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The government of Georgia Meloni is using strategic defamation cases to silence public intellectuals, claims a philosopher who is being sued by the son-in-law of the Italian prime minister.
In the latest in a series of lawsuits based on Italy’s relatively harsh libel laws, Donatella Di Cesare of Rome’s Sapienza University will appear before a criminal court in the Italian capital on May 15 following a complaint by Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida over comments she made , comparing one of his speeches to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Lollobrigida, who is married to Meloni’s sister and considered one of the prime minister’s closest allies, sparked controversy in April 2023 when, at a trade union conference, he urged the country not to “give in to the idea of ethnic replacement”, which he described as “Italians give birth to fewer children, we replace them with others”.
The trial centered on Di Cesare’s comments made the same day on the DiMartedì talk show, in which she perceived that there were white supremacist connotations in the term “ethnic replacement”, saying it could be found in the pages of Mein Kampf and in National Socialist ideology .
The philosopher, who has written books on the continuities between Nazi thinking and modern conspiracy theories, said Lollobrigida spoke “as Gauleiter”, a regional leader of Hitler’s party.
In his criminal complaint, Lollobrigida said Di Cesare portrayed him as “a Nazi who glorifies concentration camps and supports extermination camps as a solution to immigration problems,” which was “not only defamatory but shameful.”
“I cannot understand how my words can even slightly be likened to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf,” the minister said. Di Cesare’s remarks, he continued, were “solely aimed at destroying a person and staining both myself and my associates.”
Di Cesare, 67, said her comments were not intended as defamation but as political criticism. “I said Lollobrigida spoke like Gauleiter, not that he was,” she told the Guardian. “What we’re seeing here is a lawsuit against a historical comparison.”
She said she believed the lawsuit was part of a political strategy. “The purpose of libel lawsuits like mine is not only to intimidate, but to push left-wing intellectuals out of public discourse,” she said. “Meloni was very keen to give the post-fascist movement a new, more acceptable face. Those who draw attention to the fascist roots of the movement are punished.
Meloni and Lollobrigida did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
Defamation in Italy can be tried in civil or criminal courts. In the latter, the crime of aggravated defamation is punishable by six years in prison, the heaviest sentence of its kind in the EU after Slovakia, where it can lead to seven years in prison.
A court hearing in Rome on May 15 will decide whether Di Cesare’s case will be decided in a civil or criminal trial.
During Meloni’s first year in office in Italy, the country saw the largest number of strategic lawsuits against public participation in Europe – the so-called Slapp cases, according to a recent study by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) of the European Parliament.
Alongside the case against Di Cesare, classical historian Luciano Canfora, 81, faces an aggravated libel trial in Bari, Puglia. In April 2022, before Meloni was appointed prime minister, Canfora described the politician as “a neo-Nazi at heart”, which Meloni’s complaint said was “capable of distorting and falsifying her political identity”.
In another criminal defamation case involving the prime minister, writer Roberto Saviano was in October 2023. fined 1,000 euros for defaming Meloni and Matteo Salvini, the leader of the far-right League, as “bastards” on TV in 2020 because of their malice towards NGO-run rescue ships in the Mediterranean.
Reform of defamation law is still not in sight despite a recommendation by Italy’s highest court, with the Meloni government last month postponement a parliamentary debate on a bill to end the criminalization of journalists and writers accused of defamation.
“In Italy we have seen defamation cases against politicians and journalists, but this is different,” Di Cesare said. “Public intellectuals like Saviano, Canfora or myself do not have the protection of a political party or newspaper.”
According to data from the Italian organization for freedom of the press Ossigeno per l’informazioneover 5,000 defamation cases are filed against Italian journalists each year. Ninety percent are ultimately rejected as unfounded.
“In Italy, the practice of bringing defamation charges is often used as a legal maneuver to deter or intimidate journalists, who often withdraw their reporting while being investigated,” said Alberto Spampinato, the group’s founder.
2023 annual report of the Council of Europe’s Platform for Promoting the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists said there had been no decline in the use of strategic litigation in Italy. “Not only has Italy failed to decriminalize defamation, but its new coalition government has given its blessing to the use of judicial procedures to silence its critics,” it said.
The report cited 2022 Twitter post by Guido Crosetto a few days after he was appointed defense minister, in which he said “I am convinced that convictions in civil and criminal proceedings are the only method, in the face of defamation, that publishers, editors and journalists understand” in response to accusations in a conflict of interest.
A case involving the Domani newspaper was referred by Crosetto to prosecutors, who ordered him to reveal his source for articles alleging he had received payments from the arms industry. As a result, three journalists were investigated. In response to a question from the Guardian about the strategic use of defamation cases, Crosetto replied: “I have not sued the Domani newspaper or the journalists, but I have only asked the judiciary to examine how non-public and inaccessible data were published . This is something different and more serious than defamation […] That being said, I also take defamation very seriously and believe that true journalism should be a bearer of truth, even inconvenient truths, not a megaphone for lies or slander.
An open letter in support of Di Cesare, published by four British professors at Kingston University’s Center for the Study of Modern European Philosophy in London, argued that cases like hers were reminiscent of tactics used in “illiberal, prominent democracies” to silence opponents .
“It is unthinkable in a democratic country for a minister to drag a philosopher to court on politico-cultural and historical-philosophical issues that should instead be debated democratically,” the letter said.
“Representatives of a democratic government should respond to even harsh political criticism with words, not lawsuits,” Di Cesare said. “I’m a pacifist and an anti-racist, but I’m open to discussing it.”
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