an anti-fascist who wants to silence journalists

It all started well, with a nice warning from Pippo Trischitta – the city councilor who chairs the council commission on the Strait Bridge – who yesterday morning at Palazzo Zanca, giving the floor to Alexander Russowarned him: “I want to tell you to be careful that StrettoWeb is watching you and hearing you“. Russo smiles. We smile too. It’s a party game. We do our job: we observe, we feel and we tell. And we are very proud of ourselves if politics must “to be careful” in our presence.

What surprised us happened immediately afterwards. From Alexander Russo we listened to sensational, heavy words, totally out of place and out of context. Completely outside of a civic democratic debate. A double amazement, given the pulpit from which those words came. RusI know, in fact, he is a tough and pure young man of the Messina left. Always a convinced militant and political advisor among the harshest opponents of Cateno De Luca in the last council session, he is one of the best young prospects of the Peloritano PD. In the municipal elections of two years ago he took 627 votes and he stayed out of Palazzo Zanca for a hair’s breadth: he returned less than a month ago in place of Maurizio Croce. And his first words in the city council at the end of March suggested that this time his council experience would have been of a completely different nature towards the Basile Administration, with which he began with great tenderness. Almost honeyed kisses and hugs, thanking the Mayor for his presence “not due“. Maybe that Basile after the departure of some former Deluchians who moved to the League, he was left without a majority. It will be the about-face on the Strait Bridge, which he saw DeLuca And Basile – elected with proclamations strongly favorable to the realization of the great work – now move to the No barricade. The fact is that thatAlexander Russo of opposition, now, seems only a distant memory of the consiliatura that was. Even though the people of Messina voted for him two years ago as opposed to Basile and De Luca.

But let’s get to StrettoWeb.

And at Russo’s shameful words against journalists and freedom of the press.

Alexander Russoexponent of Democratic partyconvinced anti-fascist to the point of publishing a profile photo of him on Facebook next to the writing “No to Fascio” on the facade of a building, he evidently disguised himself as Vladimir Putin and spoke like a tyrant. “I would like to say that the city council and the commission are the place where the city is represented, they are not the superior council of public works nor the supervisory committee of the Stretto di Messina company, so if it makes anyone laugh that someone in here raises questions even stupid ones, we laugh at his hilarity, because we are here to represent the city and the community. We refer this stupidity to those newspapers that write that in this chamber the councilors are taking a stupid position. It seems necessary to me to defend the leader of the Democratic Party who yesterday in the chamber raised the problem of a dispute between technicians and a term which was not very polite and disrespectful of the institutional dignity of this council was used by a newspaper which repeatedly indulges in insults to this institution, so if this is the case we will also activate the presidential office of this council so that these tones are pursued in the appropriate forums“.

Russianthen, reiterated his ignorance on technical matters on the Strait Bridge and claimed his role as political representative. Which no one has ever denied. Nor StrettoWeb. Still amazed and stunned, we ask Russo where and when we would have written that the councilors would be “stupid“ or what other similar term you have ever read on our pages. Let’s ask Russo what would it be the term “not very polite and not very respectful of the institutional dignity of this council” and above all what would be the “insults to this institution” that StrettoWeb would have several times “lingered“. What is Russo referring to? When has there ever been the slightest insult to the institutions of Messina on StrettoWeb?

In the’article on Mondaythe good journalist of StrettoWeb has faithfully told the conduct of the Bridge Commission reporting all participants’ statements in quotation marks. He highlighted with a sacrosanct and shareable comment there bizarre position of the leader of the Democratic Party, Felice Calabròwho went so far as to say “Everyone who comes here gives us their version of the facts, but we are not competent and therefore we should take everything at face value” nothing less than the Professor Giorgio Diana, emeritus of the Polytechnic of Milan, among the leading mechanical experts in the world. Monia Sangermano, the StrettoWeb journalist who reported on the commission, was far too good with Calabrò. You could have remembered, for example, that the Democratic Party was scandalized when the new grillina Laura Castelli in an epic Porta a Porta broadcast he replied “This is what she says” to the great economist Pier Carlo Padoan. You could also have remembered that the Democratic Party was the party of “absolute science” than during the Covid-19 pandemic no one could afford to question. And then he should have highlighted how, instead, on the Strait Bridge, the Democratic Party has become the party of conspiracy theoristsof the deniers, at least that’s what they called them about the pandemic. The party that insinuates doubt even in front of the world’s leading experts. To the point that the group leader allows himself to say to the professor. Dianain essence, “we are ignorant on the subject, she comes here and can tell us what she wants, we don’t understand her“. As if it wasn’t one great official responsibility speak in the council committee. As if the professor was making fun of the councillors. As if Diana hadn’t illustrated with simple words all the details of the Bridge project, highlighting with enormous clarity how and why it will resist all possible winds in the Strait of Messinato the point of apologizing if “one day every two centuries we will have to close it to traffic“.

The professor had not been heavy-handed or pedantic. Diana. AND he didn’t deserve those words from Felice Calabrò. We highlighted it, without insulting anyone. Without to offendwithout insultwithout minimally question the institutions that are the maximum expression of democracy. On the contrary. The day after our article, which caused a great sensation in Messina, the city councilors returned to Palazzo Zanca with a different attitude. They did more interesting questionsthey have took a more serious attitude. AND they were concerned about our presence who heard them, listened to them and – if we had deemed it appropriate – we could have contested them, highlighting errors and inconsistencies as done the day before. It’s our jobAnd Russo should defend to the death the freedom to do so. Other than taking action to “pursue the tones in the appropriate places“. He wants to pursue “the tones” of a newspaper? And maybe send us to a Stalinist gulag? When was the crime of “tones” in the press? Or maybe that of “lèse majesté towards the Democratic Party“?

Russo would have done better, instead of defending his group leader, to recognize that he had made a disorganized interventionthat yes rude and disrespectful towards the professor, and go on. The Democratic Party would have made a better impression by apologizing. He would have done well to appreciate the existence of one free press like that of StrettoWeb which wants to stimulate everyone to the best of their ability. To raise the level.

Russo instead lowered it to levels of anti-democracy and incivility. But we can reassure him: his threats do not scare us. We will stay free. We will continue to to observe, feel, tell And to comment. Hoping that the politicians, “representatives of the city” as he says Russian, do their best work. AND represent the best Messina. Messina democratic and liberal first, and then that too polite, cultured, interested. Certainly not that of zalli And buddhas than in front of a luminary of science they would start burping. If Calabrò wanted to represent them, he did it very well. And Russo allowed himself to do so the next day threaten the only newspaper that pointed it out.