Italian journalist Roberto Saviano rose to international fame after the publication in 2006 of his acclaimed book Gomorrah, a detailed investigation of the activities of the Neapolitan mafia, which was also adapted into a film and a TV series. But along with the praise and numerous prizes for his work, he also became the target of death threats from the Camorra crime syndicate, which resulted in him having to live under permanent police protection. He has since written further exposés of organised crime, including ZeroZeroZero about the cocaine trade.
The 38-year-old journalist is a regular contributor to the press worldwide, including in the United states, Britain and Germany, and has taken an outspoken stance against the policies of Italy’s coalition government, made up of the populist Five Star Movement and its dominating far-right partner, the League. In particular, Saviano has entered into a fierce public dispute with Italian Deputy Prime Minister and interior minister Matteo Salvini, head of the League.
Roberto Saviano was the first high-profile figure in Italy to denounce Salvini’s xenophobic, anti-migrant policies which received international attention after he began prohibiting the disembarkation on Italian soil of migrants rescued while attempting the dangerous and often deadly crossing of the Mediterranean Sea. Saviano’s uncompromising attacks in the Italian press and on social media against what he unhesitatingly calls Salvini’s “lies” prompted the latter to threaten to remove police protection of the journalist.
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After Saviano earlier this summer described Salvini as “minister of the underworld”, the interior minister announced he was suing the author of Gomorrah for defamation.
But beyond the very public feud with Salvini, Roberto Saviano is highly critical of the incapacity of European Union leaders to counter the rise of the neofascists and sovereignists across the continent, and notably their refusal to engage in a radical reform of immigration policies, to centre them upon reception instead of repression. In an interview with Mediapart, translated below, he denounces the failures of the economic and social policies of governments of traditional parties who have left a legacy of anger and desperation which has driven the likes of Salvini into power. “I am proud to figure among his enemies,” says Saviano. “Let’s remove from Matteo Salvini the possibility of continuing to sow hate. Those who don’t do it now will forever be guilty.”
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MEDIAPART: With the perspective of the elections for the European Parliament in May 2019, Matteo Salvini is forging alliances with the European far-right, as illustrated with his meeting on August 28th with Viktor Orbán, the ultra-conservative prime minister of Hungary. He has also chosen to make a political target of French President Emmanuel Macron. Can the vision for Europe espoused by Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel represent a rampart against that of the far-right represented by Salvini and Orbán ?
Roberto Saviano: In face of Matteo Salvini, Viktor Orbán and all those who one can describe as “sovereignists”, the European Union – whose destiny is in the hands of Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron – has only one possible path, which is to defend a policy on migration that is turned towards welcoming [migrants] and which respects the requirements of solidarity.
For the moment, that’s not the case. They have made the choice of adopting a security-driven, and very restrictive, migratory policy. We saw that with the Italian coast-guard vessel the Diciotti [Editor’s note: which was ordered by Matteo Salvini not to disembark the migrant passengers it had rescued at sea late August when it returned to the Sicilian port of Catania] and the interminable negotiations between European countries for the reception of 177 migrants. Emmanuel Macron offers Matteo Salvini the opportunity to say ‘You criticise me, but you do the same thing’. At the end of his meeting with Orbán, Salvini declares that, ‘on immigration, we demand the cooperation of frontier countries, beginning with France. [Macron] spends his time giving lessons to foreign governments whereas he should be the first to demonstrate solidarity by opening the border at [the French-Italian border town of] Ventimiglia'.
If the French president doesn’t assert himself as the avant-garde for a new model for managing [migratory] flows, he will remain [as if] an administrator open to criticism from the populists, and he will be judged for that.
