A bigwig in Premier Giorgia Meloni's
rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party on Sunday defended the
free-speech rights of an army general who was sacked after
self-publishing a book slamming gays, feminists,
environmentalists and migrants.
Although he recognised that the defence ministry was right in
opening disciplinary action against the officer, FdI
organisation chief and MP Giovanni Donzelli said the man's
rights to freedom of expression were protected by the Italian
Constitution.
General Roberto Vannacci has been removed from his post as head
of the military geographical institute in Florence and is
awaiting a less prominent posting after airing his anti-gay and
other views in his book, 'The world back to front', which has
become among the hottest sellers on Amazon amid a surge in
social media support and sympathy for his opinions.
The disciplinary action, which Donzelli recognised as being
legitimate, was initiated by Defence Minister Guido Crosetto,
one of Meloni's closest allies.
Donzelli, in defending Vannacci's Constitutional rights in an
interview with Italy's biggest selling non sports daily,
Corriere della Sera, on Sunday, said: "In a free world you write
what you think."
"If we laid down that it is the task of politics to decide the
merits of ideas it would be the end of democracy".
Donzelli blasted the centre-left opposition Democratic Party
(PD) for criticising Vannucci's book.
"Who gave the PD the right to self-proclaim themselves as
censors?" he asked.
"I wouldn't like to see us arrive at the principle that you can
only write ideas if the PD likes them.
"What do they want? Stoning in the street? Burning books they
don't agree with? A gulag for ideas that don't correspond to the
many factions they are always squabbling in?
Donzelli's defence of Vannacci prompted PD Lower House caucus
secretary Silvia Roggiani to say the FdI MP "should be ashamed
of himself".
She said: "In Donzelli's opinion, those who have roles of
responsibility in the State can say anything, can offend people,
ignore rights, make racist and homophobic proclamations.
"He talks of the Constitution but perhaps he has never read it.
"We'll send him a copy.
"The only ones who aren't supposed to speak are the exponents of
the PD and the opposition...Let it be clear to Donzelli, we will
always and strenuously fight to make sure that Italy does not
turn back on its democratic values and that, instead, it will go
forward combatting people who are nostalgic (for Fascism) and
reactionaries".
The PD's rights chief, Alessandro Zan, a gay activist who filed
an anti-homophobia bill sunk by the centre right amid fears of
curbing free expression, said on X that "Donzelli's ravings on
Vannucci give the lie to (Defence Minister) Crosetto.
"For Brothers of Italy there is no problem if a serving general
spews misogynistic, racist, and homophobic hate, for them the
problem is the PD that asks for the Constitution to be
respected. Is this the line of Giorgia Meloni's party?".
Green and Left Alliance co-spokesman Angelo Bonelli said the
openly homophobic, racist, misogynistic and
anti-environmentalist views voiced by Vannucci also lie at the
heart of Meloni's FdI.
"Freedom of opinion has nothing to do with General (Roberto)
Vannacci's book: the fact that an army general should talk of
gays as people who aren't normal, or that people are going too
far in defending Jews and all the history of the Shoah, or that
saying sh*ty Jew is normal, has everything to do with our
Constitution and with the Mancino Law (against reconstituting
the Fascist party), and not with freedom of thought," said
Bonelli, a historic Green leader.
"Donzelli isn't speaking for himself only: he is the coordinator
of FdI and therefore he is speaking for Giorgia Meloni.
"Just as Vannacci, as a general, represents the army. Donzelli
is trying to give us a lecture on freedom of thought by
defending the general, and this has nothing to do with freedom
of thought but rather with Article 3 of our Constitution (which
states: "All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal
before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language,
religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions").
Bonelli said that Galeazzo Bignami, another FdI member and
deputy transport minister, and Donzelli were defending Vannacci
"because his positions represent the heart of what Brothers of
Italy has always been and what is has built its electoral
consensus on.
"In a normal country we would not have Bignami in government and
Donzelli as Meloni's deputy.
"In the United States, Eric Fanning, an out gay, was the head of
the army, but for Donzelli it is freedom of thought to says
sh*ty Jew, abnormal homosexuals and all Vannacci's other
discriminatory insults.
