In Italy, there is hardly a way to escape Matteo Salvini. From morning to night, the Minister of the Interior sends on all available channels, supported by a highly professional social media team. It's a creative mess, aggressive, charming, mercilessly populist - and quite often quite entertaining.
For example, this Thursday: The day begins with a photo of a projectile sent to him by a threatening letter, addressed to the "Duce" Matteo Salvini. Later, a picture of Saint Benedict as patron saint of Europe follows. In between, a video in which the vice premier beckons his citizens in a good mood ("Nice Thursday, good work, good study, good coffee break, good rest!"). Another, in which he is looking for new owners for 117 dogs. And then there are always success stories about his tireless struggle against migrants and criminal aliens who entered illegally - as he congratulated the state police on the blow "against the Nigerian mafia of Palermo".
Salvini's political opponents have not found an antidote yet. From left to right, there is no one who even approaches social media almost as efficiently and so successfully talks about their own topics.
Defamatory, if not threatening incidents
With their lawsuit against Salvini, "Sea-Watch 3" captain Carola Rackete wants to put the right-wing populist in his most vulnerable position. In the document she accuses him of serious defamatory behavior and incitement to a crime. In addition, Rackete requests to seize his social media channels.
Intermission. It would be the maximum penalty for Salvini.
She called for the "precautionary seizure" of those informational sites that spread the degrading content, Rackete claims. On several pages she quotes the attacks of the Minister of the Interior, which she repeatedly called a "criminal" and "accomplice of traffickers". Or as a "captain of a pirate ship", which deliberately tried to kill five Italian soldiers when they docked in Lampedusa and collided with a security police motorboat.
Video interview with Carola Rackete: "No help, no one, nothing"
MIRROR ONLINE
The words of the Deputy Prime Minister had led to a massive, fortunately only verbal spiral of violence, writes the captain. This is expressed to her in thousands of defamatory, if not threatening incidents. She could only be afraid of the words of a man who plays such an important public role as the minister. His statements, Rackete said, "severely damaged my reputation and endanger my person and my integrity."
"When Salvini takes our tools from us, we take his tools from him"
The conflict between the captain and the "Capitano", as Salvini is hailed by his fans, comes to a head with it. Those who expected the waves to settle after Rackete's release on Tuesday last week were deceived.
At Sea-Watch, however, the requisite confiscation of Twitter and Facebook accounts is also seen as a kind of revenge - after Italy had confiscated the charity's rescue ship. "When Salvini takes away our tools, we take away his tools," said Ruben Neugebauer, spokesman for Sea-Watch, SPIEGEL.
How the matter ends legally, will show. Politically in any case, the again escalated dispute Salvini should not hurt. Italian pollsters have just told him that he uses the argument with Rackete in the polls.
And so he plunged on Thursday again with delight on the subject. "The German Communist has applied to the prosecutor to close my Facebook and Twitter pages," he wrote on Instagram: "There are no limits to ridicule." Thousands of users gave him more than 62,000 "likes" on Instagram by Saturday. Also on Facebook "grandissimo Matteo", as a user called him, received countless smile and heart emojis. "Now I'm really scared," he had texted next to three tear-smiling smileys.