Hidden camera footage captured members of the youth wing of Italian far-right leader Giorgia Meloni performing fascist salutes and singing “Sieg heil.”
Following the scandal, Prime Minister Meloni told her Brothers of Italy party on Tuesday that it should expel from its ranks anyone who idolizes Italy’s fascist past and reject anti-Semitism, racism and nostalgia for its past dictatorships.
Criticism has mounted after an undercover media investigation last week published a video of members of his party’s youth wing giving the fascist salute.
In a letter to party leaders, Meloni said she was “angry and saddened” that their actions had damaged the group’s reputation.
“In the Brothers of Italy there is no room for racism or anti-Semitism, for those nostalgic for the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century or for any manifestation of absurd folklore,” he wrote. “Our task is too great to be allowed to be ruined by those who have not understood its scope.”
Hidden camera footage captured members of Italian far-right leader Giorgia Meloni’s youth wing performing fascist salutes and singing ‘Sieg heil’ (pictured)
In the wake of the scandal, Prime Minister Meloni (pictured June 28) told her Brothers of Italy party on Tuesday that it should expel from its ranks anyone who idolizes Italy’s fascist past and reject anti-Semitism, racism and nostalgia for its past dictatorships.
Brothers of Italy has its roots in a neo-fascist group created after World War II.
However, Meloni has worked to distance himself from the far right in recent years and says his party is conservative.
But in a blow to these efforts, opposition parties pounced on the investigation by the digital newspaper Fanpage, which was titled ‘The Meloni Youth’.
The publication’s journalist posed as an activist from National Youth, the youth wing of the Brothers of Italy party, and the report came out in two episodes last month.
The fanpage said hidden camera footage showed members of the movement making fascist salutes, praising Benito Mussolini, defining themselves as fascists and instructing others to spread stickers with fascist slogans.
This, Fanpage claimed, showed that Brothers of Italy was a haven for far-right individuals, contradicting Meloni’s efforts to present a moderate image both at home and abroad.
Meloni said on Tuesday that the Brothers of Italy must be transparent and coherent.
“Anyone who believes that there can be a public image of the Brothers of Italy that does not correspond to their private behaviour simply does not understand what we are and is therefore not welcome among us,” he said in the letter.
‘There is no place in our ranks for those who play a caricature role that only serves the narrative our opponents want to create about us.
“We have no time to waste on those who want to push us back.”
Fanpage.it said hidden camera footage (pictured) showed members of the movement making fascist salutes, praising Benito Mussolini, defining themselves as fascists and instructing others to spread stickers with fascist slogans.
A fan page posted clips of youth members singing “Duce,” a reference to Mussolini, and shouting “Seig heil,” an expression adopted by Nazis under Adolf Hitler.
However, Meloni and other lawmakers from his party also criticised the methods employed by the journalists, saying the report only represented a small majority of his party’s youth movement and not the party as a whole.
Luca Ciriani, a lawmaker for the Brothers of Italy, also said the Fanpage report was based on fragmented and out-of-context images.
Despite his efforts to distance his party’s modern version from Italy’s fascist past, Meloni once again had to remind his party leaders to move on.
He also reminded them that the Brothers of Italy had joined a 2019 resolution of the European Parliament condemning all dictatorships of the 20th century.
She said this was a “position” she had “no intention of questioning.”
The report showed the party’s project to bring it into the modern era was not complete and that nostalgia lingered for the days of Mussolini, Italy’s fascist leader and “Duce” (derived from Latin Dux, or leader) from 1922 to 1945.
He was summarily executed in 1945 by Italian partisans.
A fan page posted clips of young people singing “Duce,” a reference to Mussolini, and shouting “Seig heil,” an expression adopted by Nazis under Adolf Hitler.
One man told reporters: “I’m a fascist.”
Another said: “We are comrades, not morons,” in contrast to Meloni telling a crowd of National Youth members: “I’m proud of you.”
The undercover reporter attended a meeting of the group, where people were seen chanting and giving fascist salutes.
He also met there with Marco Perissa and Paolo Trancassini, senior leaders of the Brothers of Italy party, and MEP Nicola Procaccini.
The clip showed some greeting attendees with a “gladiator salute,” which the report said is when two people grab each other’s wrists in a handshake.
The Fanpage report also showed a group chat where someone had posted the message: ‘Jews are a race and I despise them.’
Two junior members, Elisa Segnini and Flaminia Pace, resigned last week after the second instalment of the report was published.
They were not expelled, a spokesman for the Brothers of Italy party said.
In the image: Meloni is seen speaking at a national youth event in the Fanpage report.
Fanpage said hidden camera footage showed members of the movement making fascist salutes, praising Benito Mussolini, defining themselves as fascists and instructing others to spread stickers with fascist slogans (pictured)
Liliana Segre, an Italian senator and Holocaust survivor, asked on Italian television after seeing the Fanpage reports: ‘At my age, will I have to see this again?’
Will they have to expel me from my country like I was once expelled?
Left-wing MPs in Italian politics have spoken out against Meloni.
Michela Di Biase, of the Democratic Party of Italy, accused the National Youth of idealizing those who “stained the history of our country with the blood of persecution.”