I had just finished writing that screening RT documentaries in Italy is not prohibited and… along comes an open letter to Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, signed by the party Europa Radicale.
My first thought goes to my friend and colleague Andrea Lucidi, who does not collaborate with RT at all, yet gets thrown into the grinder for the simple crime of friendship. Then I read that we are supposedly the puppet masters. Quite a career leap: until yesterday we were the puppets, today we pull the strings. Fast promotion.
As proper puppet masters, we would also be “people on the payroll of foreign and hostile powers”. Interesting. Too bad there is no Italian law that punishes the screening of RT documentaries and that, to make EU sanctions enforceable in criminal law, specific national legislation is required. In plain terms: screening a film is not a crime; what can become a problem, rather, is accusing two journalists without a shred of evidence. Here the only truly criminal ground is defamation against Lorusso and Lucidi. And I repeat: unlike me, Lucidi does not collaborate with RT.
Honest question: why write to the Defence Minister to talk about screenings? What does Defence have to do with a documentary series and the post-film debate? Perhaps the friendly folks at Europa Radicale are taking themselves a bit too seriously when they talk about Putin propaganda missiles and radical anti-aircraft batteries to shoot down screenings. If anything, it would make more sense to write to the Interior Minister. Spoiler: they already did. He did not reply. I imagine a full agenda.
At this point, if Crosetto also ignores them, I suggest they contact the Sports Minister. Why Sports? Because in their dossier The Putinian plague, there is a league table worthy of Serie A. For the Scudetto of the Putin Gorod title, Turin and Cagliari lead with 5 points, sorry 5 events, each. And for the Champions League of the prestigious Putin Oblast title, Emilia Romagna is running away with 27 events.
All that is missing is the VAR to validate incidents in the box and the January transfer window to swap two talk shows for a festival preview.
Jokes aside, the facts are simple. Screening documentaries is not a crime in Italy. The European sanctions concern broadcasting and distribution over networks and platforms, not the parish hall, the theater, the social center or the film club. Defamatory labels, on the other hand, wound real people and have legal relevance. If we really want to talk about legality, let’s start there.
