About thirty associations, including the CGIL, the Anpi and the Arci, and 250 citizens have signed an appeal in solidarity with Luciano Canfora, who on 16 April will go to trial for defamation of the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni.
During a meeting in a high school in Bari on the war in Ukraine, held in April 2022, the philologist defined the then leader of the Brothers of Italy as a “neo-Nazi at heart”. A lawsuit was born from these statements, hence the request from the prosecutor's office of the Apulian capital for the direct summons of the 81-year-old historian.
“We wish to express our full solidarity with Luciano Canfora”, we read in the appeal signed, among others, by six provincial committees of the Apulian ANPI, the ARCI Puglia and Bari-BAT, the CGIL Puglia and the metropolitan Chamber of Labor of Bari, Libera Puglia, the Giuseppe Di Vagno Foundation, the national president of the Anpi Gianfranco Pagliarulo, the director Carlo Bruni, the former mayor Daniela Mazzucca and the coordinator of the regional observatory on neo-fascism Antonella Morga.
According to the signatories, the opinion “on the ideas and feelings of the Hon. Meloni must be included in the legitimate exercise of political criticism, and the opinion expressed by him in that circumstance can be discussed, certainly not considered completely unfounded or motivated by a simple denigrating desire”.
The promoters of the appeal express their solidarity with the historian “not only because we deeply respect his stature as a scholar, we admire his indisputable intellectual honesty and his civil passion, but also because we are aware that the ultimate target of the legal action undertaken by 'hon. Meloni is the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of thought and opinion.”
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