Italy: The Italian Prime Minister faces waves of racist and anti-Semitic attitudes within her ruling party
The left-wing news site Fanpage has revealed that it has video evidence of some members of the National Youth using racist slurs and giving Nazi salutes.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has condemned racist and anti-Semitic remarks made by some members of the Youth League of the ruling Italian Brotherhood party.
Speaking to reporters in Brussels, Meloni said anti-Semitism and racism were not in line with the party, and the prime minister’s remarks came after two leading members of the National Youth League resigned over anti-Semitic remarks targeting a Jewish senator in the Senate.
“I’ve said many times and again, I think that those who have racist, anti-Semitic or nostalgic feelings have simply misunderstood their homeland, because these feelings don’t correspond to the Brotherhood of Italy, don’t correspond to the Italian right, nor do they correspond to the political line that we have clearly defined in recent years, and therefore I don’t accept that there is any ambiguity about this,” Meloni said.
Meloni’s remarks came after a report appeared in the left-wing online newspaper Fanpage, claiming it had audio and video recordings of some members of the National Youth using racist slurs and saluting Nazis.
Fanpage’s investigation, titled “Melonia Youth,” sent shockwaves through the ranks of the Italian Brotherhood at the same time as Meloni seeks to establish her reputation as a moderate voice on the European Union stage.
Members of Rome’s Jewish community were also outraged, with some calling for it to punish members of the youth wing revealed in the investigation, and the Jewish community in Rome condemning the shameful images of racism and anti-Semitism that appeared in the Fanpage investigation.
The Jewish community in Rome urged the party to take “appropriate action” saying it was “essential that society reacts” against discrimination.
The Brotherhood of Italy has its roots in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed in 1946 to succeed Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement that ruled Italy for more than 20 years.
Meloni has repeatedly condemned the racist anti-Jewish laws Mussolini enacted in 1938 in an attempt to turn her alliance into a major conservative force.
However, it has also ignored calls to declare itself “anti-fascist”, leading some of its critics to say it has failed to distance itself completely from neo-fascism.
