ROME — “This is not resistance to Salvini but organized piracy against a sovereign state,” declared Giorgio Gandola in La Verità newspaper Friday, noting that the captain of the Sea-Watch 3 is violating laws not only of Mr. Salvini, but of the Italian Republic itself.
Carola Rackete, the German captain of the NGO vessel Sea-Watch 3, has become the new poster-child of the Italian left, Gandola observes, replacing the recent occupants of that coveted chair: climate-change activist Greta Thunberg and antifa novelist-Sardinian separatist Michela Murgia.
Ms. Rackete, Gandola notes, has a perfect progressive pedigree, having worked years for Greenpeace and animal rights causes, and appropriately ashamed of her “white privilege.”
The only problem is that her crusade against Matteo Salvini has become a crusade against Italy itself, since the laws she is flouting were passed by the Italian parliament and approved by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella.
The German NGO Sea Watch has official yearly revenues of two million euros, without counting the generous donations from their ample liberal fan base made up of German greens, actors, and rock bands, Gandola notes.
For her part, Carola Rackete turned down offers to head to Tunisia with her human cargo as well as every other solution that was not Italy.
Her interest in the 42 migrants aboard her vessel was marginal, Gandola affirms, while her primary interest was creating an international incident by confronting Mr. Salvini. In other words, he suggests, Rackete has exploited the fate of 42 human beings to make a political statement and draw attention to herself.
In her own words, in fact, Rackete had said that “for me, Lampedusa is the only option,” discarding a priori any other port to disembark her passengers, including Spanish ports that would have shortened her 1400-km journey considerably.