Minister Sangiuliano tries to abolish cancel culture by decree

It is a kind of modern form of damnatio memoriae: cancel culture is that particular phenomenon, which arose in the late 2010s, whereby there is a tendency to ostracize, boycott, or avoid subjects who have said or done something deemed unacceptable. Rowan Atkinson, the famous actor who played Mr. Bean for years, has said that cancel culture is like “the mob that in the Middle Ages was looking for people to burn.” In Italy, the expression is often understood in an expanded perspective, and is also sometimes used in reference to those who advocate revisiting or reinterpreting tradition, if not directly attacking it. For example, cancel culture has often been spoken of in reference to monuments damaged by activists (such as those of Christopher Columbus in the United States or, in Italy, that of Indro Mondanelli). And now the minister of culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, is trying to abolish cancel culture by decree.

The minister had already announced his intentions at the end of December, when, on the sidelines of a visit to Villa Floridiana in Naples, he branded cancel culture as a “barbarity” (“it means erasing identity and history,” he had said: “Each of us has a collective DNA that is the history of our nation, of our culture”), and had announced that a measure against cancel culture would soon end up on the table of the Council of Ministers. Where exactly, Maurizio Lupi, president of Noi Moderati and a member of the Vigilance Commission, had anticipated it: “I applaud the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano for having introduced in Tusmar a rule against Cancel Culture, a dangerous form of negationism, revisionism and erasure of histories, identities, cultural symbols. A trend that, especially in the U.S., is causing enormous cultural, historical and social damage, just think of the destruction of the statues of Christopher Columbus.”

Tusmar is the Testo Unico dei Servizi Media Audiovisivi e Radiofonici (Legislative Decree 208 of Nov. 8, 2021), which contains the regulation of media services (television, radio, social platforms, and so on), and which will be amended through a legislative decree, the outline of which was approved by the Council of Ministers last Dec. 21. The draft legislative decree containing supplementary and corrective provisions to the Consolidated Law on Audiovisual Media Services is currently being examined by the House: as required by law, draft legislative decrees must be submitted to the relevant committees in the House and Senate for their opinion.

The amendment strongly advocated by Sangiuliano concerns Article 4 of Legislative Decree 208 of 2021, which includes the general principles of the system of audiovisual media services and radio, as a guarantee for users and regarding media services in local areas. Currently, the principles are these: the guarantee of media freedom and pluralism; the protection of every individual’s freedom of expression; the objectivity, completeness, fairness and impartiality of information; and the countering of disinformation strategies; the protection of copyright and intellectual property rights; openness to diverse political, social and cultural religious opinions and trends; and the preservation of ethnic diversity and cultural, artistic and environmental heritage. That’s it: the draft legislative decree stipulates that these principles will include "combating the contemporary tendency to destroy or otherwise downgrade elements or symbols of the nation’s history and tradition(cancel cultures)."

The amendment was discussed a few days ago, on Jan. 11, when the Culture Commission held the Consultative Discussion for Opinions to the Government. “From a substantive point of view,” said the committee chairman, Federico Mollicone, “to the declared purpose of maintaining the memory of the past and historical culture, the principle of contrasting the so-called cancel culture is added, defined - by the new letter h) - as the current trend of destroying or downsizing the symbols of the Nation’s history and tradition.” The day before, the draft legislative decree was also presented in the Senate Culture Committee, with speaker Claudio Fazzone, president, explaining the measure.

It is not, however, the first measure to come in this direction under the Meloni government. Something similar has already been presented in the Made in Italy Law (number 206 of 2023, approved at the end of the year), where it is stated in Article 28 that “the Ministry of Culture shall adopt guidelines to ensure that musical, audiovisual and book works owned by public discos, film libraries and libraries, even if the subject of later processing, are preserved and made usable even in their original version, in order to prevent creative operations of repurposing the same works with new communicative and popular languages from replacing the original and causing its memory to be lost.”

The only opposition reaction, at the moment, is that of Senator Barbara Floridia of the 5 Star Movement, chairwoman of the Rai Vigilance Commission. “That on ’cancel culture,’” she said in a statement made to The Daily Fact, “is a very serious debate that should be evaluated as a whole and not in an ideological key. We absolutely deprecate the banning of masterpieces of literature, art or cinema in the name of a distorted vision of values and moral standards in today’s world. Likewise, we oppose all forms of ideological revisionism of culture and history. But we wonder whether all this complexity can be addressed with two lines in a decree amending the Tusma. Is this a serious way to deal with such a phenomenon that involves the public sphere, online platforms and social dynamics, as well as above all the freedom of expression and the ability of people to express their opinions? Doesn’t the government think that the possibility of even dispensing sanctions, in this field perhaps can lead to the very ideological conformity they would like to counter in words? The real strength of our democracies lies in the richness of public discussion and debate. Thinking of sanctioning the crime of ’political correctness’ is yet another clumsy attempt to act in the cultural field that risks creating only distortions and nothing more. National identity is not saved by decree.”

What will happen, then, if Tusmar is amended by introducing the principle of countering cancel culture? Will someone who denies freedom of expression become comparable to someone who, for example, asks not to play Puccini’s Ode to Rome as happened this summer in Lucca? Will a speech like the one given a few days ago by Paola Cortellesi at the Luiss University in Rome become the subject of law enforcement action? It will be interesting to see how the new principle will be applied.

Pictured is Minister Sangiuliano.

Minister Sangiuliano tries to abolish cancel culture by decree

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.