Barry Sweeney writing from Catania, Sicily, shows how in Meloni’s Italy criminalizing dissent has become normal.
Italy, as with all countries, faces multiple problems relating to climate chaos, workplace deaths, inadequate public services, pandemics, a weak health system, poor worker protection, rampant exploitation, crumbling bridges and infrastructure, racist institutions, and questionable military alliances, to name a few contentious issues. But according to the Italian government these conflicts do not exist and have no right to exist. Nothing to see here folks. Keep the peace. Move along, now.
On Thursday the 19 th of September the new Security Package DDL 1606 was passed into law in the Chamber of Deputies (the Lower House in the Italian government) and is now being fast tracked through the Senate (the Upper House) in “a channel of absolute urgency” according to Matteo Salvini, the far-right senior member of Meloni government.
The Bill, which has been dubbed the Anti-Gandhi Security Bill, (re)establishes the police state in Italy. As DDL 1660 Security gallops towards its final approval, one thing is very clear: Citizens are the real enemy of this government.
The Bill contains several new crimes that seriously inhibit the publics ability to participate in public life, which is the heart of democracy. Where once activists dreamed of a horizon filled with transformation, now they are faced with a skyline of repression. The threats that the Meloni government sees are not climate catastrophe, genocidal wars, rising levels of poverty, or the continuous brain drain from the Italian shores. They reject any green response to climate change; they boast of burying every green proposal despite rivers drying up, temperatures rising and glaciers melting; they proudly stand side-by-side with war criminals who are live-streaming a genocide. The real peril they see are those who demand a better world to live in. They criminalize those who oppose the disaster and immorality.
Anti-Gandhi Laws
To get an idea of how these new repressive laws can be used in real life and to illustrate how activism now carries a real risk, let’s look at a couple of current cases. Let’s take the Genocide of the Palestinian people. Shamefully, Italy is the third largest supplier of weapons to the racist Israeli apartheid regime. We all know how these weapons are being used as the Israeli army live streams their murders and massacres daily in some sort of sick snuff videos.
Leonardo S.p.A. (a massive Italian arms company) is a large supplier of weapons to the Israeli army. These sales and economic connections are covered in blood are contested by many. The Luigi Spera case offers an illustration of the erosion of civil liberties in Italy. Spera, a local firefighter and long-time peace activist, participated in a protest in front of the headquarters of Leonardo S.p.A. in Palermo, Sicily.
The Green Left Alliance (Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra, AVS) a merger between two parties, the Italian Left (SI) and Green Europe (EV) supported Spera. They pointed out that the Leonardo arms company, with the backing of the Italian government, sells “instruments of death and destruction, the same weapons that produce the horror that offends our consciences every day”. As the AVS statement said: “Luigi is a father, a firefighter, he has not used violence against anyone
and has not caused property damage to his community. War kills women, men, boys and girls and steals our precious resources to defend our environment, our health, our right to real work, our freedom.” Luigi nonetheless ended up in the San Michele prison in Alessandria, in the high surveillance section reserved for prisoners convicted of subversive crimes or involved in organised crime as he awaits trial. He has not even been convicted of any crime, and yet he has lost all freedom.
Another activist facing subversive charges is Giacomo Baggio Zilio. Giacomo, an environmental activist, disrupted a tennis match in May of this year by throwing confetti on the tennis court. The Questura of Rome (the police headquarters) has demanded the application of an anti-mafia measure for Giacomo. Under which he will be subject to two years of heavy restrictions of his freedom: prohibited from leaving his town of residence, a nighttime curfew from 8pm to 7pm, obliged to sign in daily and not able to attend any event, religious procession, sport competition and concert.
Chilling Activism
For the purposes of trying to understand the effects of the Anti-Gandhi Laws on those who demand action on an issue, lets imagine a few situations. Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of a young working class woman who has been forced to spend ‘Five day of reflection’ before being allowed an abortion and doesn’t want others to go through what she had to. Or a citizen who is facing drought and desertification in Sicily, or flooding and landslides in Emilia-Romagna and sees only inaction from the bureaucratic ruling class. Or an exploited worker being paid pittance for gathering the food we eat. Or an environmentally minded teenager who wants to see more money invested in sustainable farming than in weapons of war.
How can you fight for your cause when dissent has now been criminalised? If you participate in a march, you face two years in prison. If you organise a demonstration, you face 15 years in prison. If you participate in a strike at work or your school, you face two years of prison. If you want to highlight the deplorable conditions in prison or of a refugee detention centre, you are facing twenty additional years in detention. So, think hard before you go on hunger strike or demand more pay for teachers and resources for schools.
Let’s imagine instead that we are a little more cautious and we don’t like to get involved in street protests and so we are more involved in detailing struggles, or supporting causes. Maybe you are a blogger, or you help run a social media page highlighting as issue which is dear to your heart.
For example, the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people, is now punishable by up to 6 years in prison, as reporting struggles is now considered “terrorism of the word”
All of this is now law.
Fascist pressures
Fascism does not just repress the public from expressing itself. It forces fascist values on the population. Traditional/conservative family structures, anti-freedom of choice (abortion), extreme inward nationalism are all in its sights.
Let’s consider abortion first. Abortion in Italy has been a right for 46 years, since it was passed into law. But this freedom has been curtailed. In recent years attacks on women’s freedom and self-determination have become more common. One example of this was the “Initiative for the prevention of abortion, support for motherhood, defence of life and protection of the traditional family in the territory of Rome Capital,” in 2023.
Women are subjected to pressure in Regional Health Centres amounting to acts of psychological violence. Many women are subjected to “undue interference and pressure from volunteers in the centres”. They are “forced to hear the foetal heartbeat or promised economic support (for not aborting) with the precise intention of dissuading them from choosing to have an abortion” as the political party Power to the People reports.
Many anti-abortionists have found employment working in abortion clinics since Meloni’s government came to power. Consequently, there are many examples of women seeking a termination of pregnancy that have experienced a nightmare. One woman relates how she “had an abortion on December the 23rd. When we got off, a nurse said, in two days Baby Jesus will be born and here we will kill the children.”
“Some of us cried” she said describing her reaction and the reaction of the other eight women there that day. One woman when forced to hear the heartbeat of the foetus reports “I can’t say exactly how long it lasted, but it seemed like a very long moment to me. I remember not having the strength to say anything, I didn’t expect it and it was a blow that left me almost breathless. When the visit was over, I left with my eyes full of tears. It took me days to recover psychologically, and I still remember it as the most traumatic and unpleasant thing about the whole experience.”
With regards promotion of the traditional family, LGBT+ rights are being crushed. Little chance of getting married, or adopting, or having the protection of the law as a couple. Marriage is a man and a woman. Full stop.
With regards to nationalism (a.k.a racism), “Italy is for the Italians”, and nobody else is welcome. This is embodied in Matteo Salvini, leader of the separatist political party, La Lega, and deputy prime minister of Italy. In 2019 while he was the Minister for the Defence, Salvini closed all Italian ports to Mediterranean rescue ships carrying migrants that were saved at sea. He is currently facing trail for these actions. Salvini claims that he was defending the Italy and its borders. In the court last week, he stated that migrants “after disembarking have ended up in jail” thus insinuating, an often-repeated message, that refugees are criminals, and that Italy is better off without them. Through the repetition of this message, fascist ideology is pushed on the masses.
Tipping point
Federico Dolce of Diem25, the pan-European political party headed up by Yanis Varoufakis, has some words of wisdom for those who face the rise of the right in their countries. “Like the climate, democracy has a tipping point, after which it is hard to get back to how things were before. When your rights are gone, it is not easy to get them back”.
Federico points out in his upbeat manner that “in Ireland there are signs that something is still alive on a moral level” (due to the strong Palestinian solidarity actions taken in Ireland), “and everything starts at that level…if you love your community, love what’s best for all of you, keep conversations going down to the market, in the pub, keep the conversation sane on the human level, fight for the common good, what is good for the community is good for you. That is how you will have a community you can rely on, how you will have a government you can rely on. Once you have done that you will see fairer work laws, you will see a good fight for good laws, you will have (as a people) your moral compass.
“If I could go back in time 50 years”, continued Dolce, “that’s what I would fight for, without that everything comes apart. If you give up on the common good of the community, if you give up on empathy and trying to understand what other people need, then it is all gone. Just look at us” he finished poignantly.
Words of warning. Ireland needs to take note.
Barry Sweeney is a Donegal man living in Catania, Sicily. He is a long time peace activist with World BEYOND War Ireland.