"What does Meloni have to say, does she think the same as her
deputy Donzelli?
"Brothers of Italy is ever more similar to Alternative for
Germany (AfD), that party which (late Silvio Berlusconi's)
centre right Forza Italia party would be disgusted to have as an
ally in (next year's) European elections."
In response to Zan, Donzelli repeated on Sunday afternoon that
the PD cannot decide what people can say or write.
"Zan, I'm sorry to tell you that in the Constitution it is not
written that the task falls to you or the PD to establish what
can be written or said. "Is that hard to understand? The day on
which you stop insulting us we'll ask what we've done wrong".
(FdI) Whip Tommaso Foti said the Left was attacking Donzelli for
defending the freedom of expression of an antigay general
because it had run out of solid arguments.
Foti said: "It was enough for the Rt Honourable Donzelli to
touch an exposed nerve of the PD, that is its attempt to take
the place of the hierarchically competent authorities to judge
the conduct of General Vannacci, and against him came
concentrated the attack of the faithful and various acolytes of
(Democratic Party, PD, leader Elly) Schlein.
"The technique is always the same, it has deep roots and it is
wholly predictable: accusing a political adversary of what the
latter has never said and mounting a virulent polemic.
"All Donzelli did was to repeat that it is not up to the
Democratic Party or other parties to decide what can and what
cannot be written in books, a basic principle of democracy.
"But immediately the Left, as always when it has run out of
solid arguments, goes so far as to accuse Donzelli of being
racist, homophobic and even antisemitic.
"But if they think that this way they can condition our actions
with insults and moral blackmail, they have made a glaring
mistake".
In response, Italian Left (SI) economy pointman Giovanni Paglia
said too many people on the right appeared to have discovered
the Constitutional right to freedom of expresson in defending
Vannacci.
Paglia said: "If the lowest staffer on the smallest Italian town
council writes a comment that they don't agree with, the right
asks for his immediate sacking and stoning. "But if an army
general launches a homophobic, sexist, racist and antisemitic
crusaded, in this country it can happen that too many exponents
of the right in government discover freedom of expression".
Paglia said "the reality is that they share (his views) word for
word".
Paglia said: "If the lowest staffer on the smallest Italian town
council writes a comment that they don't agree with, the right
asks for his immediate sacking and stoning. "But if an army
general launches a homophobic, sexist, racist and antisemitic
crusaded, in this country it can happen that too many exponents
of the right in government discover freedom of expression".
Paglia said "the reality is that they share (his views) word for
word".
Former Lazio Governor and ex PD leader Nicola Zingaretti said
that Italy respected the right to freedom of expressing ideas
except those that would deny other people the right to exist.
"It's true, in a democracy all ideas have citizenship rights,
except for those that, if they were upheld, would deny other
ides or people the right to exist," said the PD MP.
"We've already been there. Enough already".
Crosetto said on X: "If Gen. #Vannacci had written a book
arguing the opposite thesis to those he argues in these, I would
have behaved in exactly the same way, as a minister.
"Those who attack me, on one side or the other, would have
behaved in the opposite way. Yes, we are different, and very
different."
In his book Vannacci, formerly head of the crack Folgore
paratroopers, says of homosexuals: "You are not normal, come to
terms with it!", insisting that "normality is heterosexuality".
"If everything seems normal to you, however, it is the fault of
the plots of the international gay lobby," he adds.
Vannacci has since said he stands by what he wrote.
On Saturday evening the far right and neoFascist party Forza
Nuova (FN) proposed Vannacci to stand in a by-election for the
Senate seat at Monza near Milan left vacant by the late
three-time ex-premier and media mogul Silvio Berlusconi.
"In the hope that he is against the war, and against vaccination
madness," said FN leader Roberto Fiore, "I ask Roberto Vannacci
to stand for Forza Nuova in the by-election in Monza. "An act of
courage that Lombards and Italians would appreciate. Italians
want an Italian Revolution".
Vannacci has so far not responded to the call, and is not
expected to.
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