SECURITY BILL: IF DISSENT FAILS TO ORGANIZE
- Sombrero
- Feb 24
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 4
E se credete ora
che tutto sia come prima
Perché avete votato ancora
La sicurezza, la disciplina
Convinti di allontanare
La paura di cambiare
Verremo ancora alle vostre porte
E grideremo ancora più forte
The Meloni government has secured approval from the Chamber of Deputies for the Security Bill, introducing around thirty new crimes, harsher penalties, and additional legal aggravations. Celebrations on one side, protests on the other, as the bill now awaits a final verdict in the Senate.
We won’t go into every new crime introduced by this bill—that’s a job for the Pagella Politica editorial team, who are certainly more qualified than us.
What is clear, however, is that this government wants to further criminalize protests, particularly environmental activism and prisoner uprisings, with severe penalties even for passive resistance.
Critics are already warning of a new police state, much like when the first Security Decree was introduced in 2018, and national strikes have been threatened in response to this authoritarian shift.But what stands out is not just the repression of protests, but also the subtle inspiration drawn from a certain close friend of our Prime Minister: Viktor Orbán.They agree on practically everything—except for the war in Ukraine and their respective European party affiliations. But this hasn’t stopped Meloni from admiring the Hungarian leader’s governance model.
One example? The attempt to appoint the 15th judge to the Constitutional Court—the same person who drafted the constitutional reform on the direct election of the Prime Minister. That attempt failed, but this single episode should not be the source of our concern. After all, politically aligned candidates have always been proposed, even by previous governments.
Nor should the constitutional reform on direct elections be our sole focus of alarm. The real danger lies in the bigger picture and the trajectory we are on.
Just like Orbán—a master at manipulating legal and constitutional frameworks to erode the rule of law—this government could follow the same path. The Hungarian leader did not seize power through a coup, but rather through a series of legislative and constitutional reforms that gradually hollowed out democratic institutions from within.
This is what is often referred to as a "constitutional coup"—a process where formal legality is maintained, but democracy’s actual substance is dismantled.
Could our government take the same steps in the future?
The fact that we are not yet in that situation should not be a source of comfort. Instead, it should prompt serious questions: Will civil society—especially the youth—awaken to the reality of this democratic backslide in time?
WILL WE MOBILIZE, EVEN AS AMINORITY, TO PREVENT IT FROM HAPPENING?
In Hungary, a country that certainly does not have a strong democratic tradition like Italy but shares a tendency to entrust power to a strongman, the political and intellectual elites, along with civil society, allowed themselves to be swept away without putting up much resistance—not by choice, but almost out of helplessness.
Orbán built a clientelistic network, offering positions of power and economic advantages to those loyal to his party, Fidesz. This system co-opted influential figures, who gradually aligned with the regime out of self-interest rather than ideological conviction.
With a vested stake in the government’s survival, opposition faded into silence.
Is anyone willing to argue that Italy is immune to this same logic?
When it comes to institutional reforms, these have always been justified in Hungary as necessary for national stability and protection from external enemies—whether immigration, the European Union, NGOs, or the judiciary. Sounds familiar?
This rhetorical strategy numbed Hungarian elites and civil society, making them believe there was no imminent threat to democracy.
Who can guarantee this won’t happen here?
Another key factor: Hungary’s opposition parties were weak and divided, failing to form a unified front against Orbán.Their lack of leadership and cohesion contributed to the passivity of both the people and the political class, reinforcing the government’s narrative that there was no credible alternative to Fidesz.
Sound familiar? It should.
The Italian opposition today is fragmented, struggling to mobilize, and fails to inspire confidence in those who should be resisting.
In a context where the opposition is weak and disengaged, Italian society could very well lose interest too.Let’s be clear: as long as the Security Bill mainly targets prisoners and climate activists, most Italians will sleep soundly.
But what happens if tomorrow we wake up in a true police state?
WHO WILL BE OUR INTELLECTUAL LEADERS? WHO WILL FORM THE REAL POLITICAL OPPOSITION?
Perhaps domaninat media corporations will step in—or maybe they will remain silent, just as they did during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which has already demonstrated how media complicity can shield governments from scrutiny.
As for opposition parties and their leaders, we shouldn’t place too much faith in them for the future. The opposition in Parliament is stagnant, in a country where the public is confused, bombarded by sensationalist crime news, and manipulated by a pervasive sense of insecurity.And let’s not forget the contradictions of opposition figures themselves—such as Giuseppe Conte, who attended the December 14th protest, despite being the same person who signed the first Security Decree in 2018. Even union leaders like Landini, often too close to those in power to be credible defenders of freedom, offer little hope—especially given that unions are practically irrelevant to the younger generations (7 out of 10 Italians under 34 are not enrolled in any union).
The Security Bill has now become a generational issue, and the text of Article 31 (which mandates universities to collaborate with intelligence agencies in sharing data) should make that abundantly clear.
Accepting it without resistance means ignoring a dangerous precedent for our future. We cannot allow the normalization of a principle where universities become instruments of state control, because it is precisely within universities that critical thinking and political awareness take shape.
If there is one place that must remain free, it is this.
But this isn’t just a battle for left-wing students, and it would be a mistake to reduce it to a partisan issue. We are all students. We are all young. And we will be the ones facing the challenges ahead—job insecurity, climate collapse, the erosion of social rights.
Today’s targets are activists, students, and those who dare to dissent openly. How can we be sure that our right to protest will still be protected tomorrow?
We cannot remain silent.
And we certainly cannot count on the current stagnant intellectual and political class to fight this battle for us.
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