Analysis
Italian minister blames migrants and denies patriarchy in Cecchettin Foundation speech
Speaking at the presentation of the Giulia Cecchettin Foundation, Giuseppe Valditara launched into a racist and denialist rant. The opposition called on the first woman prime minister to distance herself from Valditara’s remarks, but no one from the majority said a word.
On Tuesday, the technique of flipping the narrative frame, to which the Meloni government has devoted itself, went haywire for Minister of Education (“and Merit”) Giuseppe Valditara.
The Lega minister accomplished many feats all at once: spreading fake news, unleashing a heated controversy, embarrassing the forum where he had been invited to speak, insulting the memory of a victim of femicide, and completely misjudging tone, approach and context to propagandize notions dear to the global ultra-right. Speaking at the presentation of the Giulia Cecchettin Foundation at the Chamber of Deputies, Valditara launched into a winding speech that gradually slipped into a racist and denialist rant.
From the first words, it was clear to the audience that the minister, unlike the other institutional representatives in the room (Family Minister Eugenia Roccella and Vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies Giorgio Mulè), had not understood that he was speaking in an institutional venue, not at a party rally.
“Generally, ideological approaches never aim to solve problems,” the minister began. ”And the ideological vision is the one that wants to solve the woman issue by fighting against patriarchy.” Then, with a classic rhetorical device, he cited a figure that he would consider “close to the left” to strengthen his own view by contrast: “Cacciari was exaggerating when he said that patriarchy died 200 years ago, but as a legal phenomenon, it ended with the 1975 family law reform.” Thus, according to the Education Minister, the “woman issue” consists only of “residues of masculinism, of machismo, which must be fought and which lead to treating women as objects.”
That’s true for Italy, he stressed, because the real danger comes from outside: “It must be clear to every newcomer, to all those who want to live with us, that the scope of our Constitution does not allow discrimination based on sex. We must not pretend we don’t see that the increase in the phenomena of sexual violence is also linked to forms of marginality and deviance in some ways arising from illegal immigration.”
The audience in the Queen's Hall at the Palazzo Montecitorio sat in stunned silence – both at the fake news being pushed and the incredible lack of any sense of context. Giulia Cecchettin was not killed by a stranger, much less a foreigner, something one would hardly need to be reminded of given the collective outrage aroused by her case that brought 500,000 people to the streets last year against femicide. Giulia’s sister, Elena, would respond to Valditara on social media: “If one were to listen instead of making a propaganda speech at the presentation of the foundation that bears the name of a girl killed by a ‘good,’ white, Italian boy, hundreds of women wouldn’t keep dying in our country every year.”
To use the Lega lexicon, the killer, Filippo Turetta, did not live in a condition of “marginality” or show any “deviance.” And the data from every survey, including from the Interior Ministry, says precisely the opposite: in 2023, 73 percent of violence against women was perpetrated by known persons (cohabitants or former partners). And the perpetrators of “ancillary crimes” [a category consisting of harassment, ill-treatment of cohabitants and sexual violence] are Italian in 72 percent of cases.
It’s hard to imagine what the Education Ministry’s communications office was thinking and how they failed to anticipate the disastrous reception Valditara’s speech would get. Giulia’s father, Gino Cecchettin, watched in disbelief from the front row, next to an astonished Mulè. As soon as the conference ended, the hall was abuzz. Leaving the event, Cecchettin limited himself to saying, “On certain values we’ll have to have a reckoning.”
In the end, the launch of the foundation named after his daughter was overshadowed by Valditara, who took the stage in the first place without the good taste to leave that to the ones who had set up the foundation: the experts and Giulia’s family; and then, of course, because of the immediate controversy that blew up around his speech.
An “embarrassing speech,” “delusional,” “indecent,” “offensive,” in which he “covered himself in shame,” “racist,” “xenophobic,” “misogynist,” “dangerous,” “ignorant,” showing that “patriarchy exists and speaks like him” – such were the reactions coming from a very wide swathe of the political field: PD, M5S, AVS, Azione, PiùEuropa, Italia Viva.
The opposition called on Meloni, incidentally the country's first woman Prime Minister, to distance herself from Valditara’s remarks. But no one from the majority said a word.
Valditara was left to defend himself on his own. In the afternoon, he put out a statement insisting that his notions were correct, adding that “it’s hard to understand why the left always turns things into a fight and can’t debate calmly.” But it wasn’t just “the left” who condemned his words: the student associations did too (they were “wrong and serious,” said Camilla Velotta of the Network of Middle School Students), as well as the FLC CGIL union. According to the latter, the high number of femicides in Italy is “the result of the patriarchal culture whose existence he denied. He has no respect for his role.” The NGOs dealing with gender violence also expressed their outrage.
According to the Educating for Differences Network, the minister's speech represented “a repugnant mixture of petty racism, political opportunism and ignorance. To deny patriarchy is to attack the possibility of dismantling violence from the root.”
“It is a serious matter that a representative of the institutions is taking a denialist point of view, blaming immigrants for part of the violence that characterizes Western cultures,” said a statement from D.i.Re (Women in Networks Against Violence). ”If he knew the numbers, he would realize that the one who commits violence is the one who has the keys to the house.”
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/femminicidi-valditara-accusa-i-migranti-e-nega-il-patriarcato on 2024-11-19