Gennaro Sangiuliano is Italy’s culture minister and one of prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s closest allies. He has been a journalist and media director, and before that an activist with the (now dissolved) neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), and is now trying to develop a far-right culture in Italy. On 17 March, the anniversary of Italy’s unification, he was in Naples, although he went there for the opening of a Tolkien exhibition at the Royal Palace. The culture ministry is sponsoring its tour of Italy, and Meloni, leader of the rightwing populist party Frattelli d’Italia and a big Tolkien fan, launched the show in Rome last November. The exhibits are nothing special: what’s important is the descriptions that accompany them, which praise ‘the beauty of The Lord of the Rings, rooted in the Christian faith’.

This worries Romeo Castellucci, the internationally renowned theatre director. ‘The government is appropriating cultural spaces to serve its ideology,’ he says. ‘Culture has become a battlefield. It’s madness.’ Some years ago, Meloni wrote him off as ‘one of those so-called artists … who insult the symbols of Christianity’. Meanwhile, journalist Paolo Rumiz compares the present government’s behaviour to Mussolini’s march on Rome in 1922: ‘They are storming our museums and occupying television airtime to promote their nationalism.’

‘All they need is the right politics’

So what’s the truth? The Italian government, like any other, appoints the directors of major institutions and, like many governments, favours people it trusts. Writer Nicola Lagioia, a former director of the Turin Book Fair is appalled: ‘It doesn’t matter if they’re not qualified for the job, as long as they take the right political line.’ Meanwhile, the new president of the Venice Biennale is Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, a well-known writer and former member of the MSI. A native of Sicily, Buttafuoco converted to Islam because, he says, the island’s identity is (…)

Full article: 1 517 words.