Italy investigates Placebo singer for calling far-right PM ‘racist’ and ‘fascist’
theguardian.com
Meloni heads Italy’s most rightwing government since the second world war. Italy’s criminal code punishes with a fine ranging from €1,000 to €5,000 anyone who “publicly defames the republic”, which includes the government, parliament, the courts and the army.
Meloni is definitely far-right, and comes from a historically fascist party. So he is just stating the facts here.
Do you mean the well the well known racist and fascist Giorgia Meloni?
Is Georgia Menoni known to the rest of the world as anything other but the well known racist and fascist Giorgia Meloni?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandra_Mussolini , proud member of Forza Italia and defender of her grandfather.
She blocked me on Twitter just for telling her a really cool fact: there's an emoji of her grandfather. It's this one! 🙃
I don't understand.
Look up how her grandfather died.
I thought he was shot, didn't know the rest.
Grandpa's last look into this world was being hung upside down and killed
I didn't realise there was a rope element, just thought he was shot.
how to tell if youre in a facist state:
the person accusing the facist goes to jail
It's the sign of a civilised state, where you can't just randomly offend whoever you want a scale, you need to go to court and prove that you actually have proofs about what you're saying. I applaud this move from the government, the left wings after years of cutting public services to bend to corporativism and ECB, leaving the country in the hands of all sort of migrants without doing anything for security, finally got what they deserve, and now everyone else is a fascist, but with no content
Oh, Lemmy has fascists now.
The left wing was cutting public services, right. Famous left wing policy. I think you're thinking of liberals.
It's astounding these people still don't realize how obvious their tells are. Blaming migrants? Almost certainly an insensible right winger.
One of the main 'issues' with decentralised social media is that it allows the fringes of the political spectrum to have a platform. We'll have to find a way to get along.
I'm not sure I want to "get along" with fascists.
I'm sure I don't.
My sentiment is the same, albeit wording.
I share your general sentiment, I phrased the last part wrong - just trying to be civil in my post. Defederation with fascist instances would be the best shout.
It's called defederation.
Defederation is an outrageously blunt instrument for moderation.
It's part of a process.
To me this looks like a pretty robust process. What other steps would you add?
Main thing I can think of is an option for non-admin users to block an instance on the client side. Like blocking a community or user except it does both, for everybody from that instance.
That's already possible in Mastodon, so if Lemmy doesn't do it already, it should be easy to ask and get implemented.
You don't get along with nazis you exterminate them like you would any parasite.
It can't be that whoever has a different opinion is a fascist, also because I was just having a conversation, it doesn't make sense, if everyone else is a fascist, the term loses any meaning and it's hard to fight back the real fascists. Guess another issue with the boom of lemmy is that all the judge juries and executors from twitter are arriving.
No you're just a fascist agreeing with a fascist government. Might as well call yourself what you are.
Let me guess, whoever disagrees with your subjective experience is also a fascist am I rite
Fascism has an actual definition. People pretending it's just a vague insult are likely fascists themselves in my experience.
Did disagreeing with you makes me a fascist in your eyes? If so thanks for demonstrating
Sorry but people who openly admire Mussolini (the original self-proclaimed fascist) are fascists pretty much by definition. Sounds like you may be one of them.
If "civilised" means I have to tolerate fascists then I don't wanna be civilised
As Porco Rosso said: “I’d rather be a pig than a fascist”. Be like Porco Rosso…
Porko Rosso
No, they got it right
Unless there's a pun I'm missing here
"rather be a pig" and pork=pig meat
The character's name is already Red Pig in Italian, though?
Yes but this is internationally friendly
No, they got it right
Unless there's a pun I'm missing here
I'm sure Placebo, a British band, doesn't give a single dry fuck what this stupid Italian fascist wants to investigate.
Someone is about to learn what "Streisand Effect" means.
You mean racist fascist Giorgio Bologna?
They were in Italy at the time so I suppose they could have caused issues if they went full full fascist.
Ah, yes, nothing like forbidding people from calling out fascism to prove your government isn't fascist.
Didn't the world fight a world war to stop this kind of government from taking full control over a people?
Nah, Italy's fascists were never really purged, because the occupying Americans preferred them to the Communist partisans
I'm not saying that Americans didn't play their dirty tricks as usual, but it was Italian voters that elected Meloni, not the US..
As if that matters. As if Trump wasn't elected by US voters after massive disinformation campaigns and international meddling.
