How is it conceivable that homosexuality might be considered a crime? How is it possible to think of using it as delegitimization? In actuality such misinformation is more than mere calumny, which is used mainly against enemies. Misinformation is aimed at destroying victims from within their own side; it is used as punishment, to force you to defend yourself to those close to you, to make statements that have nothing to do with your public activity. It sows doubts and insinuates suspicions that even friends begin to fear. Whatever your lifestyle, whatever work you do, whatever your thinking is, if you oppose certain powers they will always respond with a single strategy: to delegitimize you.

The mudslinging machine wasn’t born today; it’s been at work for some time. That’s why I would like to tell the story of a man who endured and survived the mudslinging machine and in the end could only be stopped by explosives. This man’s name was Giovanni Falcone.

In 1983 Rocco Chinnici is killed. An anti-mafia magistrate and a courageous man, he too was a victim of delegitimization: twenty-four hours after his execution, he was said to have been killed over a romantic matter. As a result of this homicide, the investigative branch of the Prosecution Office in Palermo falls under the supervision of Justice Antonino Caponnetto, who decides to establish an anti-mafia pool composed of magistrates who will be assigned full-time and exclusively to Mafia trials. Called upon to be part of the pool are Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino, Giuseppe Di Lello and Leonardo Guarnotta. This pool forever changes the world’s judicial history, because it succeeds in addressing the issue of crime not only as a matter of safety, but as a factor in the Western economy. The judges confront the issue, study it, understand its codes, and manage to conclude the biggest trial against the Mafia that has ever been brought: nineteen life sentences for all members of the cupola, the body of top-ranking Mafia bosses, and 2,665 years of prison for 339 defendants. In short, thanks to this pool, Italy discovers that it has definitive formal evidence of the existence of the Cosa Nostra.

The judges’ work is intense and very dangerous, and for this reason a strong system of protection is mobilized, drawing criticism from the newspapers. The press attacks the anti-mafia pool and it attacks Giovanni Falcone. Instead of being proud of the judges, it isolates them. People are afraid or, worse yet, fed up with this war fought in their own city. The deployment of forces is perceived as an inconvenience and people seem to consider what is happening a kind of private battle between Falcone and the Cosa Nostra.

A letter is sent to the Giornale di Sicilia in April 1985 by a reader complaining about the racket caused by the security measures taken to protect the magistrates: