Beatrice Venezi, insults in the theater. The left is not scandalized

It’s an almost scientific rule. When it comes to fanning the fascist ghost (the diminutive is due to its contemporary farcical dimension) or the authoritarian turn in Italy, anything goes, and the left follows any complicity, even when shooting at the crowd, ending up offending their own image of our country in the world. Which everyone should take care of, yes, beyond and above their political affiliation. It happened, for example, at the New Year’s concert in Nice, where conductor Beatrice Venezi was challenged. The artist, as he is known, is a Music advisor to the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano. Furthermore, in his public interventions he did not hide a certain opposition to certain chic radical clichés, typical of a large part of the Italian intellectual generation.

This earned him a protest in Nice: “No fascists at the opera, no opera for fascists”, said the inscription printed on a banner, unfurled from the highest stages. The initiative was preceded by a preventive controversy, when Venezi’s presence in Nice was announced this summer and some committees expected the event to be canceled. Obviously, not a single word from the left to protect a figure who, with his activity, represents Italian art abroad. Similar logics also existed at the level of political confrontation, in this historical thread of almost thirty years, also linked to the Second Republic. A “red aid”, although welcome in our progressivism, even when it disfigures the entire basis of our democracy. Last year, the political elections had just taken place, we were in the gestation weeks of the Meloni government and the Prime Minister of France, Elisabeth Boone, arrived, arrogating to herself a kind of supervisory role over Italy, «to ensure that the values ​​on human rights, in particular respect for the right to abortion, are respected by all”. And then there was Katharina Barletta, vice-president of the European Parliament, a social democrat, who declared: “The victory of the center-right in the elections in Italy is worrying.”

In an attempt to Hungarianize Italy that took into account neither the political-cultural reality of the parties in the majority coalition, nor the fact that the electoral body expressed its opinion in a consultation carried out with complete freedom and transparency. Going up the years, we then find the case of Jean Asselborn, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Luxembourg (this year will be the twentieth anniversary of his office). In 2018, when Matteo Salvini was Minister of the Interior, he accused him, in the columns of an Italian newspaper (Repubblica), of expressing “concepts resulting from fascist ethics”. A few days earlier, the then vice-president of the European Commission Pierre Moscovici (socialist) spoke of “little Mussolinis” for our country. Then there is the case of schools, which could mark one of the initial chapters of the trend. In 2002, Italy was guest of honor at the Paris Book Fair. The then Minister of Culture, Catherine Tasca, said that if Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had shown up, she would not have shaken his hand.

“I’m very concerned about his politics,” she said. Around the minister’s position were some left-wing Italian intellectuals who, in interviews with the French press, complained about our country’s separation from the “regime”. Usual script, in short. In the end, Berlusconi did not go to Paris and the task was taken over by Vittorio Sgarbi, also Under-Secretary for Culture at the time, who received very loud protests. The Italian left, political and intellectual, rejoiced. And a lesson came from the French newspaper Nouvel Observateur, never tender towards Berlusconi, who on that occasion complained to Tasca of a certain inconsistency: on the one hand there was intransigence towards the Italian leader, on the other a certain political enthusiasm towards contemporary communists regimes. On the Italian left, however, it was all worth it. Govern as well yesterday as today.