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Italy’s pro-Trump parties condemn Syria air strikes

Italy's far-right Northern League and anti-establishment Five Star Movement have spoken out strongly against US President Donald Trump's air strikes on Syria, while the country's foreign minister said he "understood the reasons" for the attack.

Published: 7 April 2017 10:28 CEST
Italy's pro-Trump parties condemn Syria air strikes
File photo: Emmanuel Dunand, Andreas Solaro/AFP

Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano described the air strikes, carried out in response to a suspected chemical attack, as a “proportionate response in time and manner” which would act as a deterrent against further chemical attacks.

However, two of the main Italian oppostion parties – both of which have previously shown support for the American leader – appeared to distance themselves from Trump on Friday morning with comments condemning the missile strikes.

Northern League leader Matteo Salvini said Trump's decision was a “bad idea, big mistake, and a gift to Isis”.

“Haven't the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya taught them [the US administration] anything?” he asked, writing on his Facebook page. 

Meanwhile, the Five Star Movement said the attacks were “likely to constitute a clear violation of international law” and added: “After 20 years of mistakes, it seems that nothing has changed, unfortunately.”

Leader Beppe Grillo had on Thursday called for an immediate UN investigation into the apparent chemical attack on Syria, and the note on Friday criticized the US administration for “preferring to bomb before the independent inquiry.”

“The solution to war cannot be another war,” the party said.

Friday's criticism was a contrast to previous shows of support for Trump from both parties. In November, Salvini posted a series of jubilant tweets celebrating Trump's victory in the US elections, saying “Americans, thank you, thank you and thank you!” 

He has previously hailed Trump as “heroic”,  and shared photos of the pair grinning and doing a thumbs-up sign together. However, Trump snubbed the far-right leader following the meeting, saying: “I didn't want to meet him, I don't even know him”.

Five Star Movement leader Beppe Grillo did not formally endorse Trump, but praised him on his victory in a blogpost saying that it represented a “fuck you” to the establishment.

Elsewhere in Europe, France's far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen also said she “strongly condemned” the strikes on Syria. 

READ MORE: Le Pen shocked by Trump's decision to bomb Syria

And the French President Francois Hollande issued a joint statement with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad bore “sole responsibility” for the US strike.

READ ALSO: Five things President Trump could mean for Italy

What does President Trump mean for Italy?
Photo: Jim Watson/AFP

POLITICS

Italy’s Meloni breaks silence on youth wing’s fascist comments

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Friday condemned offensive comments made by members of her far-right party's youth wing to an undercover journalist, breaking weeks of silence over the scandal.

Published: 28 June 2024 16:19 CEST
Italy's Meloni breaks silence on youth wing's fascist comments

The investigation published this month by Italian news website Fanpage included video of members of the National Youth, the junior wing of Brothers of Italy, which has post-fascist roots, showing support for Nazism and fascism.

In images secretly filmed by an undercover journalist in Rome, the members are seen performing fascist salutes, chanting the Nazi “Sieg Heil” greeting and shouting “Duce” in support of the late Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Opposition parties have been calling on Meloni to denounce the behaviour since the first part of the investigation aired on June 13.

Those calls intensified after a second part was published this week with fresh highly offensive comments directed at Jewish people and people of colour.

READ ALSO: Italy’s ruling party shrugs off youth wing’s Fascist salutes

Party youths in particular mocked Ester Mieli, a Brothers of Italy senator and a former spokeswoman for Rome’s Jewish community.

“Whoever expresses racist, anti-Semitic or nostalgic ideas are in the wrong place, because these ideas are incompatible with Brothers of Italy,” Meloni told reporters in Brussels.

“There is no ambiguity from my end on the issue,” she said.

Two officials from the movement have stepped down over the investigation, which also caught one youth party member calling for the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), Elly Schlein, to be “impaled”.

But Meloni also told off journalists for filming young people making offensive comments directed at Jewish people and people of colour, saying they were “methods… of an (authoritarian) regime”.

Fanpage responded that it was “undercover journalism”.

Meloni was a teenage activist with the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed by Mussolini supporters after World War II.

Brothers of Italy traces its roots to the MSI.

The most right-wing leader to take office since 1945, Meloni has sought to distance herself from her party’s legacy without entirely renouncing it. She kept the party’s tricolour flame logo – which was also used by MSI and inspired France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen when he created the far-right National Front party in 1972.

The logo’s base, some analysts say, represents Mussolini’s tomb, which tens of thousands of people visit every year.

Several high-ranking officials in the party do not shy away from their admiration of the fascist regime, which imposed anti-Semitic laws in 1938.

Brothers of Italy co-founder and Senate president Ignazio La Russa collects Mussolini statues.

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