Whether the people are partially to blame or not is a complicated topic. Both in the US and Italy, about half of the population were educated/smart enough to see through their propaganda. The right wing party still won though because they picked their target audience effectively and tailored their whole campaign around that audience.
@iByteABit @Damage forest for the trees…
Never laid the blame for that on anybody else
WW2 was started by the Nazis, so it was really them fighting for something. The rest of the world just defended itself
It's a lot more problematic when the Nazis call from inside the house.
Ethiopians would disagree
Nah, just the one. And it was because he was killing hordes of people, not controlling them.
Um Mussolini's Fascist Italy was very much in the war
But Franco got a pass. Probably because he didn't invade his neighbors and committed his atrocities at home like a good little fascist.
Wait, which mussolini? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandra_Mussolini
TIL about Italy's shunning of their past in contrast to the "collective guilt" felt by Germans after WWII
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italiani_brava_gente
Have you ever heard of Mafia. Bc if you come to this country they will mostly collectively lie and tell you" Hun? Naaaa that's gone". You live here for a while and you like, oh ok, we just pretending it's gone nice.
The fact that the Italian military & it's leaders were spared from the Nuremberg Trials made this all the easier.
Italy has a real hardware love for fascism, it's part of the culture, unfortunately. I wouldn't be surprised if they go full Nazi in the coming decades.
After WW2 italian socialist and communist parties where between the strongest ones in non USRR europe (if not the number one), but let's just spout random nonsense for no reason
While the extreme right wing never disappeared, they were as much as a niche as the extreme left.
The country stayed between the left and the center until well into the 90s when a moderate right became more prominent and started to be closer to a 50/50 split
The general right wing radicalization we're seeing now is way more recent and it's hardly a phenomenon exclusive to Italy.
I totally agree that the current Italian government is ridiculous and that this problem with extreme right wing populism is becoming very serious in most western countries, Italy included.
But comparing this to a culture ingrained love for fascism when fascism didn't last for even 1% of Italian history and culture is just asinine and ignorant.
This kind of attitude is ironically very similar to the racism you're trying to criticize
With operation Gladio Italy was the core place for neonazi terrorist groups that received paramilitary training and funding by the US and carried out multiple terrorist attacks to be blamed on the left. It is hard to believe that the Italian government wouldnt have known and tolerated theses activities too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
yup even italian computers are infected
I swear to god that I typed hardcore. lol
Sometimes it feels that Italy consists entirely of pasta, fascism and 🤌.
Literal actual fascists behaving like fascists, surprise surprise.
Yeah this was my thought reading this, too.
Who woulda thunk that when you give the fascists power, they don't stop being fascists! #surprisedpikachu
Now, what I would do if I were Brian Molko is I would absolutely go to trial. Turn it in a show. Either I get convicted, in which case, Meloni looks even more like a fascist, or I get exonerated, in which case, it's the courts that are accepting that she's a fascist.
5000E is not an issue, he can fundraise that in an afternoon.
GO BRIAN
I've never really been a Placebo fan or a supporter until right now
Brian's duet with David Bowie is a thing of beauty.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=c14qMbmP9eg
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Proving them right, I see
Person: "You're a fascist"
Government: "That's wrong; we're gonna use the power of the state to investigate and punish you for something you said"
Person: "Oh well I stand corrected. Totally not fascist at all...."
Thats the fascist paradox.
Call someone a fascist, if they want to oppress you because you lied, then you are right, so they can oppress you, but if they dont oppress you, then you are wrong and you are to be oppressed, but then you will be right.
The USSR would also persecute people for criticizing the Soviet state or its leaders, but they weren't fascist. Authoritarianism is something people on the left and right both get up to.
I mean we are kind of splitting hairs a bit then. The worst thing about fascism is mostly the autocracy and the "ends justify lots of murder" attitude. When people talk about the evils of fascism that's what they're talking about.
Likewise, when people criticize Stalinism, they aren't talking about the high minded ideals or even the questionable fashion choices. They are talking about the autocracy, and the "ends justify lots of murder" attitude.
If left-wing authoritarianism isn't an oxymoron, then what the heck does left-wing mean?
I agree that authoritarianism does not equal fascism, but the only meaningful definition of left-right politics (in my opinion) is a measure of belief in and adherence to social hierarchies. And the USSR was definitely heavily into hierarchy.
Why would it be an oxymoron? There is nothing on the political chart or inherent to it to forbid the left wing to be authoritarian.
This is my thinking, let me know if you see any issues with my interpretation:
First line of Wikipedia Left-wing politics: Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole.
