In Pulawy, a “lgbt-free” Polish municipality, a 20-year-old man hides daily from Nazi patrols hunting homosexuals. In Warsaw, non-pro-government judges are attacked in the streets and harassed by many colleagues in court. In Krakow, a public TV journalist resigned because he was tired of reporting prone to the regime, and now faces a mock trial. Throughout Poland, abortion is illegal, and anyone who helps a woman in distress risks jail time. In Hungary, a 16-year-old girl can be stopped by a policeman who wants to arrest her for “gender propaganda” because she has a rainbow on her backpack. These are just some of the stories that Tonia Mastrobuoni, a correspondent for “la Repubblica,” has collected in her many trips to Hungary and Poland, and now recounts in this book. Witnessing how, in Warsaw and Budapest, democracy underwent a programmatic erosion, which occurred without coups, palace assaults or bloody repressions, but by emptying the foundations of these republics of essential rights, to the point of making them simulacra. From outlawing the right to abortion to systematic discrimination against women, gays and lgbt+, to normalizing the media, to subordinating the judiciary to the executive. Governments are now in absolute control of everything and are crushing all opposition. There is a climate of terror, accentuated by gangs of more or less anonymous aggressors, who accompany state persecution with death threats and smear campaigns, which travel on the web but reach in some cases all the way to the doorstep. Europe has tolerated two member countries unhinging the principles that govern democracies in the West from day one. And Italy seems to be taking risks, reading about the political-media strategies also used by us and the intense relations between Hungarian and Polish leaders and several of our rulers. Mastrobuoni’s is a disturbing report on the sovereignist and obscurantist Europe of erased rights and denied freedoms. On our doorstep. (Source: Ibs.co.uk)
Is an Italian journalist and author
