Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has sued Luciano Canfora, an eighty-one-year-old historian, philologist, and professor emeritus at the University of Bari, for aggravated defamation (diffamazione aggravata). The preliminary hearing took place yesterday.
The case dates back two years, to when Meloni was an opposition parliamentarian and the leader of the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party. Professor Canfora is the acclaimed author of dozens of books and a famous public figure. Invited to speak at a local high school as part of a discussion of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he made the following comment about Meloni’s position on the political spectrum:
Meloni immediately protested that she would sue Professor Canfora for defamation—above all for having called her a “neo-Nazi,” which according to the complaint “is apt to distort and falsify her political identity.” On July 5, 2022, she did. Having become Italy’s prime minister that October, she did not withdraw her complaint, which makes this trial an unprecedented event in Western Europe’s democratic history: it is the first time that a serving prime minister has dragged a scholar to court.
https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/pierre-vesperini/
an opinion on her politics.
April 17, 2024