Social storm over the post by the actor and director Michele Riondino who on April 25th to celebrate Liberation Day posted on Facebook, turning it upside down and therefore with the protagonists upside down, an old photo portraying the current president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, next to a photo of Benito Mussolini.
Riondino, who is busy these days as artistic director of the Primo Maggio of Taranto together with Diodato and Roy Paci, wrote next to the photo: “The really funny thing is that there was a time when the fascists were more authentic, more bold, they were lions, even if only for a day. They claimed their identity without fear of being accused of being traitors and murderers of their homeland. Today, however, they are afraid to define themselves, to claim their faith. They betray their identity by swearing on the constitution anti-fascist and then to sit on the armchair they become champions of the super bullshit, I say sincerely there are no longer the fascists of the past today. Better to live as a sheep than one day as a lion. Long live the resistance.”
Under the Facebook post many comments including applause and insults. There are those who write “very good” and those who call him a “failed director”, those who flatter him (“you are wonderful”) and those who criticize him: “The Stalinist-Talibans are always the same. Murderers and cowards. Fascism is dead and buried. Unfortunately, the Taliban communist thugs are still there.”
The reactions
The reactions are close at hand. “Michele Riondino’s statement about the president of the Senate Ignazio La Russa is shameful – declares the president of Fratelli d’Italia in the Senate, Lucio Malan – These characters in search of easy, cheap publicity are cloying. These are the same people who are ready to cry scandal in the face of any criticism, even polite, of institutional figures, if coming from the left. Fomenting hatred, evoking the killing of political opponents is harmful to everyone and is in total contrast to the Constitution, that Constitution that those people only know how to quote, without understanding it, without respecting it”.
“A shameful post published by the actor Michele Riondino on Facebook against the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa – comments Thomas Foti, group leader of the Brothers of Italy in the Chamber – Insulting phrases and images, all the more unacceptable as they are directed against the second highest office in the State, imbued with a violence that is fuel for fueling a vulgar and dangerous hatred. Apparently, the protagonist of said disgusting performance on social media would have been chosen as artistic director of the May 1st festival in Taranto. It is true that there are people like Riondino who are willing to do anything to publicize their own films, but it seems natural and due to revoke the aforementioned position from a person whose demerits are only known.” “To the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, whose appreciated and shared political history we know well, and the courage to have always faced it head-on – certainly not head-down – the full solidarity of the Fdi group in the Chamber”, concludes Foti.
