Putin’s homophobic laws? They can only be condemned if there is no talk of war. Boldrini dictates the line

The scuffle in the LGBTI Intergroup chat. The proposal for a statement against the Kremlin’s latest anti-gay barbarity. Scalfarotto suggests: “A reference to Ukraine would be useful”. But for the former Speaker of the Chamber it would be “a stretch”, and then “even in Kyiv homosexuals are not protected”. In the end, nothing communicated. Better self-censorship than intransigence against Moscow. Pd-M5s axis. The squint of the “pacfist” left

And then, on closer inspection, there are those who have noticed the absurdity. “As far as I’m concerned – Ivan Scalfarotto blurted out at one point – if we talk about Russia and there is no mention of war, one of the events that will mark this century in the history books, we look like Martians”. And who knows, maybe even Ennio Flaiano would have really liked this brief parliamentary farce via WhatsApp, an apologist that seems to be an allegory of a certain squint of anti-fascism, a militancy always on the alert in elevating every fact from our local news into a clear sign of looming barbarism and so inclined instead to make sophisms, to contextualize, to object, in short, a bit to deny, when fascism reveals itself for what it really is, but at a reassuring distance from us, thousands of kilometers to the east, in Moscow . In short, the story is this: that, faced with the news of Vladimir Putin’s homophobic repression, the LGBTI Intergroup of the Italian Parliament, after much discussion, decided not to comment in order not to run the risk of having to condemn, in addition to the homophobic repression, also the invasion of Ukraine. Which says something, perhaps, about what’s going on on the left.