay on social networks. Probably the opposite effect of what the leaders of Rai were looking for, accused by their detractors of having made this programming choice in order not to displease Georgia Meloni.
Meloni denounces “alleged censorship”
Ultimately, it was the Italian Prime Minister herself who spoke out very quickly on her social networks. This mentioned “alleged censorship” and put forward the official economic reason given by Rai, while denying any influence in the choice to cancel Scurati’s participation. “I gladly publish the text of the monologue (which I hope not to have to pay for) for two reasons: 1) Because those who have always been ostracized and censored by the public service will never ask for censorship from anyone. Not even to those who think that its anti-government propaganda must be paid for with citizens’ money 2) So that Italians can freely judge its content,” she wrote.
But if this deprogramming caused so much controversy, it is above all because the text that Antonio Scurati intended to deliver was very directly directed against the head of the far-right Italian government and her party, Fratelli d’Italia. “Fascism was throughout its historical existence – and not only at its end, or occasionally – a phenomenon of systematic political violence made up of assassinations and massacres. Will the heirs of this history recognize this once and for all? all?”, asked the author, accusing “the post-fascist group in power” of “trying to rewrite history”. “[Georgia Meloni] distanced himself with the indefensible atrocities perpetrated by the regime (the persecution of the Jews) without ever denying the fascist experience as a whole. She attributed the massacres committed with the complicity of the fascists of the Italian Social Republic to the Nazis alone. And she ignored the fundamental role of the Italian Resistance, to the point of never mentioning the word ‘anti-fascism’ during the commemorations of April 25, in 2023″, he finally concluded.
“Stifling” management control
This controversy illustrates, in the eyes of some, the increasingly strong hold of the Georgia Meloni camp on public broadcasting, with the appointment of personalities close to their ideas at the head of the various television channels and radio stations. “The control of Rai management over public service information is becoming more stifling every day,” lamented this Sunday the channel’s journalists’ union, Usigrai, denouncing “a new sign of a Rai that is “opposes any cultural expression that displeases those in power” and an “omnipresent system of control that violates the principles of journalistic work.”
The Italian opposition also protested against this decision. Senator Barbara Floridia, of the 5 Star Movement (M5S), also president of the Rai supervisory committee, deplored that “affairs like that of Antonio Scurati risk discrediting the public service, undermining its credibility and casting a shadow cast a shadow over his independence”, adding that “it is not acceptable to treat a personality of the caliber of Antonio Scurati in this way”. The Democratic Party of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, for its part, deplored “a decision that we cannot accept”, calling on the management of Rai to “immediately provide the reason for what appears to be an unbearable ‘censorship’ .”
In 2023, already controversies
Already last year, the commemorations of April 25 caused a lot of noise. Several party members Fratelli d’Italia had refused to participate in the ceremonies, accusing the left of exploiting them. “I will not celebrate April 25, because we are not celebrating a celebration of freedom and democracy, but the preserve of a certain left-wing party,” declared the President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa, a founder of Fratelli d’Italia and former member of the Italian Social Movement, the main neofascist party at the fall of Mussolini’s regime. Georgia Meloni, for her part, had participated in these ceremonies and denounced the crimes committed under Mussolini, but without ever mentioning who was the instigator or the role of the Italian anti-fascist resistance in the fall of the regime.
At the center of this new controversy is this time the author Antonio Scurati. He is often targeted by the Italian extreme right for his work on the genesis of Benito Mussolini’s rise to power and the points of comparison that he assumes to weave with Georgia Meloni. “Scurati is one of those very intelligent authors who, with the right in power, knows that they can do marketing by selling books and raising money during public appearances,” mocked Alfredo Antoniozzi , vice-president of Fratelli d’Italia in the House of Representatives.
“What is happening today in Italy is not a repetition of the past. But the resounding victory in Italy of a party which has its cultural and ideological roots in fascism,” explained Antonio Scurati in an interview given to the regional daily The Dauphiné Libéré in 2022, following Meloni’s coming to power. “Many people still declare themselves neofascists, and some members of Fratelli d’Italia are very close to them, which raises the moral question of their legitimacy to govern the country”. Words that resonate beyond the transalpine borders.