First list of Wikiepdia Authoritarianism: Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting.
By these definitions, Left-wing politics should want to evenly distribute power democratically, whereas authoritarianism wants to centralise power in a single entity such as a the military or a dictator.
The perpetual dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist-Leninism is functionally indifferent from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The authoritarian leadership just becomes the new bourgeoisie.
All good with the definitions, please share them as much as you want.
My claim is extremely simple, nothing is gonna stop you as a left wing representative to reach those objectives through authoritarian means.
I don't see how is that hard to understand unless you claim some kind of special position for either side.
In which case, this is not a conversation I'm interested in.
Yeah, that's where the left-right concept kinda breaks down.
It feels wrong to say the USSR wasn't left when you consider the many left policies they had and of course their origin.
I also agree with your idea of what left-wing should mean. I guess there's no way to avoid complexity with topics like this.
I'd argue the USSR was fascist the same way the DPRK is fascist. You aren't necessarily left-wing just because you say you are.
I can see the parallels but this really conflicts with the historical definition of fascist. Then again, practically everyone is a fascist these days at least according to someone, so maybe the historical definition doesn’t matter anymore. Guess that’s the downside of it being the universally despised bogeyman term in politics.
Thought it might be helpful to compare the USSR to Wikipedia's definitions of fascism and communism. These definitions can be wrong or could be different than what they were at the height of the USSR, but perhaps it'll help with finding common definitions. I'll admit that my knowledge of USSR culture/governance is limited, so feel free to critique/refute any of my interpretations.
Fascism:
::: spoiler Checklist (hidden for brevity)
+Dictatorial leader: Stalin wasn't exactly a democratic ruler. Check.
?Centralized autocracy: AKA: One person has final say over any government decision. Probably, but maybe not depending on your definition?
+Militarism: Definitely had a significant military focus. Check.
+Forcible suppression of opposition: Yeah, that sounds par for the course for modern Russian government.
?Belief in natural social hierarchy: Does semi-deliberate wealth disparity and nationalistic superiority complex count?
?Subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race: Sounds likely, but not 100% sure.
+Strong regimentation of society and the economy: Pretty sure the USSR had a planned centralized economy. :::
It hits 4/7 pretty firmly and the remaining 3 are plausible.
Communism:
::: spoiler Checklist (hidden for brevity)
XCommon ownership of the means of production of goods/services: Weren't these state-owned?
XCommon ownership of the means of distribution of goods/services: ^
XCommon ownership of the means of exchange of goods/services: ^^
?Allocates products to everyone in the society based on need: Wasn't there significant poverty while others' were well-fed? If distribution wasn't tied to labor, then it could be argued this fits, if somewhat imperfectly.
XAbsence of private property: Oligarchs don't exactly scream "lack of private property"
XAbsence of social classes: Again, oligarchs and poverty
?Absence of money: Can't comment on this one
XAbsence of the state: There was 100% an overarching state :::
Hits 2/8 at best, but I would be surprised to learn there wasn't money in the USSR.
Yes, but that is a different conversation. Now we are talking about Meloni and her ties to the far right 🙂
Stalin was absolutely a fascist.
He really wasn't, though.
All fascists are authoritarians, not all authoritarians are fascist.
As Italian is worth mentioning that these nationalist dimwits we have now in charge have being elected with a genius grade new electoral law pushed by the centre left coalition and especially devised in a bipartisan accord between the centre left and the centre right coalition to counter the rise of Movimento 5 Stelle (or any new "small" party) which would then interfere, as indeed it did in the previous election, with the well established bi-partitism which had been instated from Berlusconi since the late 90's (as per P2 Masonry Group Manifest bullet point, https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_di_rinascita_democratica and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due).
As result of this new electoral law Meloni is holding Italian government by the balls with a mere actual 16,4% of votes on the voters total.
Let's go into numbers, indeed Meloni coalition ("centre" right, lol) got 43,79% of the total valid votes, of which 26% for Meloni's own Fratelli d'Italia party, but you must consider that these percentages do not include the 36,91% of citizens holding voting rights which didn't actually vote at all, which means this non-group missed to be the largest non-coalition by little and de-facto resulted in non-being the most non-representative non-party.
So accounting for the 36.91% of non-voters Meloni is acting like an empress embodying the second coming of Mussolini with a scant 16.4% of actual voting preference. For this don't forget to thank the center-left for pushing the afore mentioned new electoral law, because this only is what enabled her to act like she's doing.
