Book Fair, blitz against Roccella. FdI against the director Lagioia- Corriere.it

TURIN
I decide on my body. one o’clock and in the Piedmont Arena, at the Turin Book Fair, activists from the Extinction Rebellion and Non una di meno movements contest the Minister for the Family Eugenia Roccella, who was supposed to present her book there
A radical family
(Rubbettino). With her on stage Annamaria Bernardini de Pace, but the presentation will not take place, triggering a series of political controversies that also involve Nicola Lagioia, director for seven years and
at its latest Salone, praised by everyone at the inauguration, including by the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano.

The raid

These are the facts. In the Piedmont Arena, a space managed by the Region, the activists protest and Roccella herself asks the police not to send them away. She invites them to explain the reasons for the protest and a statement is read in which the minister is contested for having repeatedly stated that Unfortunately abortion is a women’s right. Then we accuse a political system blind to the gravity of the climate crisis and its dramatic effects, which will affect women above all, but attentive instead to understanding how to dispose of our bodies and reproductive rights. The minister notes that she would have preferred dialogue, not a press release and adds: Fight against surrogacy with us, against the commodification of women’s bodies.

The protest does not subside, there are chants, some activists lay down on the ground. Lagioia is called, who tries to speak to those demonstrating: Democracy also contains protest, but let’s not lose this opportunity for dialogue. Send one of your delegates here to the stage to discuss with the minister. This is also done in politics. You are demonstrating peacefully, now seek a dialogue. Mediation failed, indeed someone starts challenging the director himself. And here comes the episode that will arouse further controversy.

The controversy

Lagioia begins to get off the stage and the deputy of the Brothers of Italy Augusta Montaruli, present, attacks him: Shame, how can you say that this is a peaceful demonstration?. The director, she will say shortly after, is badly managing the presence of people who don’t think like him and we will roll the drums when he leaves. The latter phrase is much contested by those who, like the former mayor of Turin Chiara Appendino (M5S), defend Lagioia: who intervened to guarantee the minister the right to speak, but to see a parliamentarian violently railing against the director of the Salone is serious and unacceptable. Excuse me.

Around 15.30 Roccella leaves the hall. Twenty-nine activists reported for private violence by the Digos of Turin. The minister must participate in a meeting with The doubt, but the event at the fair canceled and broadcast on Facebook. We were in a place – says Roccella – which should be the most open to all manifestations of culture and it seemed to me important that even on the part of the director there should be a clear position against preventing someone from speaking.

To theCourier
Lagioia explains that his position was very clear: I would have liked the minister to speak and I tried to appease spirits in the way that seemed most appropriate to me. And on Facebook you underline: I said that in a democracy protests are legitimate as long as they are non-violent. And I then invited those who contested to dialogue with the minister, even making harsh criticisms to which she could have responded. The democratic game between citizens and power is also made up of harsh criticisms. It seemed to me that the protesters did not accept this type of invitation. And on Montaruli: A deputy (therefore we are talking about institutions), who evidently demanded that I say what she wanted, began to verbally assault me ​​with quite disconcerting fury and verbal violence.

The question and answer

Lagioia and the minister will then meet to clarify, but the question and answer continues at the Salone, predictable in an edition in which the controversies between figures lined up on opposite sides are heated. Preventing a minister, but in general anyone, from speaking, an attitude that fascism of anti-fascists, an anti-democratic attitude, says Francesco Giubilei, adviser to Minister Sangiuliano and publisher, who presented his volume yesterday at the Book FairRight-wing intellectuals and the organization of culture
(Oligo) in a debate with Luca Beatrice, Francesco Borgonovo, Ferrante De Benedictis, Giordano Bruno Guerri. While Roberto Saviano, also at the Lingotto, on the sidelines of the presentation of his podcast on Falcone (Audible), observes: Let’s not turn the truth upside down. The words of La Russa and Sangiuliano and Minister Roccella are provocations and therefore the dispute enters this dialectic. Zerocalcare had already said that the right has an obsession with hegemony that needs to be regained. What he wants to do is take back the places of cultural power and take them away from others. A practice which, albeit with different nuances, in the dialogue between right-wing intellectuals seems to be considered substantially legitimate: I am a theorist of the spoil system – says Beatrice for example – because the left has always applied it by putting its own in the key points.

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