Ignazio La Russa talks a lot lately. Since he was elected president of the senate on 13 October, the exponent of the Brothers of Italy has seemed irrepressible. But he showed an almost amateurish enthusiasm, despite the experience accumulated over many years of political militancy should instead suggest a lot of prudence to safeguard the senate of the republic, the institution that he now represents, from political contention.
The last temptation that La Russa was unable to resist was to throw himself into the controversy arising from the exhibition of a photograph of Benito Mussolini in the ministry of economic development. That photograph was then removed precisely because of the public discussion that had opened and which, however, would not have left any other traces if it had not been for the irruption into the debate of La Russa.
The president of the senate earlier said that a similar photo “is also in the ministry of defense”, and asked: “What do we do cancel culture us too? ”, and then, during the Rai broadcast Door to doorhe added that, if for years there has been a photo in one place, it is not clear what has changed now to have to deal with it.
In reality, according to the reconstruction made by the outgoing minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, that photo would have been there for a short time and would be part of an exhibition set up to celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of the building that houses the ministry. But of course this is not the problem. The point is instead the verbal incontinence that seems to afflict La Russa, and which is not without consequences.
According to reports from newspapers and news agencies, after his election to the presidency of the senate, La Russa would have intervened in some political meetings, moving – he, president of the senate – between the chamber of deputies, where he also met the leader of Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni, and the headquarters of her party in via della Scrofa.
On these occasions he released some statements on the progress of the negotiations for the formation of the new government, for example on the ministry to which the former president of the senate Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati would be destined. It was also produced in some political considerations on the state of relations between the parties of the right. And he did not miss the opportunity to intervene on another question of a purely political nature, despite being president of the senate, the one born on the strongly negative judgments of Silvio Berlusconi on Giorgia Meloni.
Finally, he also found time for a joke about the leadership of the parliamentary club dedicated to the Inter football team: “If there is an incompatibility”, he joked, “I resign from the presidency of the Senate”.
These are completely inappropriate activities if carried out by the president of the senate, since they drag the institution into the political battle, and in the worst case they take it with one side, with evident damage for everyone since in this way the institution is weakened. The presidencies of the chambers, on the contrary, should perform a democratic guarantee function.
The president of the senate, moreover, is the second office of the state, and in case of impediment of the president of the republic he would be called to carry out his functions. Yet La Russa does not seem to have any intention of giving up the party dress. It is a worrying attitude, and it should alarm the political class and observers much more than a symbol, such as a photo of Mussolini, even if it hangs inside a ministry.
Moreover, Italy is still studded with symbols of fascism. They are found everywhere. In Rome, for example, it is easy to come across manholes bearing the image of the fasces. On the walls of many buildings from the 1930s there are marble fasces, just as a group of fasces can still be seen on the theater of Marcellus, right in front of the Campidoglio.
There are also some around the large fountain in the gardens of Piazza Mazzini, on the railway bridge of Porta Cavalleggeri or on the passage between the churches of San Rocco and San Girolamo dei Croati, a stone’s throw from Piazza Augusto emperor. It could go on for a long time.
The fact is that, although all these symbols are clearly visible and are all in particularly significant places in the capital, they have no longer had a voice for some time. They are silent, digested by history or in any case reabsorbed by the landscape. Almost no one pays attention to it anymore, except in very striking cases such as the obelisk of the Italic Forum (formerly Foro Mussolini) which still bears a huge inscription praising “Mussolini dux”.
For the rest, they are silent symbols for decades now. Attitudes such as those of La Russa, on the other hand, make a lot of noise and contribute to the construction of a potentially harmful climate for democratic life. An experienced politician like him – also an expert in symbols, as evidenced by his passion for fascist memorabilia – should be aware of this.
La Russa is not the only one who these days does not seem to feel fully the responsibility that the institutional offices would advise to observe. Even the Northern League player Lorenzo Fontana seems not to have fully realized that he is no longer a partisan but the representative of a democratic institution.
As soon as he was elected president of the chamber, in fact, he found nothing better to do than to go to the show as a guest Door to door. And here, with regard to the sanctions on Russia, he argued that “we must be careful, because if they become a boomerang we could find ourselves in serious difficulty”.
If a party representative makes such a statement, it is one thing, but if the speaker is the speaker of the chamber, that same statement takes on a completely different weight, due to the authority that that office confers on those who make it. embodies. Affirmations such as those of Fontana therefore risk reducing the presidency of the chamber to a partisan stand, dragged into the political dispute and therefore de-legitimized.
Rino Formica, a very long-term politician, leader of the Italian Socialist Party and several times minister in the eighties, spoke of the role of the presidencies of the chambers in a recent interview with the press. And he noted that, in his inauguration speech, La Russa spoke “on behalf of that post-fascist generation that was formed in the search for a space for survival in the democratic and anti-fascist republic”, and spoke of it as a ” survivor who has been able to live together “. But this, he added, “for the new right is not enough”, and hence the election to the presidency of the chamber of Fontana, defined as a “clerical-reactionary”.
The information system is destined to become the most exposed point if the design of this new right goes ahead
Formica also spoke of a conservative drift that will have to be countered by democratic forces, also explaining that “the information system is destined to become the most exposed point if the design of this new right continues”. However, according to Formica “the absence of a reaction from the democratic secular culture […] it was impressive ”.
And, according to what we read these days, other thoughts seem to circulate in the information system as well. In this sense, it is quite significant that the Corriere della Sera, after the election of the presidents of the chamber and senate of two certainly controversial figures, preferred to underline that “at the moment, the effect that the choices made by the center-right was to radicalize the Democratic Party and further fuel the extremism of the 5-star movement ”.
These are all signs that should not be underestimated in a time like the present one in which a radical right has established itself in power that intends to give the country a new cultural horizon, affirming an idea of a more conservative society – even reactionary, in some of its features – compared to that cultivated by the right led in recent decades by Silvio Berlusconi. One of the tools with which this plan should be implemented is the presidential reform of our parliamentary democracy.
And this is all the more worrying, given that in the past this same right has not hidden its anti-parliamentarianism. Meloni herself wrote in her political manifesto – I am Giorgia (Rizzoli 2021) – that “a free and mature people choose and elect their rulers without leaving the ‘palace’ the possibility of distorting their will”, while “a people under protection, considered incapable of self-determination […] it must be satisfied with a mediated form of democracy, in which it has the possibility of having its say […] but then others decide who will be the head of the government, and also the head of state ”.
As Ezio Mauro pointed out in Repubblica, it is precisely through the reform of parliamentary democracy in the presidential sense that the right “will find the heroic background to transform the conquest of the government not only into a seizure of power, but into a system alternative”, perhaps, in the wake of the illiberal and neo-authoritarian democracies that are experimenting with some of the international allies of the party led by Meloni, such as the Hungarian Viktor Orbán.
In short, if the symbols are important and the debate on a photo of Mussolini can also make sense, since we know that even photographs can sometimes change history, it is important to remember that history changes above all the actions of the people who hold the power. And it is these actions in which it will be appropriate to take an interest in the coming months.