Censorship in the world of culture is not limited to France. The Italian singer Giuseppe Piova, known more simply as Piova, winner of the 2006 SanRemo festival, with 8 platinum and 3 gold records to his name, is regularly the victim of censorship in Italy. Author of a song Luca was gay (Luca was gay) where he tells the story of a gay man who became straight again, he also expressed skeptical positions on the vaccine during Covid. It did not take more for 40 (forty!) of his concerts to be banned, including at the end of July 2024, the 40th in Nichelino (Piedmont), canceled by the PD municipality (Partito Democratico, left). The Daily Fact is a left-wing populist daily newspaper, close to the 5 Star Movement, it would have the same positioning in France as Marianne. Its director Marco Travaglio published a nice article on the subject that we translated, the subtitles are from our editorial staff.
Back to Piova
We are in such bad shape that we have to defend Povia. Invited to chair the jury of a talent show in Nichelino and to perform at a concert, he had the whole thing canceled by the mayor because of “his position on civil rights and his opposition to vaccines, which are different from those of my administration.” But, to be clear, “this is not a political issue.” Rather, it is “the” political issue.
Especially since this is the 40th concert they have cancelled for the singer. If it was for his artistic qualities (in our opinion mediocre, despite his first place in Sanremo 2006), nulla quaestio: if you don’t like a singer, you don’t invite him and that’s it.
The Censorship of Liberal Democracy
But if he is invited and then sent home because of what he says or thinks, that is called censorship. It has no place in a liberal democracy, otherwise liberal democracy ceases to be liberal democracy.
Freedoms of expression, dissent and madness
We are vaccinated and vaccinators (no obligation, though) and we support civil rights: but among these, there is freedom of expression, of dissent and even of madness, as long as you do not hurt a hair on someone’s head. And a singer is judged on how he sings, not on what he thinks. But since we exported democracy, there is less and less of it at home.
Everyone is outraged by a list of “Zionist agents” to boycott published on the web by a self-proclaimed “New PCI”: it’s true, we don’t make proscription lists.
Proscription lists
The problem is that many of the special indignants, and even of the people mentioned, have been drawing up proscription lists of “Putin’s agents” since 2022, who are neither agents nor Putinists, but who have the serious fault of not thinking like them on the Russo-Ukrainian war.
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Pavel Durov, the new devil
And then there is the arrest, in the homeland of Enlightenment and Freedom, of the founder of the Telegram app, Pavel Durov, a Russian entrepreneur with multiple passports. He may be the new Bluebeard, but if the accusation is that the chats on his social network are used, thanks to their special secrecy, by criminal organizations, as well as by millions of Russians, Westerners and even Zelensky, his arrest revolts us.
And we are dismayed by the furious journalists of the “sovereignist international” of Musk and Salvini who defend Durov, clearly on behalf of Putin.
Durov escaped precisely from Russia, which in 2018 tried to block Telegram for him. It was only then that the West protested and Amnesty shouted: “Hands off freedom of speech.”
See also: Expansion of the scope of censorship: arrest in Paris of Pavel Durov, founder of Telegram
Thierry Breton and the “good guys”
Now, on the contrary, everyone is silent when Macron’s European Commissioner Thierry Breton threatens to ban X because Musk is Trumpian and does not do like Zuckerberg, who puts the censorship and fake news of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp at the service of the other gang: the “democratic” gang of Biden and Harris, the “good guys” who can do as well or worse than the “bad guys” because of their innate goodness.
The more we fight Russia, the more we resemble it.
See also: Summer 2024: Elon Musk versus Thierry Breton, 1 to 0, the match continues
Translated with DeepL
