The affair that is threatening to introduce a Constitution bias against the citizens

by Emanuele Mastrangelo

The stakes around the affair of Roberto Vannacci's book Il mondo al contrario are much higher than one might imagine. For many years, in fact, liberal leftists have been waging a campaign to replace certainty of Law with subjectivism. The Ministry of Defense, by invoking from the Army General Staff a summary operation of cancel culture against Vannacci, has unwittingly lent itself to this campaign of destroying the certainty of Law, providing an extraordinary assist to the wokeist front.

Let us start with the factual and objective data. Roberto Vannacci, a serving general in the Army, has written a book in which he sets out his views. Thoughts about patriotism, lawful self-defense, family, homosexuality, and national identity, mostly lie at the exact opposite side of the political compass from Wokeism. Vannacci as a serviceman has very few restrictions on his constitutional freedom of thought expression. Article 1472 of the Military Ordinance Code (Legislative Decree 66/2010) clearly states that the only instance for which a serviceman must seek prior permission is for "matters of a confidential nature or of military interest." The soldier is also bound to political neutrality, so he is precluded from propaganda. Anyone who has read Il mondo al contrario can objectively see that the content of the book falls neither under the rubric of confidential or military interest nor even political propaganda. Even pulling out every other article of the Code, Vannacci's book has no objective problematic profile. The world upside down può constatare oggettivamente che il contenuto del libro non ricade né nella fattispecie dell’argomento riservato o d’interesse militare né tampoco nella propaganda politica. Anche tirando fuori ogni altro articolo del COM, il libro di Vannacci non presenta alcun profilo di problematicità oggettiva.

The problem with the book, of course, is only in its content. Beyond subjective interpretation, does it have criminal profiles? Obviously not, otherwise we would have already seen lawsuits, accusations, complaints or reports to the relevant authorities. And this is where the Wokeist infection creeps in. The pretense that "what offends" some minority should be elevated to a source of law and should constitute sufficient grounds to snap State apparatuses and civil society to attention.

The subjectivist presumption underlying these arbitrary interpretations is identical in matrix, aims and methods to the "love is love" by which they purport to provide justification for "marriage" between same-sex individuals and even between people and animals or people and things, as already observed in certain more "progressive" legal systems. In other words, the subjective perception of "love" (perfectly individual) must be elected as a source of right erga omnes. In the brave new world of wokeism if something makes an individual "feel good," it must become law, if it "offends" it must be prosecuted by law.

Hence the outrageous words of PD Secretary Elly Schlein, according to whom "the Constitution is anti-fascist, we cannot tolerate attempts to revise history. Our Constitution does not put all opinions on the same level, it does not guarantee freedom of expression to those ideas that deny certain groups of people the right to exist." Now, even if you read it a hundred times you can find into the Constitution of the Italian Republic in force since Jan. 1, 1948, that there is a "hierarchy of expressible opinions." Instead, Schlein, like other liberal leftists and the hundreds of haters unleashed on social media, refer to a very specific and malicious distortion of Article 3 of the Constitution, which states:

All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions.

It is the duty of the Republic to remove obstacles of an economic and social nature, which, by effectively limiting the freedom and equality of citizens, prevent the full development of the human being and effective participation of all workers in the political, economic and social organization of the country.

According to them, the concepts expressed by Vannacci, as "offensive" from their very personal point of view, would represent a form of "discrimination" against certain human categories and would therefore be deserving of the most decisive and summary censure. Their point of view, therefore, is worth more than the Constitution's very letter.

Leaving aside the patently internal contradiction of invoking censorship "for political views" on the basis of a Constitution article that forbids apertis verbis discrimination "for political views," the ideological step taken by the Wokeist leftists and disgracefully endorsed with the cancel culture against Vannacci is to claim that because the general's ideas would be "offensive" according to some of them, consequently they must also be considered a direct and criminal form of discrimination, regardless of their actual relevance secundum ius. Simply perceiving them as "offensive" by some individuals places these ideas and those who expressed them outside the perimeter of the national community. And that is enough.

In short, "indignation" as a source of Right superior to laws, regulations, customs and traditions and even capable of providing a "more authentic" interpretation of the Constitution, even against what is written verbatim in it. Article 3 thus becomes a kind of general purpose bomb that the wokeist front uses against any position deemed "offensive." And this is not the first time: the arbitrary interpretation of Article 3 of the Constitution is also at the basis of the operation of imposing gender and deconstructionist theories as a mandatory ideology carried out by the municipality of Rome. Where - the word of Councillor Claudia Pratelli herself - there would exist an alleged "duty to non-discrimination" understood in the Wokeist sense: school personnel employed by the Campidoglio are obliged to refrain from anything that is considered "offensive" by a Wokeist, including refusing to follow Wokeist ideology ("You don't agree with me? You offend me"). This wholly subjectivist and arbitrary duty is considered superior to the objective and constitutionally guaranteed rights of freedom of teaching (Art. 33), freedom of expression (Art. 21) and religious freedom (Art. 19).

To have handed Vannacci's head to the wokeist Leftists on the plate like Salome with the Baptist is a very serious misstep at a time when Italy has a government supported by conservative, national, populist and liberist forces. For whom, "doing like Orban" and rebuilding the objective, natural and certain basis of Law should be one of the Guiding Stars, a goal to be pursued at all costs. The own goal of the Vannacci case widens the margin of advantage of the Wokeist Left and makes even more improbable the feat that this government should accomplish if it wants to go down in history as a moment of national turning point and not paper-pusher of agendas already written by others.