BONUS: article on some buried past of Meloni as failed nerd wannabe career using public money
https://kotaku.com/georgia-meloni-italian-pm-fps-shooter-game-pope-unreal-1850163072
We have an old saying in Germany, from the times of the Weimar Republic's communists, which roughly translates to:
"Who has betrayed us? The Social Democrats"
It rhymes in German.
Wasn't the Weimar communist party also the one who said "after Hitler, us", and formed a coalition? I may be completely mistaken and misremembering. My impression was always that it wasn't the center left nor the left at fault, it was their feuding with each other that allowed Hitler to rise.
Had the two groups seen each other as rivals and not enemies, I think things would be way different.
She's literally the head of a self proclaimed fascist party, isn't she?
Fascist in everything but name. They want everyone to follow the same song and dance that they're totally not fascist tho
Wow. Ok then...I guess technically he did violate that law and so it shouldn't matter how fucked up that law is with respect to an investigation being done about it, but can we still talk about how fucked up that law is in an EU country? Yeah I know Italy's a little bit different and such, but goddamn.
W would have loved to have had something like this when the Dixie Chicks got out of line over Iraq (though his response quoted there seems oddly...reasonable? ehh, fuck W): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy
They have it in a lot of other countries in Europe too. Its fucking disgusting and constantly abused by conservatives. You also see it being used against people who insult the church in certain countries.
Fascist gonna crybully
So no freedom of speech?
You're free to be super duper racist, sexist, ableist, pretty much any kind of discrimination you want. Isn't that enough?
No, I want talking shit about governments without government punishment. Ya know, freedom of speech
Not if it means I have to trade away my right to criticize the government.
"Free speech bro's would kindly request that all free speech is fully aligned with the party policies..... thank you"
Yeah, wtf?
In a democratic state it is imperative that the population is free to criticize their government.
What is the EU saying about this? Don't they have demands on member states to uphold democratic values?
I've been surprised that some western countries have laws like this. A French woman has also been fined for insulting Macron.
The public prosecution department in Germany let someone's home got searched because he called a conservative politician "Du bist so 1 Pimmel" ("you are such a penis") via Twitter.
At the same time the public prosecution department in Germany regularly refuses to take action against hate speech when aimed against other people. Even other politicians.
And since many people do not really understand our jurisdiction, they believe it is enough to protest against the police.
I wonder what their response would be to a bunch of lemmings outside the reach of Germany's laws doing the same?
It's almost like making laws against free speech is a slippery slope.
It can be, but not all speech is free, not even in the US.
Them's fighting words.
Nope. There's a bunch of thoughts and speech acts that don't contribute anything. There's a reason the swastika and other Nazi codes/insignia are outlawed in Germany. "We just need to exterminate the Jews for a better life for everyone else" is similarly outlawed under an incitement to genocide clause.
There are very good reasons to put barriers on absolutely free speech.
What i meant was actually, fighting words are not protected under free speech in the USA. Not disagreeing, just making a funny.
Not just that, slander, defamation, hate speech, harassment can all be speech yet you can get sued and will have to pay for that sort of speech. Actually the US is basically the same as most other western countries, the „only the US allows free speech“-simpletons couldn’t be further off.
To be exact, there is a difference between insult and defamation
I'm not too sure about the technicalities either, so I'm not sure if insulting is also a problem.
But declamation requires saying something false to ruin the other person's reputation, and it's actually a crime even against normal people
*defamation
Declamation is a form of rhetoric.
Thank you, I didn't notice the typo!
Somebody once remarked that it's funny how everyone acts like Italians all walk around being Mario Brothers but the Italians just roll with it.
It's because some Italians were the people who invented Fascism as a formal political movement, and you know damn well how that ended up, so if going "It's-a me, Giancarlo!" every once in a while gets the world to forget, they'll take it.
But then this happens, and you have to start talking about spaghetti as much as possible.
Don't even have to go that far back: Italy is massively corrupt with organized crime running parts of the country and with a literal facsist representing them in the EU Parliment(Mussolinis granddaugher in fact). This current prime minister that is being referred to in the post is a self-proclaimed "national conservative".
And the fact that they kept letting Berlusconi run things is all the proof you need of how corrupt the entire country is(his "controversies" part on wikipedia is so large that it has its own page with 160 citations, he is also connected to the party of the person mentioned above).
But it has some amazing tourist locations and food, so people gloss over that as well.
Italians where also the ones that invented the republic, so what?
Fascism was and will always be a disgrace in Italian history, but maybe you should research Piazzale Loreto to see how much people ended up liking fascism in the end.
