The ceremonial of every wedding envisages the phrase “for better or for worse” to be added the vows of the parties of sticking together until the end of life. When things go smooth it is easy to stay together; it may be a lot harder to do that when things are not exactly going as expected.
Or as they were planned to unfold. The one between the current PD-labeled government and the Italian press really seems a most solid marriage. But mybe, rather than the whole PD ecosystem, our media really fancy the current government's Minister of the Interior, as well as its titular, Minniti. Repubblica, Sky and the Rai seems to really fall for this man, trained in the environment of party leftism and raised through work with our country's secret services. His political culture seems perfect in the eyes of journalists and media outlets who are connected with a hypocrite democratic Italian culture that does not envisage neither guarantees (not even the liberal ones anymore) nor real possibilities of dissent. Thus the partnership is stronger than ever.
On Saturday in Giardini Naxos (province of Messina) the protest cortege against the G7 happening in most nearby Taormina was held. A massive political showcase that costed the government about 50 millions of euros. A showcase that could not afford any cracks or hits: no one was meant to disrupt the feast of the masters of the world! But, at least formally, in Italy the right to demonstrate still exists, and that disrupts such media charades in a not small way. So that for politicians and journalists Minniti becomes the right man at the right place because, thanks to his political and career training, he is very keen at depriving of any effectiveness the concepts written on paper (even the constitutional one). Therefore, one was allowed to demonstrate, but at Minniti's conditions! The strategy: weeks of ad-hoc media terrorism, built around the demonstration; two towns (Giardini Naxos and Taormina) literally hijacked by military and carabinieri; pre-emptive repressive measures (bans from the Sicilian soil) against those who are deemed “troublesome” out of prejudice and a maybe unprecedented security dispositif for Italy. The goal was the one of being able to publicly claim to have guaranteed the right to demonstrate – the press releases with the thanks to the good and peaceful demonstrators were already prepared – and to have prevented problems and pains at the same time. But the dispositif did not work, instead it was a complete failure. But Italian journalists did not notice, or they pretended to not have noticed. For better or for worse – we said.
About five thousands of people partake in the demonstration – but they were a few hundreds for the newspapers: maybe they did not see the video they published themselves; tensions, clashes and charges arrive in the end to disrupt the international showcase of Minniti and of the government; the populace of Giardini Naxos symphatizes with the demonstrators by throwing from the terraces water and anti-teargas lemons. In the ministerial plans the event was supposed to go otherwise. And at this point the newspapers and the main media outlets had to overturn reality in order to defend their beloved spouse. “The demonstrators were few” - yet, it has been one of the most important demonstrations in the last years. “Those who tried to break the ban and arrive to Taormina were twenty or thirty” - from the videos it can be clearly seen that virtually the whole cortege decides to proceed beyond the police department boundaries and break the bans. “These “antagonists” broke, as a minority, a peaceful march” - but that march was built by those very antagonists that were awaited by the rest of the demonstrators as they came back after the “deviation”. Plain lies in the end, a product of loyalty and bond that tie together journalists and government.
For example, what the journalists do not say is that those thousands of people that arrived in Giardini Naxos had to go through a veritable odyssey to be able to demonstrate. Some buses were held and searched multiple times; every single participant was identified, had a file opened about him and was photographed without any reasons; some groups were banished and forced to go back even though they did not commit any crime. Moreover, every single one of the thousands of searches had a negative outcome (!!!). Yet, dispensation from any democratic conception is granted to Minniti.
Who arrived to Giardini Naxos did it being exacerbated after hours and hours spent at police checkpoints or directly in the police departments. Who arrived was pissed off! And this could explain to any honest intellect why they were so many in breaking the ban of the police department about approaching Taormina too much. But not to our journalists that preferred to tell the usual lies about petty protest groups.
Minniti failed, but it is better not to say this in Italy...
Yet the ones who won are the movements and the struggles. Because they fearlessly defied that dispositive, but not only. Because they brought to the stage radical content and critique; they were able to make themselves appreciated by the populace of the place of the march; because they rejected any pre-emptive division between “good” and “bad” demonstrators; because the march was participated across-the-board by associations, social centres, committees: very different subjectivities, yet united in the will to say No to that mockery called G7. The struggles won, because this country needs struggle; and on saturday was written a good page of collective history of social opposition against those who exploit, steal, speculate, kill and...repress!
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