I did more or less try to read their other article, but only skimmed over the one with the quotes - guess I should fix that oversight, but Dante is rather hard to read than simple modern Italian. There's only so much I can make of those passages.

I was under the impression the Giuda-Giudecca thing was a big factor in their claims of anti-Semitism - and the associations it created. I dare say Dante wasn't the first to make that pseudo-etymological link, but calling the deepest layer of Hell the "Giudecca" does rather suggest anti-semitism to me that goes beyond the person of Judas. That said, see next paragraph.

I don't think it's these guys' contention that Dante was particularly Islamophobic, anti-Semitic, homophobic or offensive by the standards of his time (indeed, that would have been a rather difficult thesis to defend even if he'd been still worse than he is). Their point is that those passages are all those things by modern standards, and that Italian education rather fails at putting them in their proper historical perspective. Which, as I noted elsewhere, is of course not a statement that we can easily verify.


There is certainly something gratuitous about this thing in the way they thrive off the publicity created by the suggestion of removing Dante from the compulsory curriculum. An intentional provocation to guarantee them media attention for their rather less revolutionary goals (and media attention for whatever other projects they may have going in the bargain). But they're not nearly so foolish as you make them out to be.