Stop extreme-right assembly, Jewish Italian lawmaker urges

ROME (JTA) – A Jewish member of Italy’s parliament urged the country’s Interior Minister to curb the formal inception of an Italian version of Greece’s extreme-right Golden Dawn party.

Alba Dorata Italia, or Golden Dawn Italy, was formed in Trieste in November and has scheduled its constituent assembly for December 21 in Rome. The party uses the same ancient Greek logo as the Greek Golden Dawn, which has been compared to a swastika, and its platform also reflects anti-immigration and extreme nationalist positions.

In a statement Thursday, Emanuele Fiano, a lawmaker of the left-wing Democratic Party, said he hoped that Interior Minister Annamaria Cancellieri and the judiciary “want to prevent that tomorrow in Rome will take place yet another insult to the memory of our anti-fascist republic, born of the anti-fascist resistance and democracy.”

Fiano noted that Alba Dorata Italia had declared the “need for a radical cleansing of all the toxic waste of society,” and also said it wanted to preserve the “just things” carried out by World War II-era fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Fiano said that the group “has published on its website shameful images of Italian politicians marked with the Star of David on their foreheads and others that minimized the horror of the Holocaust.”

Alba Dorata also published slurs against prominent Italian gays including Nicchi Vendola, the president of Puglia region.