“No conspiracy”, “no pressure”: indeed, a request for “rethinking”.
This is how the Italian government comments on the case that has been agitating Italian politics and culture for hours: the cancellation of the participation of the physicist Charles Rovelli as speaker of the Master’s lesson which will mark the opening of Italy’s participation in the Buchmesse in Frankfurt, one of the most important events related to the world of books.
The cancellation had been made known on Friday evening by Rovelli himself, who had spoken of a letter received from Ricardo Franco Leviwho holds the dual role of Extraordinary Commissioner for Italy’s participation in the Book Fair and President of the Publishers’ Association.
«I’m sorry to disappoint the Italian conspiracy experts, always on duty, who are already talking about «censorship» or pressure, regarding the decision of the President of the Italian Publishers Association, Ricardo Franco Levi. I’ve never heard it in my life, I’m sorry that he has decided to change speaker and I am absolutely certain that no member of the government or of the Italian institutions has applied any pressure”, said Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, who himself had criticized from the May Day Concert stage. Crosetto also adds that he is «the first to hope for a rethinking of the decision taken».
A similar position, hours earlier, had been expressed by the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano: «I learn with great surprise of the story, unprecedented for me. In general, having undergone complaints, I am against inflicting them on others. Perhaps I would add a few other voices to that of Professor Rovelli, that of Pierangelo Buttafuoco, Francesco Borgonovo, Marcello Veneziani or others in homage to pluralism», continues Sangiuliano.
Levi’s letter
The story began on the evening of Friday 12 May, when Ricardo Franco Levi, in his capacity as Extraordinary Commissioner for Italy’s participation in the Frankfurt Book Fair of 2024, withdrew the invitation addressed to Rovelli to carry out a Master’s lesson at the opening of the event. Italy had not been a guest of honor at the Buchmesse for 36 years and last March 30 Levi had written the physicist a long and detailed invitation to ask him to inaugurate the event. Now the rethinking, due to Rovelli’s statements from the stage of the Concertone organized by the trade unions for May 1st.
«In Italy, the defense minister was very close to one of the largest arms factories in the world, Leonardo», Rovelli had declared from the stage attacking the defense minister, without ever naming him directly, Crosetti.
The reactions
«Italy will be the guest of honour. Carlo Rovelli was first invited to the opening ceremony and then left at home because his ideas against weapons and war could be an “embarrassment”. Let’s call things by their names: this is preventive censorship. But not even in a book fair is there room for free thought? Not even in the sanctuary of the free exchange of ideas is it allowed to question the single dominant thought? What do we do: do we select our intellectuals to be sure of not offending government officials? What a shame!”, he wrote instead on Twitter the president of the M5S Giuseppe Conte.
«I hope that Carlo Rovelli can give his speech at the International Book Fair, as planned. Otherwise it would be a serious precedent. I don’t share Rovelli’s positions, but there can be no preventive censorship or punishment for ideas expressed as a free citizen», is the opinion of the senator of the Pd Francesco Verducci.
Still from the party of slime raises the voice of Sandro RutoloHead of Information and Culture: «We are concerned about the climate of censorship in our country. No problem if a minister of the Republic speaks of ethnic replacement and Italian ethnicity. If, on the other hand, a physicist and essayist like Carlo Rovelli takes the liberty of criticizing the Minister of Defense at the concert on May 1st, they will make him pay dearly».
«We learn that Charles Rovelli would no longer be worthy of representing Italy, as a guest of honor, at the Frankfurt Fair in autumn 2024: an event that will take place in a year and a half. The reason? He expressed free opinions in a public rally. A serious episode and a decision from which we can only dissociate ourselvesexpressing all our closeness to the author», they comment from Adelphi, the publishing house that publishes Rovelli.
The publishers and the request for a rethink
In the late afternoon of Saturday 13 May, the Italian Publishers Association, while expressing «understanding for the reasons of institutional prudence that determined the decisions taken, within the scope of its autonomy, by the extraordinary commissioner (Ricardo Franco Levi, ed)», he expressed to Levi, president of the association, “the hope that the presence of Professor Carlo Rovelli in Frankfurt can be confirmed”. The Italian Publishers Association «has always placed freedom of expression and of the press at the center of its institutional mission. He has always defended it, and intends to continue to do so, on every occasion: in Rome, in Brussels, in Geneva, in all the relevant national and international institutions and in all public demonstrations. We wouldn’t be publishers if we didn’t put authors and their free thought at the center of our work. This is not and will never be in question.”
The authors and solidarity with Rovelli
Tweets are multiplying on social media: «Levi takes away #Rovelli’s voice speaking of institutional embarrassment. This executive creates the embarrassment and it is not only institutional: it is social, constitutional, moral. Levi’s censorship is a point of no return: it legitimizes the punishment of dissent at the request of power,” he says Michelle Murgia.
«Solidarity to Carlo Rovelli and maximum alarm for freedom of thought in this country. Very serious» by the writer Silvia Ballestra. «But are the imbeciles unleashed against Rovelli all iron crosettians or do they mate with the third poles? In any case they are pathetic, yet another wave of trolls on Twitter (too many we have seen over the years). They too will pass» says Ballestra.
And the philosopher Donatella Di Cesare he presses: «Solidarity with Carlo Rovelli, the target of Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist and warlike regime. Standing up for peace means paying a very high price. Shame!”.
For the art critic and essayist Tomaso Montanari «the cancellation of Carlo Rovelli’s inaugural lecture in Frankfurt it is a black and shameful page for Italian publishing. We have to react, we authors and our publishers. By keeping silent, one is complicit in an obscene and servile self-censorship, in a genuflection to power which would be very serious in the face of any government, but which in the face of this government of fascist origin is also a suicidal act”.