This Mediterranean story of migrants is all about the incapacity of supposedly leftwing governments which have reproduced the same policies as the Right. It is not only an Italian story but also a European one. The social-democrat governments have adopted the same policies as the Right while telling themselves ‘we will not be beaten by the Right and for that we will become just as intransigent’. In Italy, Matteo Salvini has continued with the work of Marco Minniti, the previous [Democratic Party] minister of the interior. He himself announced the wish to close Italian ports [to migrant arrivals] and negotiated with militias in Libya for the migrants to be retained. These agreements have helped former traffickers becoming coast guards. But that is not only the work of Marco Minniti, it is that of the European Union.
The negotiations between Italy and Libya were made possible because previously Germany had reached an agreement with Turkey to close down the Balkans route [by which migrants crossed into central Europe and Germany]. In 2016, Turkey was given almost 6 billion euros over a period of three years, and Libya 800 million euros in order to block the migratory flows. The European states could have introduced visas, to stabilise the legal routes to avoid the migratory flows passing through countries like Libya: but quite the opposite. Europe doesn’t give visas to [people from] Africa anymore, even less so Sub-Saharan Africa. Which signifies that the European Union has not facilitated the legal paths of immigration, but rather has contributed to reinforcing the trafficking of migrants and clandestine activity.
France criminalises solidarity, as does the government of Salvini and [joint deputy prime minister and leader of the Five Star Movement, Luigi] Di Maio. For example, I’m thinking of Benoît Ducos, the mountain guide arrested by the French police in March for having helped rescue a pregnant migrant at the French-Italian border. If the Europe of Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel continues with these migration policies, they will be no different to those of the sovereignists, Matteo Salvini and Viktor Orbán. That’s really what’s happening now, and it’s terrible.
Civil society and those who in France think Emmanuel Macron can be a rampart against the far-right Rassemblement National party [the renamed former Front National] must argue in favour of the idea that the government will not be judged on the basis of the number of migrants that it has succeeded in rejecting, nor over the fear of foreigners that it had fuelled – especially given that in the field its political opponents are far more clever and direct – but, on the opposite, for the rights that might be given to migrants. Because to give rights to others is to add more to those who already have them, and not to subtract them.
Today, the situation is such that the European Union plays the game of Matteo Salvini, who can say that the French and the Germans reject migrants. For Matteo Salvini the situation is perfect. It gives free rein to his propaganda, even giving him ammunition to use.
MEDIAPART: The Five Star Movement remains in the shadows behind the League on migratory questions, and the propaganda from Matteo Salvini occupies the media coverage while veiling Italy’s economic problems. You regularly debunk the false claims about immigration put about by Salvini but for the moment your voice appears to fall on deaf ears.
R.S.: Italy is devastated after decades of ‘Berlusconiism’, ‘anti-Berlusconiism’ and recession. The traditional parties, on the Right and the Left, have lost all credibility and politics have given way to political communication, to a popularisation. Italians are crushed by this communication which is relayed on television programmes and on social media. It is a period of escalation, of provocation, and not one of reflection. Those who harangue the crowds, who stir up the hate of citizens, are certain to occupy the centre stage. The scapegoat is readymade: the migrant.
This reality is not limited to Italy. Europe committed the same communications mistakes. Migrants are taken as an adjustable variable in neoliberal economic policies at a European level. France and Germany are experiencing crises comparable to those in Italy, but the difference is that these countries still have an administration, a social cohesion. Italy is collapsing, and the Genoa bridge is a sad symbol. After 20 years of ‘Berlusconiism’, [the governments of prime ministers Mario] Monti and [Matteo] Renzi did not know how to do better. These years of mediocrity and incompetence precipitated the country into endless corruption with no possible safeguards.
MEDIAPART: You refer to austerity policies and point the finger at the responsibility of Europe’s institutions.
R.S.: I am always afraid to make the comparison with the 1920s, but it is true that the resemblance is striking, because as a result of the failure of socialist policies, the radical rightwing inherited the rage, the anger, of peoples. We see it at a European level with austerity policies which have contributed to making work insecure, always with growing inequalities. If Europe becomes an economic magma we have no hope left. It has forgotten Italy, despite it being one of the founders [of the institution that is now the European Union]. The south of Italy, whose economic and institutional situation is comparable to countries like Tunisia, is already situated outside Europe.
