The historian Luciano Canfora, 81, is on trial in Bari on charges of having offended “the reputation of Giorgia Meloni”, during a meeting held at the Fermi scientific high school in 2022 on the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The hearing is set for April 16th, the Premier is assisted by Andrea Delmastro, undersecretary of Justice, while Canfora’s defender is Michele Laforgia, candidate in the centre-left primaries. Canfora had defined the leader of the Brothers of Italy who would later become Prime Minister in October of the same year as a “neo-Nazi at heart”.
Canfora received the solidarity of around thirty associations and organizations and over two hundred and fifty citizens who signed an appeal. Canfora’s judgment «on the ideas and feelings of the Honorable Meloni – the signatories point out – must be included in the legitimate exercise of political criticism, and the opinion expressed by him in that circumstance can be discussed, certainly not considered completely unfounded or motivated from a simple denigrating desire.”
The signatories of the appeal express «our full solidarity with Luciano Canfora not only because we deeply respect his caliber as a scholar, we admire his unquestionable intellectual honesty and his civil passion, but also because we are aware that the ultimate target of the legal action undertaken by the Honorable Meloni is the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of thought and opinion”. Among the organisations, the six provincial committees of the Apulian Anpi, Arci Puglia and Bari-Bat, the CGIL Puglia and the Metropolitan Chamber of Labor of Bari, Libera Puglia, the Giuseppe Di Vagno Foundation, political parties and political associations sign the document -cultural, the student organizations gathered at regional level in the Knowledge Network.
Among the individual signatures appear the national president of Anpi Gianfranco Pagliarulo, the regional secretary of CGIL Gigia Bucci and the secretary of the Chamber of Labor of Bari Domenico Ficco, the regional president of Arci Francesco Digregorio, Don Angelo Cassano, the former president of the province Gianvito Mastroleo, the director Carlo Bruni, the former mayor Daniela Mazzucca, the former rector Corrado Petrocelli, the university professors Nicola Colaianni, Lea Durante, Luisa Giorgio, Domenico Mugnolo, Mario Spagnoletti, Ferdinando Pappalardo, Pasquale Voza, the coordinator of the Regional Observatory on neofascism Antonella Morga.
