Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

Anger over plans for Italy’s Salvini to speak at events in the UK

British anti-fascist groups have planned a "Sardines"-style protest in Liverpool after events were organised in the name of Italian far-right League leader Matteo Salvini.

Published: 12 February 2020 15:37 CET
Anger over plans for Italy's Salvini to speak at events in the UK
ItalianItalian League party leader Matteo Salvini. Photo: AFP

The protests have been organised amid concern that populist Salvini is planning to speak at venues in Liverpool and London this spring, the Liverpool Echo reported.

Tickets are on sale at £28 (€33) a head for what appears to be a dinner event being hosted by Lega nel Mondo, an international network established by Salvini in 2018.

Advertisements suggest Salvini will be speaking at as-yet undisclosed venues in the UK and Ireland in March and April.

A screenshot of one UK event being advertised online.

Leader of the right-wing League party and Italy’s former deputy prime minister, Salvini frequently grabs headlines in Italy and abroad with his anti-immigrant outbursts, controversial publicity stunts, and divisive “Italians first” rhetoric.

READ ALSO:  

The event website is very vague, and invites supporters of the Italian politician to email for further information.

Lega nel Mondo had not responded to requests for comment at the time of writing.

In Liverpool, anti-racism groups quickly responded by organising a peaceful protest which, the Echo reports, will take inspiration from the 'Sardine' movement that has recently sprung up in Italy to protest the politics of Salvini and other right-wing figures in the country.

READ ALSO: 'Enough hate': Who are the protesting 'Sardines' packing into Italian squares?

The protest movement began as a flash mob protest in Bologna in November, at which organisers said people would be “packed like sardines” into the city's main piazza.

A “sardines” protest against Matteo Salvini and the League party in the Italian city of Florence in December. Photo: AFP

The anti-Salvini protest in Liverpool is being organised by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Stand Up to Racism and is being supported by Labour politicians and other groups.

A spokesperson for UAF stated: “No venue in Liverpool should host such a person as Salvini. Liverpool of course is a proudly, multicultural city with great anti fascist traditions.”

Salvini has been he subject of five criminal investigations within the past two years. He is currently the subject of one ongoing trial and numerous lawsuits.

It was confirmed on Wednesday that Salvini is now also to stand trial on charges of illegally detaining migrants at sea, after senators upheld a vote by the lower house to strip him of his parliamentary immunity. If found guilty in this case, Salvini could face prison.

READ ALSO: More than half of Italians think racist attacks 'can be justified', poll finds

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

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.

SHOW COMMENTS