Controversy over monologue

Accusations of censorship against Rai and Giorgia Meloni

(Bild: APA/AFP/Andreas SOLARO)

Italy's public TV broadcaster Rai and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are facing accusations of censorship. Rai is being criticized for disinviting the writer and Mussolini expert Antonio Scurati from taking part in a political talk show on public television at short notice.

The 54-year-old Scurati was due to read a monologue on the occasion of "Liberation Day" on April 25 in the program "Chesarà" (roughly: What will be) on Rai 3 on Saturday evening. On this public holiday, the country commemorates the liberation of Italy after the partisan uprisings of April 1945 against the German occupiers and their fascist allies.

Controversy over invitation and monologue
The writer's invitation sparked a heated controversy. The Rai decided to terminate Scurati's contract on the grounds that it did not want to pay 1800 euros for the reading of a 3500-character monologue. Scurati then made his short essay available to the presenter free of charge, who then read the text on her show.

In his text, which was also published by numerous newspapers on Sunday, Scurati recalls the murder of socialist politician Giacomo Matteotti by Mussolini's fascists on June 10, 1924, as well as the Wehrmacht massacres of Italian civilians in the spring of 1944. He lamented that Meloni had never "detached herself from her neo-fascist past". Instead, she and her "post-fascist party" were trying to "rewrite history".

Meloni also shared the text
The text of the monologue was later published on the internet and shared by Prime Minister Meloni on her Facebook profile. "In an Italy with so many problems, the left is once again causing unnecessary controversy. The left complains of censorship, Rai replies that it simply refused to pay 1800 euros (the monthly salary of many employees) for a one-minute monologue. I don't know where the truth lies, but I'm now publishing the text of the monologue myself (for which I hope I don't have to pay)," Meloni wrote on social networks.

Fee just a pretext?
Scurati replied that the subject of his fee was just a pretext to silence him. This was violence, the author complained. The journalists' union Usigrai criticized that the "control of Rai's top management over information is becoming more oppressive by the day" and announced a five-day strike. Meloni has been accused for months of filling several top positions at Rai with people of trust.

Scurati's disinvitation also caused a storm of indignation in the opposition. Elly Schlein, leader of the social democratic Partito Democratico, accused the right-wing government of "censorship and violence".