The measure of intolerance is not seen in slogans about freedom, but in the way we react when someone dares to think differently from our group, whether small or large. It is there that, beneath the surface of good intentions, an ancient temptation emerges: turning an opponent into an enemy, not refuting him but eliminating him from the public space, demanding that “someone” silence him on our behalf.
And this is exactly what Andrea Grillo has done in these hours, publishing against Silere non possum a delirious text in which he claims that we attacked Sister Linda Pocher, when in reality the two authors – a priest and a religious sister – simply offered an analysis of her interview with La Repubblica. In that interview the sister made statements that had nothing to do with the Summary of the Study Commission on the Female Diaconate, signed by Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi. It is a precise analysis, read by millions of readers, who appreciated its ability to highlight Pocher’s inability to remain on the actual content of the document, preferring gut-level slogans capable of attracting an audience but devoid of real theological substance.
As expected, joining Grillo’s attack were the usual “historical haters of Silere non possum”, who over time have shown themselves far more faithful to what they accuse us of than to what they claim to defend. Among them is Marinella Perroni, a woman who for years sought proximity to Enzo Bianchi because he could offer her visibility, only to distance herself when he was falsely accused. Perroni was one of the first figures whose hypocrisy Silere non possum helped expose: after clarifying the facts by publishing documents on what actually happened in Bose, this portal dismantled one of her sing-song, whining letters against Bianchi, revealing the utter inconsistency of her claims. Since then she has not missed a chance to attack us: not with arguments but with jabs, sterile criticisms, accusations of aggression. She, who keeps company with Andrea Grillo, known to all for his proverbial “calmness” and “good manners”. A telling example can be found in this video.
There are many who have aligned themselves with those who insult, attack, and mock anyone who disagrees with them, while demanding that everyone else remain silent and no one criticize them. Grillo, as you well know, harbors a visceral hatred toward Silere non possum because we have put in black and white how utterly inappropriate his teaching in Pontifical Universities is. And Silere non possum, as always, does not rely on gossip – as we are accused of doing by those who actually live off gossip – but on documents. It was our portal that made public the financial statements of the Sant’Anselmo University, where it is clearly written where the money comes from and for what purpose. It was our portal that published the letter with which Grillo left the liturgical journal after one of his heretical outbursts. Silere non possum also highlighted the inappropriateness of the invitations he receives after having even spat upon a young saint. It is evident, then, that although Grillo throws himself under other people’s posts invoking divine and judicial punishments against us, he knows perfectly well that contra factum non valet argumentum. Publishing documents is not gossip; it is information. Gossip is what Fabrizio Mastrofini (who served as spokesman for Vincenzo Paglia) practices, to name one, when in his articles he attacks Silere non possum with that resentful nastiness that only a deeply disappointed man can allow himself, only to be forced the very next day to correct everything he wrote. Not Silere non possum, which has never been compelled to correct a single line of its investigations. Now, if after a news outlet exposes your inadequacy you harbor resentment, I can understand it. It is not especially Christian – but neither are your theories on the female diaconate, so the dynamic is clear. But that you stoop to the level of insult, that makes no sense. In the article on Sister Linda there is no personal attack, nor any insult: it analyses words and positions, nothing more. The insults, rather, appear in the statements of Grillo and his allies who, as usual, then showcase their “openness”, their being “avant-garde”, respectful of “tone”, using low-grade insults obviously tinged with homophobia. Yet they are the ones who call others “aggressive”, “vulgar”, etc. I will not even dwell on the Bergamo priests, who manage simultaneously to provoke amusement and bewilderment, as confirmed by the several confreres who, in these hours, have repeatedly written to Silere non possum.
The intolerant who accuse others of intolerance
But since this behavior is nothing new, let us examine it more closely. George Orwell described this mechanism with a precision that today sounds almost documentary. In the Two Minutes Hate ritual of 1984, the crowd is summoned daily before the screen to insult Emmanuel Goldstein, “Enemy of the People”, former Party official turned apostate. The scene is well known: Goldstein’s face appears, the “bleating” voice attacks the group’s doctrine and dares to ask for “freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought”; within seconds the room explodes into screams, thrown objects, insults repeated like automatisms. The most disturbing thing, Orwell notes, is that there is no need to pretend: “it was impossible not to join in the denouncing”, a “desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer” ran through everyone “like an electric current”, and that hatred became an “abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp”. Intolerance does not need arguments: it only needs a target, real or presumed. Today there are no state-run screens projecting Goldstein, but the logic is similar when, faced with an uncomfortable opinion, the reaction is not to ask whether it is true or false, but to demand: “Who will stop him? Who will punish him?”
