He surely wasn’t expecting to be the subject of a criminal investigation as a consequence.
After all, making that kind of declaration has been standard fare for musicians since the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” denounced the late monarch and “her fascist regime” nearly fifty years ago. But the right to criticise public figures within democracies can no longer be taken for granted.
The notoriously thin-skinned Meloni has been a standard bearer for the far right’s war on freedom of speech, using Italy’s peculiar defamation law, which permits both civil and criminal penalties, to go after critics.
For example, the Italian premier successfully sued anti-mafia journalist Roberto Saviano, author of the critically acclaimed Gomorrah, though he did not have to pay his fine unless he repeated the infraction.
Molko’s insults likely reminded her of the crime for which Saviano was convicted. The journalist called her, together with far-right Lega leader Matteo Salvini, “bastards” for their anti-migration politics during an Italian television interview in 2020.
Many politicians and journalists, both Italian and foreign, have made negative statements about Meloni. Indeed, the prime minister’s button-pushing rhetoric actively courts such attacks since it amplifies the polarisation that brought her party to power.
For example, the Italian premier is fond of using the codeword “globalists” despite its Antisemitic connotations, a term Hungarian Premier Viktor Orbán, her long-time ally, has repeatedly used to attack Jewish liberals like philanthropist George Soros.
When her Brothers of Italy was still a fringe party, refusing to join the complex coalitions that the Italy’s proportional representation system demands, negative attention helped to keep Meloni in the public eye. The more outspoken she was, the better.
However, once Giorgia Meloni became firmly established as a leader, both domestically and internationally, this type of attention was no longer necessary.
The whitewashing of her past and her party’s, which began with forbidding the Roman salute and overt support for Benito Mussolini’s legacy, has now reached the stage where this kind of harsh criticism feels more like a hindrance than a help.
Giorgia Meloni has keen political instincts. She understood before other Western politicians that reactionaries could use the perceived excesses of the LGBTQ+ movement as a lever and that her brand of conservative “feminism” gave her the perfect angle for doing so.
When she famously declared in 2019, “I am a woman. I am a mother. I am Italian. I am Christian,” she was laying the groundwork for this approach.
At a 2022 rally for the Spanish far-right party Vox, Meloni put herself at the vanguard of the international neofascist movement with a speech that explicitly wedded so-called traditional values with Euroscepticism, advocating a defence of the “natural family” and national identity over against the “gender ideology” supposedly promoted by the “LGBT lobby” and the “bureaucrats of Brussels”.
It’s no accident that Brian Molko was investigated by the Italian police in 2023, and why his case has continued moving through the legal system.
Since Placebo’s early days, when the band’s 1997 song “Nancy Boy” and Molko’s preference for women’s attire aligned the band with LGBTQ+-inflected multiculturalism, they have consistently advocated the cosmopolitan, tolerant worldview that Meloni has made her reputation attacking.
The fact that Molko is originally from Brussels and is of Jewish heritage further reinforces his desirability as a target.
Some might argue that the defamation suit against Molko isn’t a big deal. After all, he can afford the fine and is highly unlikely to serve any time for his offence. However, the point of singling out such a visible and popular figure is not to persecute him in particular but to scare the less-privileged people who might want to repeat his declaration.
If defending yourself in court is a burden and paying a fine would have a major impact on your life, it’s harder to rationalise speaking your mind. There’s also the distinct possibility, in this age of rapidly mounting radicalisation, that the publicity surrounding your case could make you a target for those who wish to inflict greater harm on you.
In other words, suing people for defamation is intended to have a chilling effect on free speech.
At a time when social media platforms are already worried about being penalised for what they distribute, regardless of whether they endorse it, and actively suppress certain content, adding the prospect of litigation against individuals further disincentives criticism.
If things continue down this path, the freedom of speech long enjoyed in the West could become so compromised that people opposed to governments might need to start speaking in code, as they must in totalitarian environments like Russia and China.
Donald Trump recently declared that news organisations that criticise him should be “illegal”, upping the ante in the war against the press.
Given the president’s penchant for litigation and the close ties between some of his key advisors and the European far right, such as Sebastian Gorka, it seems very likely that Giorgia Meloni’s legal assault on opponents is being held up as a role model for his own administration.
Progressives are in a terrible bind right now.
It’s crucial to speak out against what is happening in historically democratic countries like Italy. But the more people speak out, the more likely that they will become targets of persecution.
Maybe we are entering an era in which it is necessary to tell the truth “slant”, communicating criticisms indirectly in ways that are plausibly deniable.
It may not be ideal. But it could be the only way to stay out of jail.
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Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