In the best hypothesis, Europe has become a community which is trying to maintain its level of minimal, acceptable democracy, in order to avoid the slide towards authoritarianism and conflicts, and, in the worst of cases, it remains an economic pact which is poorly held together.
From my point of view, the heart of the European political disaster is the offshore system. Each country has its safe boxes. France has Luxembourg, Spain has Andorra, Germany has Litchenstein. Everyone has Switzerland and until recently the world’s capital of [finance] recycling is London. What does that signify? That only ‘idiots’ pay their taxes, because all the multinationals use tax havens. The European Union allows the continuation of – and even encourages – this tax evasion. Of course other policies are possible. We could have established agreements with corporations, and to make tax breaks conditional to investment. But no, it’s quite another path that was chosen.
This system necessarily takes part in the rise of extremists who can easily grab hold of the anger and frustration of populations. In Italy, as in France, the traditional rightwing and leftwing parties are moribund.
In Italy, the Five Star Movement of Luigi Di Maio and the League of Matteo Salvini declare themselves to be ‘neither Right nor Left’. That is nothing other than a rightwing logic and it’s dangerous. Moreover, Matteo Salvini is in the process of making a takeover bid for the Five Star Movement and draws closer to neofascist arguments, an ideological reference he appreciates and displays.
MEDIAPART: This combat you lead against Matteo Salvini has taken on the form of a face-to-face. There is a risk of reinforcing the interior minister in his role as the mouthpiece of a percieved people consumed with anger against another supposedly made up of the intelligentsia.
R.S.: Some in Italy say that the battle between Matteo Salvini and myself is a personal one. I know that and I lay claim to it, because Salvini is not a political opponent for he is an enemy of democracy. He weakens its rules by his words and his acts.
In the current state of things, I don’t pretend to speak to those of the other side, who support the League. Today the priority is to reconstruct a shared approach and a community made up of those who oppose these anti-immigrant policies. It is about bringing back together the children of an orphaned Left, which the Democratic Party no longer represents in any way. The country’s Democratic Party is so dispersed that it must first be reunited. And only after that, once this urgent task is completed, we could have the ambition of proposing an alternative to the inevitable disappointment that the Salvini-Di Maio government will cause among the lower social classes who, currently, support it.
MEDIAPART: You gave Matteo Salvini the nickname of “minister of the underworld”, which prompted him to launch a lawsuit against you for defamation. He said “I accept all criticism, but I don’t allow anyone to say that I helped the mafia, shit which I fight with all my strength”. What relationship does Matteo Salvini and the League have with the mafia?
R.S.: Salvini attempts to discredit my words and reduce me to silence. But it’s not his lawsuit that will silence me.
“Minister of the underworld” is a reference to an expression employed by [the 20th-century Italian anti-fascist politician and historian who in 1910 slammed collusion between politicians and the business world] Gaetano Salvemini to denounce clientelism and vote-catching.
Matteo Salvini has everything of a “minister of the underworld”. He excels in the art of manipulation through exasperating mechanisms of speculation about migrants, who cannot defend themselves. He plays with the popular anger which he stirs up by feeding them a propaganda made up of lies. And he diverts the attention of Italians from the central themes – economic and social – at the heart of daily preoccupations by proposing a solution to all their problems: the migrant.
He can’t do so at an economic level because his propositions favour businesses and the most well-off [During the March 2018 general election campaign, the League proposed tax reforms that were principally tax breaks for the wealthy, and also an amnesty for those who had committed tax evasion].
(R.S. continued from page 2): The other reason I used this expression was precisely the political racketeering of the far-right. The League is the heir to what was [the situation with the now defunct party] Christian Democracy, and subsequently [Silvio Berlusconi’s] Forza Italia, in the mafia vote. In the territories where the mafia succeeds in manipulating votes, the League is the party of reference. Matteo Salvini’s statements about his supposed fight against the mafia are pure lies.
