Luciano Canfora on trial against Giorgia Meloni, Lilli Gruber defends the historian and attacks the Government

The case of the philologist and historian continues to hold sway Luciano Canfora, sued by Giorgia Meloni in April 2022 for calling her a “neo-Nazi at heart” and now a process for defamation. The story was discussed on Otto e Mezzo, a La7 talk hosted by Lilli Gruber.

Luciano Canfora on trial for defamation against Giorgia Meloni: Lilli Gruber against the government

The journalist and presenter sided in favor of Canfora. “The professor will go to trial for defamation against the premier – declared Gruber -, then we have the then withdrawn proposal to imprison journalists for defamation for up to four and a half years. Rai, which is constantly rebalancing, we don’t know where the public service is…”

“There’s a problem with this right with dissent and critical information. We often ask ourselves this because unfortunately we have opportunities to touch on this topic”, added the hostess of Otto e Mezzo.

Professor Luciano Canfora

Marco Travaglio’s speech

Guest of the show, in addition to Canfora, also Marco Travaglio. “I had most of the complaints from politicians before the Meloni government – ​​replied the director of Fatto Quotidiano -. I have experienced 40 years of total intolerance from politicians of all stripes towards free journalism and harsh criticism.”

“On this front – added Travaglio – they are all the same, except for those who, when they become prime minister, drop their complaints and don’t make them. D’Alema dismissed Forattini’s, Conte was called a criminal by Meloni when he was at Palazzo Chigi and never sued anyone. In my opinion it is a good practice that Giorgia Meloni should also follow.”

“Neo-Nazi in the soul”: Luciano Canfora’s explanation

Camphor, since the announcement of the lawsuit of Meloni, specified that the expression “neo-Nazi in the soul” was one “political metaphor”. The professor was sent to trial on charges of aggravated defamation against the Prime Minister, who asked for a compensation of 20 thousand euros.

The professor emeritus of the Aldo Moro University of Bari, in Otto e Mezzo, then went into the merits of the expression that cost him Meloni’s legal action: “The expression ‘in the soul’ comes from Lucretius and a great liberal thinker, Tocqueville, who in an autobiographical page defines his profound feeling of aversion towards democracy as ‘the depths of the soul’”.

“It is – he added – a cultured metaphor that writers of various eras, from the great Lucretius to the no less great Tocqueville, have used to talk about their own remote feelings, what Freud would call Id. And, in my opinion, we could use with Tocqueville’s expression, ‘the depths of the soul’, was a great success”.

“Naturally each of us has a remote, cultural, historical, biographical starting point. Therefore, I would not dramatize how someone makes this expression, which is part of a literary way of expressing in summary and in an aside from a discourse that has a much broader development, a detail that I would dare to place in the field of in-depth analysis. What scientists call psychology,” concluded Canfora.

Photo source: ANSA