Commentary
The confidence of ‘smart’ friends
The paranoid right wing, always ready to denounce imaginary conspiracies, has made it clear once and for all what its leadership style actually is.
Down with the left and its shady dealings! And down with the “red judges”! We’re back to where it all began, in January 2023, when FdI’s Giovanni Donzelli was ranting and raving on the floor of the Chamber: “Is the left on the side of the state, or on the side of the terrorists and the Mafia?”
Two years later, another prominent Fratelli d’Italia figure, according to Donzelli “one of the smartest people alive,” who used to dress up as a Nazi and now chairs the FdI group in the Chamber, is bringing back the same tune: “Why did the PD deputies go to visit the mobsters? What did they need to tell them?”
Surely such a colossal intelligence cannot overlook the fact that visiting prisoners is among the duties of parliamentarians. Perhaps the genius in question, known among mere mortals as Galeazzo Bignami, is trying to shift the focus to the PD and away from the other stable genius on the team, Undersecretary of Justice Delmastro?
Because the latest news is that the undersecretary – an all-out Melonian, someone who has said he would like protesters in police custody to not be able to breathe and that he’d like to have building occupiers “grabbed by their asses” and removed – has been sentenced to eight months in prison for leaking classified conversations that took place between the famed anarchist Cospito and some Mafia figures, all held in the 41-bis isolation regime, to his party colleague Donzelli, who then weaponized them against the opposition (a moment of peak brilliance: in order to defend that hard prison regime from the supposed laxity of the PD, the straight-arrow undersecretary disclosed conversations that were subject to secrecy under the 41-bis regulations).
Of course, it’s only a conviction from a first-degree court, and “the protection of civil rights is a fundamental principle, which applies at all times and for anyone,” as FdI moderate Maurizio Lupi so sagely pointed out. Too bad that despite the prime minister's “dismay” over the conviction of her protégé, civil rights and the presumption of innocence have nothing to do with it. Regardless of the trial, whether the conviction is from a first- or second-degree court, or the number of months that Delmastro gets, this is a scandal that goes beyond the judicial. It is wholly political, and of singular gravity: a member of the government abused the privileges of his position of power to set a trap for political opponents.
The paranoid right wing, always ready to denounce imaginary conspiracies, has made it clear once and for all what its leadership style actually is – as they’ve been doing ever since, and as the near-identical statements from various FdI members confirmed on Thursday: kicks below the belt, rules trampled underfoot, attempts to downsize, if not outright subjugate and delegitimize, the other powers of the state when deemed a hindrance to their own. We certainly wouldn’t wish Delmastro actual jail time: he would risk having someone like him in charge. He might even be visited by deputies of the opposition.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/le-confidenze-degli-amici-geniali on 2025-02-21