Over the Past Two Years, Italy Has Been One of the Countries That Has Seen the Most Systematic Denial of Basic Civil Rights.

Over the last two years, Italy has been one of the Western countries facing the most systematic suppression of basic human rights. Coalition administrations headed by Giuseppe Conte and later Mario Draghi empowered an unelected group of "experts" known as the Comitato Tecnico Scientifico, which in turn empowered the governments by imbuing every edict, action, and word from the executive with a scientific aura. This has resulted in a never-ending series of lockdown measures that have for long periods erased freedom of movement, the right to work, property rights over businesses and shops, freedom to assemble, freedom to worship, and even the distinction of jurisdictional spheres between church and political authority (with state bureaucrats closing churches and then handing out petty instructions on what rites could be carried out, how liturgies should be curtailed, and how many people if any could be present at masses and funerals). Meanwhile, the legislative branch has been humbled, and governance by presidential order has become the norm. The country's constitutional framework has been twisted, and a new idea known as "stato di emergenza" (state of emergency) has been constructed out of thin air, despite the fact that it is nowhere to be found in Italy's republican constitution.

If we didn't live in the age of CNN, false news, and excessive political subsidies to newspapers and the media, one would reasonably question where the journalists were when all of this was going on. In fact, journalists in Italy are among the main perpetrators of the current dystopian reality, because they gave platforms to "experts" who agreed with lockdowns and other measures that expanded government control over all aspects of life, while ferociously mocking and ostracizing doctors and scientists who dared to question the logic of outdoor mask mandates and restaurant curfews. Anyone who tried to bring out the devastating effects of a protracted lockdown on mental health and other illnesses, or the relationship between the economic and public health, was labeled a "covid denier." This is a trend that readers will undoubtedly know, having witnessed it in the United States and many other nations during the last two years. The fact that virtually every opinion labeled as "conspiracy theory" by the media has turned out to be true just three or four months later has done nothing to shake the arrogance of the corrupt mass media, which is entrenched in its monopoly over the news cycle due to access to state funding and political favors. This is true in Italy, as it is in almost every other country.