The left surrenders itself to Fedez: one-way freedom of expression, shouts at censorship while applying it to enemies
Other than censorship, the Rai executive intervenes by giving the green light to Fedez's attack on the League. The Zan bill adds nothing to the rights of homosexuals, it is a dangerous attack on freedom of expression, in an era in which ideas and artistic works are censored and banned in the name of "identity politics" and Cancel Culture. Once there were artists aligned with left-wing parties, today left-wing parties align with artists and influencers
It is difficult to remember such a paradoxical controversy full of short circuits like the one on Fedez's monologue at the May Day concert broadcast on Saturday by Raitre . Contrary to appearances, the 'Fedez case' has nothing to do, if not marginally, with freedom of expression, and the object of the dispute, the starting point for his monologue, the Zan law proposal, only marginally concerns and sanctions homophobia, while on closer inspection it touches precisely the freedom of expression. And other than censorship, the only Rai executive to speak with Fedez in the incriminated phone call has in fact given the go-ahead for the singer's attack on the League.
But let's try to extricate ourselves between the different levels of reading and the different exploitation.
The "media" plan. The artist's freedom of expression has nothing to do with what happened and reported by Fedez . And as we will see, Rai has to do only marginally, but it is not by chance that it ends up at the center of the same controversies. Here the theme is not freedom of expression, because what Rai is criticized for is not that Fedez or others express their thoughts, but the bias and the absence of contradiction in the contexts in which they are allowed to do so, putting made the "public service" at the service of a political party, always the same.
It too often happens that cultural and artistic shows and events end up becoming stands for political rallies or moralizing sermons by the artist of the moment, which sometimes end up obscuring the event itself, bypassing that minimum of contradiction that even biased talk shows and Rai infotainment are called upon to guarantee.
This is the point: while a private publisher can be biased as much as he wants (in programs and moments that do not fall under the "par condicio" law ), Rai being a public television, paid with the money of all taxpayers, most disparate political and cultural orientations, it is expected that biased use of public service will never be allowed.
But there is another "misunderstanding" in this story, artfully fueled by Fedez to pass from being the victim of a RAI censorship. Thanks to the newspaper Domani , we get to know better how the May Day concert is organized. Rai pays a sum that is around 500 thousand euros for the broadcasting rights of the event. But the choice of the contents of the concert, since the Primo Maggio Consortium was established, is by an artistic director: this year Massimo Bonelli, CEO of the iCompany company, who has been in charge of organizing the show since 2015. If the one denounced by Fedez had been an attempt at censorship, it would be attributable to the iCompany company, not to Rai . And this can also be seen from the integral of the telephone call issued by the singer as proof of the pressure received.
To utter the unfortunate expression "adapt to the system" , to which Fedez has attached himself to pass from being a victim of censorship, is Massimo Cinque, head of the iCompany project, as well as the request for a preventive vision of the text that the rapper he would have read on stage, while the only Rai executive to speak with the singer, the deputy director of Raitre Ilaria Capitani, intervenes precisely to avoid accusing the Viale Mazzini company of wanting to censor him. But this part of the conversation the astute Fedez cut it from the video he spread on social media :
“ Rai has absolutely no censorship to do. In the sense that… Rai makes a purchase of rights and filming, therefore Rai is not responsible for your presence, God forbid, or for what you will say […] ”. “I want to underline that Rai has absolutely no censorship, okay? It is not this […] After which I consider the context inappropriate, but this is his thing ”.
Therefore, not only the crafty Fedez recorded and disclosed to millions of people a private phone call without the consent of the interlocutors – already in itself a questionable conduct even from a legal point of view – but he also shredded his video, obviously premeditated, in a way that the attempted censorship appeared to be the work of RAI executives and not, if anything, of iCompany . In short, paradox within paradox: in the whole of this affair, in the end, the only censor is precisely the alleged victim of quasi-censorship.
But you understand that one thing is to pass from being a victim of RAI censorship, another thing for iCompany …
Fedez's accusation against Rai , at least from what can be seen from the widespread telephone call, therefore appears unfounded. What we reproach the Capitani and the RAI managers is, on the contrary, for not having done everything possible to prevent them from taking advantage of the means of public service for a political and personal attack without contradiction.
In this case, moreover, the alleged censorship would be consumed entirely on the left: on the left the censored singer, on the left the alleged censors. But if the monologue prepared by Fedez had appeared inappropriate not to some bad Northern League or Melonian fascist, but to the organizers themselves (certainly not right-wing) of the big concert and to the Rai executives in the Pd share, perhaps some questions should be asked.
It is the full right of the organizers, if there are monologues of the singers that go beyond the "artistic" content of their contribution to the event, to know the lyrics, if only to protect themselves from possible legal actions. This is "the system" …
It is not unusual in this kind of events that artists want to express their closeness, support a political or social cause, with a t-shirt, a song, or even a joke, a slogan. But what Fedez did is quantitatively and qualitatively very different, so much so that it was judged inappropriate by politically similar executives. He did not limit himself to declaring and motivating his support for the Zan bill, he lashed out at a party, against some political exponents cited by name and surname, without contradiction, without any of them being able to reply in front of the same public to whom he was addressing. Particularly violent, populist, and off topic, the attack on Roberto Formigoni on the reinstatement of the "annuity" (which is not an annuity, but social security treatment), unassailable at the point of law.
