There is an air of Magalomania in Bologna. The local edition of Repubblica of the Emilia-Romagna capital reports that in the social storm that overwhelmed Mayor Matteo Lepore, there might be the involvement of American sovereigntists. Donald Trump? Elon Musk? It is not explicitly stated, however… The one most convinced of this is the person concerned himself, who has enlisted a local top lawyer to prepare a multi-level strategy to defend himself from the hate attacks he feels victim to. Complaints, warnings, legal actions: nothing is excluded; hate is met blow for blow. What are we talking about? The newspaper wrote that, among the tens of thousands of signatures on the Brothers of Italy page calling for the mayor’s resignation due to the convocation of the demonstration in memory of Fakir Abderrahim which degenerated into an assault on the police, about four thousand would be attributable to US profiles, probably fake. The same suspicion applies to six thousand critical comments appearing under the post in which the mayor theorized the two squares, the civil one convened by him, and the one of the violent social centers, which in fact is always the same, simply with two different types of participants. So? In the social offensive against the Bologna mayor, there would be “the shadow of the Maga network,” theorizes Repubblica.
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The premise that insults are unworthy and threats are a crime is mandatory. The consideration that, across the Ocean, Trump and his people do not even know who Lepore is, although the New York Times compared Fakir to George Floyd, the African American killed by police six years ago in Minneapolis when he was already handcuffed and harmless, is, to naive eyes, closer to the truth than the hypothesis of an international right-wing conspiracy against the mayor. From here, some questions and reflections. Who claims that the mayor has become an international target? An investigation commissioned by himself and viewed by Repubblica, which means, translating from journalese, probably extended by someone close to the mayor to a newspaper considered friendly. Who conducted the investigation? The reader is not told. Who paid for it? Again, unknown; some speculate: the people of Bologna with municipal funds? Furthermore: it is claimed that the fake comments and insults coming from the US would be ten percent of the total, but how was this conclusion reached? Through Talkwalker, a sort of program specialized in identifying fake profiles. Is it reliable? Up to a point: fake profiles must be identified one by one and tracing their origin is neither a simple nor certain operation and they are not “anomalies verifiable with arithmetic alone” as Repubblica writes.
Fakir, the woman who challenged the antagonists: “Meloni called me. Lepore instead did not”
Of that square gathered by Matteo Lepore in Bologna to protest against the death of Abderahim Fakir, besides the war…
POLITICAL MISTAKE
So? It is repeated that the wild crucifixion of Lepore for having made a political mistake, convening a potentially risky square immediately after Fakir’s death and before a single shadow on the dynamics and causes of the death had been cleared, cannot be shared. The authorities did well to assign a security detail to the mayor if they found the prerequisites. A first-level detail, the lowest, but still a bad signal and a limitation of freedom. It is now time for reflections. Bologna is an important city and Lepore an authoritative representative of the local progressive administrative class. But who in the US could care about who governs the city of the Two Towers? The cynics, under the porticoes of the Emilia capital, reflect that the growing tension around him, especially if it comes from the United States and is therefore potentially relatively dangerous, is actually functional to the mayor at this moment, who with this story of the violent square convened has cornered himself and does not know how to get out. Playing the victim and turning the issue around has always been his strategy in difficult moments, the city opposition points out. Fdi says it clearly: “The megalomania of the mayor of Bologna leads him to personalize any public policy, but to think that the US president has set up a network to overthrow him seems crazy,” reads the party statement. It also announces a complaint to the Court of Auditors to get clarifications on the research reported by Repubblica and on who financed it.
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Matteo Lepore under protection, fear for Sunday’s march in Bologna
Tension reigns in Bologna, the tension triggered by the death of Abderrahim Fakir during police custody and ali…
Lepore, coincidentally, sees it exactly the opposite and paints himself as a potential martyr for democracy in Italy. “If it is confirmed that behind thousands of fake profiles there is a scientifically organized system to destabilize public debate in Italy,” he announces, “then the problem would not concern Bologna but the whole country.” In short, the Fakir death affair started with an invitation from the mayor not to exploit it but has already turned into its exact opposite, a progressive crusade against international sovereigntism launched by the same mayor; who at least this time has not yet convened a square to support him. But it is not said that it will not happen.
