Italian opposition demands probe after hundreds give fascist salute at Rome rally
Illicit Mussolini homage provokes ire from detractors of far-right government, inspires worry in Jewish community; minister criticizes action, resists calls to ban group
Opposition politicians in Italy on Monday demanded that the government, headed by far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, explain how hundreds of demonstrators were able to give a banned fascist salute at a Rome rally without any police intervention.
The rally Sunday night in a working-class neighborhood commemorated the slaying in 1978 of two members of a neo-fascist youth group in an attack later claimed by extreme-left militants.
At one point in the rally, participants raised their right arm in a straight-armed salute that harks back to the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. Under postwar legislation, use of fascist symbolism, including the straight-armed salute also known as the Roman salute, is banned.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi responded to the furor, saying that the demonstrators behaved “contrary to our democratic culture” but added that banning extremist groups was complicated.
The European Jewish Congress shared on X a video of the mass salute at the Sunday night rally, calling it “absolutely abhorrent,” and adding, “that gesture is from the darkest chapter of our history and must be left there.”
Leaders of Italy’s tiny Jewish community also expressed dismay over the fascist salute.
Roma, Italia, 2024.
Vergogna di Stato. #AccaLarentia pic.twitter.com/yR7VtvmfVR— Paolo Berizzi (@PBerizzi) January 7, 2024
“It’s right to recall the victims of political violence, but in 2024 this can’t happen with hundreds of people who give the Roman salute,” Ruth Dureghello, who for several years led Rome’s Jewish community, wrote on X.
Democratic Party chief Elly Schlein, who heads the largest opposition party in the legislature, was among those demanding Monday that Meloni’s interior minister appear in Parliament to explain why police apparently did nothing to stop the rally.
Schlein and others outraged by the use of the fascist salute in the rally noted with irony that last month, when a theater-goer at La Scala’s opera house’s premier shouted “Long live anti-fascist Italy!” the man was quickly surrounded by police from Italy’s anti-terrorism squad.
“If you shout ‘Long live anti-fascist Italy’ in a theater, you get identified (by police); if you go to a neo-fascist gathering with Roman salutes and banner, you don’t,” said Schlein in a post on X. Then she added: “Meloni has nothing to say?”
Schlein, whose father is American Jewish political scientist Melvin Schlein, has spoken publicly about receiving antisemitic attacks for her surname and nose. The younger Schlein does not identify as a Jew, and has insisted in an interview to Italian daily la Repubblica that her nose is Etruscan, not Jewish.
Piantedosi said police have referred five supporters of the neo-fascist group Casapound to judicial authorities for taking part in the event.
Piantedosi, a member of Meloni’s hard right government but not her party, told MPs that all political parties had distanced themselves from “this behavior, which is contrary to our democratic culture.”
Piantedosi said the memory of those killed in 1978 was “betrayed by the repetition of gestures and symbols that represent an era condemned by history,” that of Mussolini’s 1922-1943 dictatorship.
He said the five supporters of Casapound, a fringe group based in Rome, had been referred to prosecutors on suspicion of the crime of apology of fascism.
But he resisted calls to disband such groups, saying the law only allowed for this in very limited circumstances.
Piantedosi said the 1,000 people gathered on Sunday was fewer than in previous years.
Rai state television said Monday evening that Italian police were investigating the mass salute at the rally.
Deputy Premier Antoni Tajani, who leads a center-right party in Meloni’s 14-month-old coalition, was pressed by reporters about the flap over the fascist salute.
“We’re a force that certainly isn’t fascist, we’re anti-fascist,” Tajani said at a news conference on another matter. Tajani, who also serves as foreign minister, noted that under Italian law, supporting fascism is banned. All rallies “in support of dictatorships must be condemned,” he said.
Mussolini’s anti-Jewish laws helped pave the way for the deportation of Italian Jews during the German occupation of Rome in the latter years of World War II.
The rally was held on the anniversary of the youths’ slaying outside an office of what was then the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, a party formed after World War II that attracted nostalgists for Mussolini. After the two youths were slain, a third far-right youth was killed during clashes with police in demonstrations that followed.
Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has its roots in neo-fascism, has kept her distance from Mussolini’s dictatorship, declaring that “the Italian right has handed fascism over to history for decades now.”
The late 1970s saw Italy blooded by violence by extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing activists. The bloody deeds included deadly bombings linked to the far-right, and assassinations and kidnapping claimed by the Red Brigades and other left-wing extremists.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