During his campaign, he went to Rosarno, one of the fiefdoms of the Mafia, in Calabria, where he won a majority of votes. Present at his meetings were members of the Pesce family, a family with a historic role in the Calabrian mafia, the 'Ndrangheta. Vincenzo Gioffrè, elected for the League in Rosarno, did business via his companies with members of the Pesce clan and the Belloco clan. I could multiply examples such are the decennial links between the League and the 'Ndrangheta.
Who are those who really exploit migrants? Mafia gangs. Firstly, the Libyan and Syrian mafias organise their crossings, but on Italian territory, in particular in the south, they work under the grip of the caporali, the corporals, who recruit workforces for farmers. This informal and parallel system, the backbone of the tomato harvests, is linked to criminal organisations.
If Salvini is concerned, as he says he is, with the destiny of migrants he would interest himself with the fate of these workers, who are of immigrant backgrounds and abandoned to these ‘corporals’ and used as slaves in rural areas. The mafia manages the whole network, from their recruitment to the running of the camps where they sleep. A law against this system exists but Salvini does nothing to apply it.
The example of Riace is just as instructive. Situated in the heart of the cocaine traffic in the the area of Locride, this Calabrian village had been deserted by its inhabitants. At the end of the 1990s, a marvellous mayor, Mimmo Lucano, began welcoming migrants who rebuilt abandoned houses, who gave life back to Riace, where there was no ghetto. It is an example of humanity and social cohesion which renders possible policies on migration that are focussed on providing a welcome.
What does Salvini do? On a trip to the territory of the 'Ndrangheta, he declares that Mimmo Lucano is an idiot and that he wouldn’t visit Riace until the mayor had been replaced. Salvini announced that he would cut off the funds for the protection system for asylum seekers and refugees [the SPRAR] which is an economic aid necessary for the functioning of Riace. There again, the previous [Democratic Party] government had led the way by ending aid provided by the Special Reception Centre [CAS].
MEDIAPART: As you point out, the policies of previous governments in Italy, as elsewhere in Europe, have had the effect of preparing the way forward for extremists.
R.S.: Matteo Salvini is the answer to the neo-liberal and immigration policies of previous governments. The European Union member countries must radically change their policies, without which they will not manage to contain the rise of the neo-fascists and the sovereignists. It is notably necessary to normalise the situation of clandestine immigrants and reflect upon regulations for visas, putting a halt on handing money to Libyan mafia gangs. These funds, given to true jailers, weighs on our budget. European countries must engage in a common policy of reception of migrants. Without that, we will see others like Salvini and Orbán come to power.
But Europe has already accepted the idea that Italy is lost. The French head of state spoke of ‘irresponsibility and cynicism’ regarding Salvini’s refusal to receive migrants. Another member of [Emmanuel Macron’s] party [Gabriel Attal, spokesman for the French president’s La République en marche, or LREM, party] declared that Salvini’s position made him ‘vomit’. There again, this is not a question of politics but rather public communications which have a hard job in the end of hiding the fact that neither France, nor the European Union, knew how to go about things better.
The European Union has buried the political vision of the Ventotene Manifesto and its founding fathers. [Completed in 1941 by Italian anti-fascist militants Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni while imprisoned on the island of Ventotene off Naples, the manifesto for “a free and united Europe” called for a future federation of Europe that espoused social reform and emancipation of the working classes.] Let’s remember that in this manifesto there was question of blocking the fascist slide. More than 70 years later, the European Union must find an answer to the dangers of the neofascists, the sovereignists.
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- Roberto Saviano’s latest book La Paranza dei Bambini, a novel about child criminal gangs in the author’s home city, is published this month in English under the title The Piranhas: The Boy Bosses of Naples (by Picador in the UK, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US), and in French next month under the title Piranhas (by Gallimard).
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- The text of the above interview, originally conducted in Italian, is a translation from the French version which can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse