Next to a reasonable and wise majority of national citizens, we saw the emergence of a wave of irrationality. It showcases a fatuous sleep of reason, a fatal escape into magic, witchcraft, shamanic thinking, claiming to decipher the occult sense of reality” (CENSIS, 2021). The worrisome anti-science trends evidenced in this 2021 CENSIS report demand careful scrutiny to better understand the connections between the modes of public communication of science in Italy during the Covid-19 emergency, the political co-optation of public health issues during the pandemic, and the public understanding of science in a time of pandemic crisis.

In 2021, in this context of rising public unrest, Italy saw an explosion in public anti-establishment protests and rallies targeted against: the mask mandates, the vaccines, the national lockdown, the “Green Pass” or the government pandemic policies tout court. One notable example, from October 9, 2021, is when a crowd of protesters guided by the far-right extra-parliamentary party leaders of Forza Nuova attacked and trashed the headquarters of the Italian union CGIL in Rome and also the nearby ER of the hospital Umberto I.

In this paper, I explore the discourse around the political protests that culminated in the riots of October 9. Tracing the intersections of science communication and political rhetorics during Covid-19 will illustrate how anti-establishment and anti-science publics were reinforced and amplified in the public sphere by the populist right that contributed to politicize science and exploit the pandemic crisis for their political advantage. This paper carefully reads the protests in context and it also reflects on the ways the pandemic exacerbated undemocratic inclinations within the public, including receptivity to demagogic discourse and support of right-wing authoritarian attitudes and governance. Mapping out the interplay of science and politics in the Italian public sphere will enable visualizing better and reinvigorating ways of integrating technical and public spheres for a better democratic life.