Hundreds of people who made the Fascist salute in Rome last weekend behaved “contrary to our democratic culture”, Italy’s interior minister said Wednesday — but said banning extremist groups was complicated. Matteo Piantedosi said police have referred five supporters of neo-fascist group Casapound to judicial authorities for taking part in Sunday evening’s demonstration, footage of which went viral and drew widespread outrage.
Piantedosi, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard right government but not her party, told MPs that all political parties had distanced themselves from “this behaviour, which is contrary to our democratic culture”.
Hundreds of people, many wearing black, were filmed raising their arms in a Fascist salute at the site of the former Rome headquarters of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a party formed by supporters of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after World War II. They were marking the anniversary of the 1978 murder of two teenage activists from the MSI’s youth wing at the site, killings blamed on far-left activists, but for which nobody was ever convicted.
Piantedosi said their memory 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 from the opposition centre-left Democratic Party to disband such groups, saying the law only allowed for this in very limited circumstances.
A commemoration is held every year to mark the 1978 murders, which occurred during a period of political violence in Italy known as the “Years of Lead”. Piantedosi said the 1,000 people gathered on Sunday was fewer than in previous years.
But it has taken on greater political resonance given the advent to power in October 2022 of Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy, which has its origins in the MSI. The party was not involved in Sunday’s demonstration but the prime minister has yet to comment — a silence condemned by Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein as “embarrassing”.
Meloni “remains hostage to her past”, Schlein told MPs. She added that the commemoration of the young lives lost “cannot in any way justify… the repetition of gestures that recall a dictatorship that trampled on freedom and democracy, that produced the darkest pages in the history of this country”.
MSI youth members Franco Bigonzetti, 13, and Francesco Ciavatta, 17, were shot dead while a third teen activist, Stefano Recchioni, 19, was killed by a stray bullet during subsequent riots and clashes with police.
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