On Sunday August 21, a 55-year-old Ukrainian woman was raped by an asylum seeker in the center of Plaisance, in Emilia-Romagna (North). This horrible news item could have stopped there and been the subject of a few lines in the press. But the unbearable scene was filmed by a witness and published on social networks. A video soon picked up by several dailies on the Peninsula, but also, and above all, by the campaign team of Giorgia Meloni, the far-right candidate in the early legislative elections of September 25, leader of Fratelli d’Italia ( FDI, post-fascist), who saw in it a means of exploiting his favorite theme, “Restore security in our cities”.
This use of video for electoral purposes quickly ignited social networks, as did political debate. The Democratic Party (PD, center left) denounced an instrumentalization of rape and a breach of the dignity of the victim evoking a sequence “indecent and shameless”. A few hours later, Giorgia Meloni replied by denouncing the “delusional mystifications of the left”always ready, according to her, to attack her personally, without mentioning security problems.
The candidate also claims to have masked the face of the victim before publishing the video of the rape. But the unease took on a new dimension on Tuesday, August 23, when the victim, who has lived in Italy for several years, said to himself ” terrorized “, because she was recognized by relatives on the images. “She is a victim a second time”, was indignant the elected (PD) Valeria Valente, who chairs the commission of inquiry into feminicides in the Senate, demanding ” excuses “ by Giorgia Meloni. An investigation has been opened by the Plaisance public prosecutor’s office for illicit distribution of video. The attacker, a 27-year-old Guinean national, was arrested by the police.
“Growing polarization”
For Massimiliano Panarari, a political scientist at the Mercatorum University in Rome, this particularly brief campaign led “the political forces to work a lot on symbols, at the risk of fueling an escalation in the debate”, as evidenced by this viral controversy. “We must expect other violent sequences of this type in the public debate, in a context of growing polarization”, he analyzes.
Until now, Giorgia Meloni had worked on her image with care. Determined, encouraged by flattering polls which, with more than 24% of voting intentions on average, place it in the lead – the right-wing coalition, in which the FDI is the main party alongside the League, Matteo Salvini, and of Forza Italia, of Silvio Berlusconi, even obtains 46%, ahead of the PD (30%) – she held her first campaign meeting on Tuesday in Ancona, in the Marches (East), a region directed, since 2020, by his party. True to her style, emphasizing her words and not hesitating to shout into her microphone, she returned to the episode of the rape video, betting on the counter-attack, affirming “not having to apologize”. We do not hold the press to account who shared the video, she accused.
You have 44.39% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.