Michela Murgia returns to the Rovelli case and asks for the resignation of Ricardo Franco Levi, extraordinary government commissioner for the Buchmesse 2024, where Italy will be the guest of honor, who first withdrew the invitation to the physicist to participate in the event and then, after the controversy, renewed it.
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Stop at Rovelli at the Buchmesse, then Levi thinks again - Culture & Shows
Crosetto and Sangiuliano dissociate. Solidarity culture (ANSA)
"Yesterday the president of the Italian Publishers Association, Ricardo Levi, asked the scientist Carlo Rovelli, who had to open Italy's participation in the Frankfurt fair with his speech, to step aside so as not to cause 'institutional embarrassment'", writes Murgia on Instagram.
"The institutional embarrassment derives from the opinions expressed by Rovelli during the May Day concert and it does not matter that Rovelli in Frankfurt had to talk about something completely different: the fact of having expressed a political criticism of the defense minister was enough to make him skip the conference. What happened next? What normally happens in a democracy: Rovelli published the letter informing him to step aside and so many voices were raised to defend freedom of critical speech that in the end even ministers Crosetto and Sangiuliano, not exactly champions of the freedom of speech of others, said they had never asked for such a thing. The IEA, an association of which Levi would theoretically be the president, issued a note saying it knew nothing about the request and in the end the invitation to Rovelli was renewed".
"But who pressed Levi to silence Rovelli? It is not known - continues Michela Murgia - but it seems that he did everything alone, victim of a terrible attack of moral scoliosis that forced him to bend his back at right angles at the mere thought of the embarrassment of a minister. In a normal country today Levi would rightly be out of work, instead he gives a painful interview to Repubblica in which he explains why he will not resign.
Too bad, because it is the only sensible thing to do. As a politically exposed author, I do not feel at all guaranteed by having at the top of the Italian Publishers Association a man willing to sell the right to speak of an intellectual to please power. As Chiara Valerio says in her editorial yesterday, it is a pure question of method".