There is a substantial difference between social media and an event broadcast by Rai . On Twitter, Fedez reaches an audience "of his", his followers , a following that he has thanks to his skills, while that of the May Day concert is an audience that he was able to reach thanks to the organizers and thanks, above all, to the Rai media, paid by all the taxpayers, that is, also by the citizens who think differently from him, and by the people whom he fiercely attacked and who did not have the opportunity to defend themselves there. Fedez used Rai as if it were his Facebook page and thanks to the self-harm of the Rai executives he even managed to pass for gagged …
An artist might want to support a political campaign with a gesture, with a slogan, even out of context, precisely in a broad sense of freedom of expression, but a rally to attack a party and individuals is something very different, intolerable in a format without contradiction. This is what is meant by "context" and that the iCompany and Rai executives were unable to explain to him in the phone call.
A criticism of Amazon , for example, on workers' rights, would have been more appropriate to the May Day concert, considering that on Saturday the union leaders had gone to demonstrate in front of the Passo Corese plant. But we understand that for Fedez , who was the testimonial of Amazon , it would have been embarrassing.
Second floor: the merit of the Zan bill. But Fedez read that text of the law. And if he read it, did he understand it? Because the paradoxical side is that if in one of his concerts he were to sing the verse that a few years ago he dedicated to Tiziano Ferro, pursuant to article 4 of the law that he supports with such passion, he could be called to answer by a judge for instigation to the discrimination. Here is the problem of the Zan bill: the attack on freedom of expression.
If it were to become law, one of the risks would be to go back to the time, not so distant, when musicians were tried for the verses of their songs, where their accusers saw the incitement to commit crimes or simply the promotion of immoral conduct.
Just Rai , the "public service", like other mainstream media, are responsible for a constant work of disinformation on the criticisms of the Zan bill, portraying those who oppose the text as obscurantists and keeping silent about the critical issues from a legal point of view. The overwhelming majority of critics are not motivated by discriminatory or persecutory intentions towards homosexuals, but by the risks to freedom of expression.
Today the censored thought, or in any case represented as a strongly minority, on the subject, is certainly not that expressed by Fedez from the stage of May Day. If Fedez had spent a tenth of his influence against the curfew and for the right, indeed the freedom to work in these months, that is, he had fought a truly liberal battle, they would not have even let him go up on that stage.
The Zan bill would introduce controversial, ideologically oriented concepts such as "gender identity", which cannot be legally typified, into the penal code. Article 4 seems to save freedom of expression and the pluralism of ideas, but with a "provided" that introduces a very slippery condition: "provided that they are not suitable for determining the concrete danger of discriminatory or violent acts". An ambiguous wording, which opens the door to a total discretion of the judge in its concrete application.
It does not add anything to the rights of homosexuals, nor to the fight against discrimination, discriminatory, defamatory and violent offenses are already punished by the law, and some already dangerously borderline between instigation and crime of opinion. No, it is a question of laying the legal bases to pursue dissent to an ideology.
A text that fits perfectly into a historical context in which throughout the West, starting with the United States, freedom of expression is under attack: ideas and artistic works that are not in line with woke thought, with Cancel Culture , they are censored and banned – and for which none of Fedez's defenders appear to have risen; social media takes advantage of their enormous influence in public debate to censor thousands of conservative accounts, starting with that of the outgoing president of the United States.
Finally, there is the political plan in the strict sense. Politicians, former premier and party secretaries who queue to kiss Fedez's hands in the hope of gaining some sympathy among his millions of followers . And they are the same people who have expressed – and in some cases have expressed for decades – most of the Rai appointments. Pathetic.
Not only in Italy, it is a process that has been underway for some time in the United States: the left, in a populist drift, has contracted out to the characters of the show, with mixed fortunes and even counterproductive effects, the task of spreading its political messages. Essentially because of its crisis of credibility, for its inability to speak to young people and the working class, for its inability to persuade through the confrontation of arguments. Once there were organic artists, aligned with left parties, faithful interpreters of the party line, today left parties aligned (or crouched) with artists and influencers .
Enrico Letta's tweet is exemplary:
“On the censorship of the May Day concert, we immediately demand clarification and apologies from Rai . I want to sincerely thank Fedez because the fact that a person like him talks about these issues, with the strength and visibility he has, breaks the taboo created on the Zan bill ”.
The only taboo created on the Zan bill is that anyone who opposes it is a homophobe.
But Letta's tweet well expresses the degeneration of the left that has been going on for years now. His priorities – and he claims them – are Ius soli and ddl Zan, two ideological flags: already today Italy is among the European countries where there are more naturalizations and the law against homophobia adds nothing that does not already exist in ours order, opening the doors to a potential attack on freedom of expression.
Identity politics is the new 'class conflict' through which the left seeks to deconstruct our political communities. Resentment, the victimization of minorities – believed to be the custodians of collective rights in place of individuals – is all that is left to collect consent, votes.
And basically it makes a lot of sense that this change of paradigm is plastically represented on the stage of the May Day concert: on the day of the Labor Day, the themes of work were obscured by the politics of identity, under the thunderous applause of the secretary of the Democratic Party and union leaders. The fight against an alleged 'systemic homophobia' is at the top of the concerns of the left, not the 300,000 businesses closed in 2020, the 900,000 jobs lost. But this, we believe, the citizens have now understood.
The post The left surrenders to Fedez: one-way freedom of expression, shouts at censorship while applying it to enemies appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/la-sinistra-si-consegna-a-fedez-liberta-despressione-a-senso-unico-grida-alla-censura-mentre-la-applica-ai-nemici/ on Mon, 03 May 2021 04:01:00 +0000.