Of course there are extremist idiots in Italy like in any other country, but Italy official position on it was made very clear.
Even making a fascist group or association is literally a crime in Italian law.
This doesn't change that the current situation is very bad of course, but right wing populism and fascism are not nearly the same thing, even if one could lead to the other
This has to be one of the most stereotypically racist remarks I've read in a while here on lemmy. They might be remarks, but still sheesh
Italians embrace their cultural and gastronomic exports while shunning certain parts of their history - I wouldn't say that's racist... In fact I would call that humanizing
Anytime Meloni gets upset about anything I just remind her to be like her grandpa and turn that frown upside down.
You're thinking of Alessandra Mussolini.
Dang, thought this one was related to him too. We can still turn them upside down though right?
Need a lot more people to get a lot more radical first.
So.... they proved him right?
Kind of have to. Either he's right and they do something of either he's not right and broke a law, at which point they have to do something
Or they're fascists
Ok I don't know what you are doing anymore, either parroting or something else.
That move just makes Brian seem more reasonable.
It's not defamation if it's true. Getting punished for stating the obvious is the hallmark of a fascist state. It's fishy that the original video from Repubblica has been removed.
Per Wikipedia:
So it might be slander, dpending on Italy's laws. :(
That might apply to the 'piece of shit' part, but the 'fascist' and 'racist' part are true, and not damaging her reputation, as her reputation with her voters is built upon these
but he's right, so what?
Gotta love the dipshits in the replies pushing the whole "the left calls anyone who disagrees with them a fascist!!1!" while conveniently leaving out any and all context as to what they're disagreeing about. ~Cherri
So they're not even pretending to have free speech anymore.
In a lot of ways, the fascism that Italy invented never left. I had hopes 20-30 years ago, but they have been roundly dashed.
sad but true
I mean, this was always a crime, it's not like it's a new law.
Brian Molko continues to be based
More countries really need an irony clause in their constitutions. When the irony gets to this level clearly there are insufficient checks and balances in place.
If I had the money of a lead singer of international band I would consider a €5k fine a "campaign donation" to the other side and go call them fascist and get it in the papers.
For “contempt of the institutions.”
That's not defamation, that's a factual news update.
Even calling it a news update isn't really accurate. It's more akin to "water is wet."
Yeah, but do they investigate for defamation or exposing "state secrets"?
At first I thought they were talking about Placebo Domino.
I think you mean Plácido Domingo.
Placebo Domingo LMAO
*Domino
O:
While I seriously wonder what exactly they mean by "far-right", that law shouldn't exist
Fascist admirers of Mussolini would usually qualify as far right:
Who is Giorgia Meloni? The rise to power of Italy's new far-right PM
Thank you. People seriously need to stop acting like words don't have meaning and it's impossible for actual fascists to actually exist.
"But whatabout teh mom & pop shops!" was from day 1 a deliberate talking point that existed to delegitimize the very legitimate protests. Do you really think none of the Tea Party contemporaries said the exact same thing about them? "Whatabout those poor sailors who carried that tea who are losing their payday and had nothing to do with the Stamp Act? Whatabout the poor local community merchants who will lose out on all those tea sales now? The Stamp Act is not their fault." Do you really think none of the loyalists were saying that?
We need to face the fact that we have a class of American citizens who continue to suffer under an oppressive police state. Their protests are valid
Oh, going by the actual definition of fascism and calling fans of Mussolini fascist? How very fascist of you!
It's possible they're getting hung up on the fact that you are using the western, dumbed down Fisher-Price version of the political spectrum where both sides are capitalism.
The actual political plot is a two-dimensional thing. Where left and right is defined by capitalism and socialism only. With a separate axis completely for social issues. Meaning that neo-libertarians, capitalists that favor social democracy, and authoritarians/fascist can all be equally far right. Likewise Authoritarian Leninists, social democracy favoring socialist/communist, true libertarian, and anarchist can all be equally far left. Despite all of them differing wildly on social issues.
Though I definitely could be wrong and they could just be apologizing for fascist. Sometimes it's hard to tell.
From your article, "Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology... no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration... no to big international finance... no to the bureaucrats of Brussels!"
So Western European far right,so centrist or even left wing everywhere else.
It also seems shes distanced herself from fascists.
Anti LGBT, white supremacist, antisemitic. She also openly praised Mussolini when she was young and her party used fascist imagery. But when she had a vote of no confidence against her she said she's not a fascist so it's all good!