In this world, dissent is not a right to be safeguarded but a thought-crime to be prevented. In 1984, Winston knows that the simple act of starting a diary, even in the absence of formal laws, can cost him death or decades in a labor camp. Writing an unauthorized thought means entering the territory of the thoughtcrime. Intolerance becomes a system when the authorities do not merely forbid certain phrases but try to make difference itself unthinkable. This is the aim of Newspeak: to keep words like “free” only in harmless uses – “the dog is free of fleas” – and eliminate any political or intellectual meaning. If you cannot say “free” in the sense of freedom of thought, soon you will not be able even to conceive it. Animal Farm is likewise a long meditation on intolerance toward those who do not conform. At the beginning, the animals overthrow the farmer and write the Seven Commandments of Animalism; to make them accessible, Snowball reduces them to the slogan “Four legs good, two legs bad”, which soon becomes the sheep’s favorite refrain. The slogan, born as a pedagogical simplification, quickly becomes a weapon: each time someone raises a doubt, a pig tries to object, or a hesitation surfaces, the sheep burst into their chant and repeat it for “nearly a quarter of an hour”, until any possibility of discussion is suffocated. Here Orwell grasps something strikingly contemporary: group intolerance does not need a political police when it has a battalion of voices ready to drown, ridicule, overwhelm. One does not need to refute the objection; it suffices to launch the chorus, the hashtag, the post, the open letter, the coordinated campaign. In the final scene of the book, when the pigs walk on two legs and wield the whip, the sheep have already updated the slogan to “Four legs good, two legs better”, and repeat it without interruption, so that the moment when the other animals might say “no” dissolves into noise.
Intolerance does not manifest itself only through censorship from above, but also through the education from below to renounce personal judgement. In Animal Farm, Squealer rewrites collective memory: he denies that motions against trade with humans were ever approved, suggests that the others “must have dreamed” those rules, and since no written document exists to prove them, many begin to doubt themselves. Intolerance is this too: creating a climate in which whoever raises questions ends up wondering whether he is the problem, while those with connections to power claim a monopoly over reality. In 1984, the figure of Goldstein serves the same function: he is the container of every dangerous thought, the face onto which all guilt is projected. Goldstein “advocates freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought”, accuses the Party of dictatorship, denounces the betrayal of the Revolution. Precisely for this he is hated more than external enemies: he is the symbol of a difference that cannot be tolerated. Whoever invokes freedom is turned into the threat from which one must be protected. It is a reversal we recognize each time the request for transparency, for debate, for discussion on the merits is dismissed as gossip, hatred, a “danger to democracy”, and instead of answers come only calls to “take action” against whoever dared to speak. And thus we find ourselves called gossipmongers by those who live off gossip; accused of writing falsehoods by those who have been reprimanded by their own newsrooms and forced to correct themselves because they did write falsehoods; accused of personal attacks by those who move in packs, with dynamics reminiscent of fascist squads. It is the ancient game of projecting onto others one’s own faults, distorting facts to avoid looking in the mirror.
Intolerance toward those who think differently, in Orwell’s pages, is not an accident but the very heart of the system: without an internal enemy to demonize, the Party could not stand. Without a rival reality to crush, the pigs could not convince the others that “leadership is a burden” and that suppressing debate is a sacrifice for the common good. And indeed, try searching through the abundant output of these individuals for texts that were not written to attack someone, dismantle a thesis, or assault others, as in this video.
The lesson for us is stark: any society that ceases to tolerate dissent, that responds to questions with campaigns of delegitimization, that trains its “followers” to bleat slogans instead of reasoning, has already entered the path that leads from fear of difference to the suppression of freedom. Orwell does not give us a handbook of past history, but a mirror in which to measure how willing we are today to live with those who do not agree with us.
Marco Felipe Perfetti
Director, Silere non possum