“I regret to note that my exact words and my thoughts are totally distorted by this quotation mark.” Thus, in a letter to La Stampa, the President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa returns to his words regarding the attack on the journalist Andrea Joly by a group of Casapound militants. «What I want to clarify is that I never said or thought that Joly “HAD” to qualify. Simply, by not having done so and assuming that the attackers did not know him, one can and must speak of an unacceptable aggression – also without discounts or justifications – towards a citizen, but one cannot present what happened as an attack on freedom of information. In essence, one must strongly condemn the hateful aggression – as I have sincerely done – without however maintaining that there was an unacceptable will to prevent the exercise of the right to report which can never be prevented».
In an interview with La Repubblica, La Russa then underlines: “I was struck by the fact that I was not criticized for the previous passage, when I said: ‘I don’t think the journalist was there by accident.’.
The President of the Senate continues: “There is a person dear to me who often says to me: ‘Why aren’t you more cautious?’. But I am like that, I say what I think. However, of course, I understand when they tell me, I question myself, I am conflicted, sometimes I think I am wrong, but then I convince myself that I am seventy-seven years old and I really prefer to say what I think.”
The refusal to define oneself as anti-fascist remains. La Russa quotes the historian Franco Cardini, who identifies three anti-fascisms, against the dictatorship, against the Tambroni government and in the 70s: “I cannot feel this last one as mine, because I lived those years”. And then there is another question: “Look, there is also perhaps the feeling, the thought for our old MSI members, people who fought for fifty years for the party, perhaps it is also right to have a little, how shall I say, attention towards them”.
