Freedom of speech dies not with a bang, but with silence. Living under a regime is recognizable from one precise moment: when people stop talking. Not out of good manners. Out of fear. Italy is crossing that invisible threshold where protesting becomes a crime, where dissent transforms into criminal conviction, where expressing your thoughts risks costing you your freedom.
THIS IS NOT POLITICAL FICTION. IT’S INK ON PAPER, LAW.
Italy’s new Security Decree has just become law with 14 new crimes and nine aggravating circumstances, fundamentally reshaping the landscape of civil liberties. What was once a simple administrative fine for road blocking now lands you in court. Block alone, pay a fine. Do it as a group – as happens in every protest worthy of the name – and you risk six months to two years in prison. Striking workers, eco-activists, anyone who dares disturb the traffic of power: all thrown into the same judicial meat grinder.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN PRISONS: A GROTESQUE PARADOX
In prisons, the situation reaches the grotesque. The European Court has declared italian prisons illegal due to overcrowding. Inmates live in “intensive farming henhouses”, serving a double sentence. But if they protest against these inhumane conditions, they don’t get better cells: they get a new criminal file. The decree introduces the crime of “revolt within a penitentiary institution,” criminalizing any form of resistance, even passive.
THE MESSAGE IS CLEAR – ENDURE IN SILENCE OR WORSE FOR YOU.
Major infrastructure projects have become free zones from dissent. High-speed rail, the Strait Bridge, new highways: whistling, obstructing, simply being near construction sites can cost you dearly. The law introduces new aggravating circumstances for violent acts committed to prevent the construction of infrastructure. The construction site must proceed, you must stay quiet. Even if that project devastates your territory, devalues your homes, destroys your future.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR ACTIVISTS: FINANCIAL PUNISHMENT
For animal rights activists, they’re preparing fines up to 900 euros for those who protest against animal killing during control operations. Here too, the formula is always the same: silence or beatings.
The background completes the picture. Banners removed, cameras censoring “annoying” chants, fines for political flags. Even a Palestinian flag at a soccer match becomes a judicial case. The logic is iron-clad: aggravating circumstances are introduced for crimes committed “within or in the immediate vicinity of railway and subway stations or inside passenger transport convoys” – essentially criminalizing any form of protest in public spaces.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH EXISTS, BUT ONLY FOR THOSE ALIGNED WITH POWER
The freedom to demonstrate still exists, but only for those aligned with power. Any uncomfortable dissent is silenced with tailor-made regulations. The Urban DASPO (ban from urban areas) is extended to those reported or convicted for crimes against persons or property committed in transportation infrastructure areas.
This isn’t about right or left. What a right-wing government approves today will be used even more ferociously in the coming years by a left-wing government. Political alternation is an illusion: power changes face, not substance.
THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONTROL
The technocratic elites know perfectly well where they’re taking us. The tightening of penalties and the oppressive posture of the Republic are not random. They are preparations. They know that in the coming years – when war scenarios become more concrete, when social tensions explode, when dissent becomes inevitable – they will need even more effective tools to suffocate every form of resistance.
The decree strengthens police powers with body cameras, allows officers to carry private weapons off-duty, and provides up to 10,000 euros in legal fees for police officers investigated for service-related actions. Meanwhile, new crimes target those who “instigate disobedience to laws” within penitentiary institutions, effectively criminalizing any form of prisoner advocacy.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH AS THE FIRST CASUALTY
This is the real law in force. Not the penal code you study at university, but the architecture of social control being built piece by piece, government after government. With 39 articles introducing sweeping changes to criminal law, Italy is constructing a legal framework designed not to protect citizens, but to silence them.
Those who approve these measures today because they hit “those others” will soon discover that there are no “those others.” There are only citizens and subjects. And the line of demarcation is being drawn right now, in these parliamentary halls, with these decrees, in this silence.
When regimes arrive, you don’t recognize them by tanks in the streets. You recognize them by the moment you stop speaking.
And we are stopping speaking.
The Security Decree was approved by the Italian Senate with 109 votes in favor, 69 against, and one abstention, becoming law on June 10, 2025.