The summer of attacks on culture and information: what possible consequences?

The very recent affair at the Monfalcone Municipal Library, where the local leghist junta, according to a report in Repubblica, first forced the cutting of subscriptions to Il Manifesto and L’Avvenire and then the failure to make them available to the public after the return of the two newspapers following a collection collected to meet the subscription costs, is but the latest in a series ofattacks on culture and information that we have witnessed this summer since the yellow-green government took over the reins of the country.

Banksy, Balloon girl (2002). Ph. Credit Dominic Robinson

Perhaps, in the age of democracy, there has never been a more intense concentration of episodes in which politics has made unseemly invasions at the expense of culture and information: for example, the case of the poster for the Barcolana in Trieste, which was the subject of censorship attempts by the local administration, led by the Northern League, has risen to national fame. Also in the city of Trieste, the council then tried to have the poster of an exhibition on racial laws changed, risking the event’s cancellation. In Pisa, the councillor for culture, another member of the Lega Nord, took issue with a very famous work, Tuttomondo by Keith Haring, which he called a “very modest and banal mural,” and hoped that the city would focus on enhancing the value of other artistic testimonies. Again, in Santarcangelo di Romagna, the provincial secretary of the Northern League lashed out at the Santarcangelo Festival, launching a resolution to lift it from its alleged “degradation” (which in this case was represented by a performance by Tamara Cubas). It was even worse in Sarzana: some members of the right-wing, which from this year also governs in the Ligurian city, called the Festival of the Mind “too center-left” and expressed a purpose that smacks of an ultimatum (“either it radically changes its structure, or it should be closed”). And for the Venice Film Festival, even the head of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini, made a move, expressing his intention to “bring back on the straight and narrow” actor Michele Riondino, the event’s godfather, guilty of expressing his disappointment with government policies.

But one could also mention the numerous speeches by members of the 5 Star Movement on the issue of information and publishing, from the “ousting” of unwelcome journalists to the Minister of Cultural Heritage Alberto Bonisoli who accused Il Secolo XIX of producing fake news (and it is worth noting his clumsy attempt to deny the alleged fake news by sharing the video that proved its veracity: “a miracle of communication,” the Genoese newspaper called it). And we could continue with a grillino parliamentarian, Undersecretary Mattia Fantinati, who in turn points the finger at newspapers guilty, in his opinion, of spreading fake news (which in reality were very true and confirmed by ministerial communiqués) or with the latest episode, dating back to last week, when the stars’ blog published a post in which the investigation filed by the Journalists’ Association against Rocco Casalino became a pretext to relaunch the fixed nail of the abolition of the Odg, “measure [....] already on the table of the government,” as the piece reads.

There is no need to be surprised by the uncomforting sequel alluded to above. A common feature of all populisms, including Pentastellist populism and Leghist populism, is the tendency to simplify, motivated by the assumption that populism, quoting Pierre Rosanvallon, “is founded on a simplification of democracy - a simplification of the conception of the people, a simplification of the vision of the procedures necessary to make democracy live, a simplification of what constitutes the common.” for this reason, populisms have contempt for complexity (and consequently for complex reasoning) and, conversely, base their actions on brutal trivializations of extremely difficult and complicated political issues. If a populist leader needs to find an endorsement or even a foothold for his economic policy, he will most likely find himself quoting Jerry Calà instead of John Maynard Keynes. Similarly, an alderman who is wary of a work like Keith Haring’s Tuttomondo, which deals in its own right with the complexity of the world in which we live, will find no better thing to do than to brand it as the product of a “grotesquely radical chic” mind (and patience if the expression “radical chic” used in this context has absolutely nothing to do with what Tom Wolfe had in mind when he coined it, and patience if it has even less to do with Haring’s work: for the populist it is enough that the expression fits into the framework of a narrative that is familiar to him and to which he has probably become accustomed, and everything else can safely fall into the realm of pure sophism).

Another typical trait of many populisms, well pointed out by Jan-Werner Müller in his studies, is the tendency to want to eliminate any kind of mediation. The populist does not like what is in the middle: on the one hand there is the political class, invested by the people with a precise mandate, and on the other hand there is the people themselves (and it is for this reason that a typical phenomenon of populists is the attitude of signing contracts with the people: think of Berlusconi’s “contract with the Italians,” or the current “government contract”). In other words: if the people directly invest the politician with an office, there is no need for discussion, no need to ask questions, no need for the process to know slowdowns due to interference. On the contrary: discussion could be seen as an obstacle in the populists’ path (“true democracy,” Perón argued, “is that in which the government carries out the will of the people and defends only one interest: that of the people”). This is another reason why populists despise culture and often have a hatred for journalism, since the task of art, literature, music, theater, and information is, of course, to lead the public to reflect on reality, to consider a topic even according to different points of view, to ask questions. In two words: to open discussions.

So if the first step of populist movements is the rejection of complexity, the second step will be the attempt to impose their language on the rest of civil society: and this is what we are experiencing on a daily basis, since more and more often the media find themselves chasing the externals of the current populist leaders and, in fact, having their agenda dictated by them (Stefano Feltri, in the foreword of his latest book, writes that “the populists have already won.” even when they are not in government, “because all parties, intellectuals, newspapers and televisions have absorbed their language, agenda, tools, watchwords,” with the result that populism “has gained a cultural hegemony over the forms and language of politics.”) A highly simplified language, which divides reality between blacks and whites by feeding nefarious dichotomies for public debate (which will be heavily polluted), which tends to identify, in the behavior of leaders, characteristics and traits that can make them as similar and close as possible to the ordinary citizen (and the political rhetoric will all be set accordingly: basic dictionary terms, attempts at blunt empathy, rants against the different represented as much by the outsider, such as the migrant, as by the unfamiliar, such as the intellectual class), and which makes use of apparatuses capable of moving with surgical precision.

Once a hegemony on the language of politics has been imposed, perhaps it will not be long before ahegemony on cultural production is achieved: thus, can the numerous and dense series of attacks witnessed this summer (and which cannot fail to arouse some concern) perhaps be considered a prodrome towards more structured and capillary attempts to control culture? And if so, what forms might this control take? On the one hand, immobilism (which, moreover, we are already essaying: in four months of government, the minister of cultural heritage has only been able to produce a meager package of measures on access to museums that change very little from the past) and cutbacks in funding (which some local realities are already experiencing) could become the main tools through which to harass freer and more open culture. On the other hand, bodies within the majority parties (the news of the birth, in Sicily, of a “Culture Council of the League - Salvini Premier” that will operate at the regional level has passed almost in silence in recent days) could dictate guidelines to administrators and exercise more or less pervasive forms of direction. And the main problem lies in the fact that the action of populists is exceedingly rapid and effective.

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