Opposition politicians in Italy on Monday demanded the government, headed by far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni, to explain how hundreds of demonstrators were able to give a banned fascist salute at a Rome rally without any police intervention.
The rally on Sunday in a working-class neighbourhood was to remember the killing in 1978 of two members of a neo-fascist youth group in an attack later claimed by extreme-left militants.
At one point in the rally, participants raised their right arm in a straight-armed salute that harks back to the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini.
Under post-war legislation, use of fascist symbolism, including the straight-armed salute also known as the Roman salute, is banned.
Se gridi “Viva l’Italia antifascista” a teatro vieni identificato, se vai a un’adunata neofascista con saluti romani e striscioni invece no.
Piantedosi chiarisca come sia potuto accadere.E Meloni non ha niente da dire?
— Elly Schlein (@ellyesse) January 8, 2024
Democratic Party chief Elly Schlein, who heads the largest opposition party in the legislature, was among those demanding that Ms Meloni’s interior minister appear in Parliament to explain why police apparently did nothing to stop the rally.
Ms Schlein and others noted that last month, when a theatre-goer at a La Scala opera house premiere shouted “Long live anti-fascist Italy”, the man was quickly surrounded by police from Italy’s anti-terrorism squad.
“If you shout ‘Long live anti-fascist Italy’ in a theatre, you get identified (by police); if you go to a neo-fascist gathering with Roman salutes and banner, you don’t,” said Ms Schlein on X, formerly Twitter. Then she added: “Meloni has nothing to say?”
Rai state television said on Monday that Italian police were investigating the mass salute.
Leaders of Italy’s tiny Jewish community also expressed dismay.
“It’s right to recall the victims of political violence, but in 2024 this can’t happen with hundreds of people who give the Roman salute,” Ruth Dureghello, who for several years led Rome’s Jewish community, tweeted.
Mussolini’s anti-Jewish laws helped pave the way for the deportation of Italian Jews during the German occupation of Rome in the latter years of the Second World War.
Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has its roots in neo-fascism, has distanced herself from Mussolini’s dictatorship, declaring that “ the Italian right has handed fascism over to history for decades now”.