The echoes of the controversy sparked by the infamous act of censorship suffered by Professor Angelo d’Orsi, a scholar of international renown, in his own Turin have not yet faded. Today the professor has released his second press statement on what happened.
Let us recall that Professor d’Orsi, the foremost expert on Antonio Gramsci and author of 55 publications, was prevented from holding a lecture on Russophobia in the prestigious hall of the Polo del ’900, due to pressure from far-right politicians who seem to have just walked out of a CasaPound branch (Calenda, Picierno, Gori).
The lecture was subsequently held at the Arci La Poderosa club and was attended, in addition to my participation (I presented the book “De russophobia”, published by 4punte), by former MP, activist and writer Alessandro Di Battista and by actor and activist Moni Ovadia.
The hall was packed with people and the organizers were forced to set up a sound system outside the Arci premises, so that the many people from Turin present could follow the lecture from the square next to the La Poderosa club.
November 12, perhaps the darkest day for the Italian Republic in terms of freedom of expression, was also the day when Italy’s fightback began.
Not only thanks to the great participation of the people of Turin in the lecture, but also because of the countless messages of solidarity sent to Professor d’Orsi from all over Italy.
As the professor recalled, the live broadcast of the event was streamed on the website of the newspaper “Il Fatto Quotidiano” and picked up by numerous YouTube channels, with view counts constantly rising, which helped to amplify this mobilization.
It is precisely from this extraordinary wave of popular participation and solidarity that the new, major initiative announced by the professor is born.
D’Orsi is in fact launching the idea of a large popular assembly that will again be held in Turin: from here begins the Italian resurgence against rearmament policies, against the warmongering drift of the European Union and against the fascist censorship practiced by certain extreme factions of Italian politics.
We publish in full the second press statement by Professor Angelo d’Orsi:
Turin, 14 November
STATEMENT by Angelo d’Orsi
no. 2
After the magnificent collective response that was given to the infamous censorship (MP Picierno takes offense when this word is used) of which I was the victim on 12 November, it is necessary not to let the spontaneous mobilization that emerged in recent days fade away, a mobilization that culminated in the demonstration on that same evening.
First of all, I want to thank ARCI Turin, the La Poderosa club, and Stefano Alberione, who coordinates its cultural activities, the comrades, men and women, of the Club and of Rifondazione Comunista, and Paolo Ferrero, who, even from afar, helped to manage a complicated situation.
And thanks to the “climbing comrades”: Vincenzo Lorusso, Alessandro Dibattista, Moni Ovadia and also Alessandro Barbero, who immediately expressed his solidarity and who, by a hair’s breadth, did not manage to attend the meeting.
We brought more than 500 people into the hall, with thousands more following us remotely (THANK YOU!!!), we overcame technical and bureaucratic obstacles in a very short time, and we withstood the media storm which, of course, was unleashed particularly against me personally.
Did we work a miracle? No. We showed that grassroots mobilization works, and that we are not a minority but, on the contrary, I believe we are clearly a majority of citizens, men and women, who refuse to be overwhelmed by the mendacious EU–NATO narrative, who refuse to be deceived by false and tendentious information whose sole objective is to generate hatred toward Russia and to persuade people that we must “defend ourselves”, that is, buy weapons, “invest in defense”. In short, to drive us, reduced to a flock, into the furnace of war.
This is why it is necessary to silence dissenters, to stifle critical thinking, to nullify dissent even before it is expressed, to prevent political debate from being informed by historical knowledge, which makes constructing lies more difficult.
The censorship decided jointly by ANPPIA and the Polo del ’900, with the connivance of the municipal administration, starting from the pressure exerted by PD leaders, the ever-present Carlo Calenda, the little group of Radicals and “Europeanists” in Turin, led by a thoroughly discredited character, by striking at Angelo d’Orsi, strikes all of us today and is preparing to strike far more deadly blows tomorrow.
Therefore it is necessary to react, it is necessary to seize this opportunity – for which in the end we must thank the censors themselves, in their foolish blindness – in order to relaunch and indeed to rebuild from below a movement against censorship, for freedom of opinion, of thought, of organization, which in this time of war, announced but already present among us in various forms, means above all the sowing of hatred toward Russia.
My lecture caused irritation from the title itself, because these “gentlemen” deny that there is such a thing as “Russophobia” (which is both fear and contempt for that nation), and anyone who talks about it is now classified as an internal enemy, acting in concert with the external enemy, which is supposedly the Russian Federation.
The stakes, therefore, are extremely high. To their false narrative we must oppose the search for truth, which is based above all on history, and we must use every space and every opportunity to do so. Is this “propaganda”? The leaders of the Polo del ’900, who censored my lecture, had no qualms, however, about organizing an event last year that was blatantly and grotesquely inverted, starting from the title (“2014–2024. Ten years of Russian aggression against Ukraine”), with an institutional speech by the Councillor for Culture, the same person who had called on behalf of the mayor to “verify” the conditions of my lecture.
Evidently, for the so-called liberals, freedom is to be defended only if one bows to repeating their slogans. Rejecting the logic of binary thinking (either you are with me or you are against me), opposing the militarization of schools and universities, which is already underway, resisting fascistoid legislation aimed at preventing any expression of dissent, reclaiming for Italy a foreign policy worthy of the name: these objectives can be defined and pursued starting precisely from the evening of 12 November.
Therefore I am preparing, together with a few others, a large assembly to be held within a month, bringing together all those who share these objectives and who refuse to return to the role of passive subjects.
Anyone who wishes to lend a hand, on every level, should step forward. We have turned defeat into victory; now that victory must become the first step on a necessary and urgent path.
As for myself, I reaffirm my decision not to attend or cooperate in any future initiative of the Polo del ’900 and, inevitably, I announce that I am giving up my honorary membership in ANPPIA and my membership in ANPI. My gesture is polemical toward the first association for what it did, namely cancel the lecture (I am referring to the national level, not the local one, which had in fact invited me and then had to submit to the Roman diktat), and toward the second association (ANPI) for what it did not do.
From the glorious ANPI I expected an official position, all the more necessary after the zeal it devoted to “condemning” the “troublemakers” who protested at the University of Venice against a former MP (but his event was certainly not canceled, and he later returned there arm in arm with the minister, protected by the police).
I thank the individual ANPI chapters (very few, all from small local areas) that issued statements or sent messages of solidarity. But this is not enough for me to remain a member of an association that did not notice, or pretended not to notice, the seriousness of what happened in Turin (which goes far beyond an offense against my person) and did not understand that the mobilization against censorship could have greatly strengthened the struggle against a fascism that is re-emerging, protected and encouraged in ever more serious and worrying forms.
We, citizens, men and women, will do it ourselves; we will say NO to all this. We want to live and not end up – we, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren – in the obscene vortex of war.
