Premier Giorgia Meloni responded to an undercover exposé by news group Fanpage of her rightwing Brothers of Italy (FdI) party by stating she will expel from FdI anyone who seeks to revert to the past.
Fanpage carried out an undercover exposé to reveal alleged antisemitic, neo-fascist, and neo-Nazi sentiments within the youth wing of Meloni’s FdI party.
The footage showed some members of National Youth (GN) hailing Mussolini and chanting “Duce” and “Sieg Heil,” as well as voicing allegedly antisemitic views. This has profoundly impacted Meloni, who has diligently worked to moderate FdI and distance it from its neo-fascist roots.
“Our task is too great for those who have not understood its scope to be allowed to ruin it,” she stated in a letter to party leaders.
“I do not have, and we do not have, time to waste with those who are unable to understand what Brothers of Italy is and what the great historical challenges of our time are. I don’t have, and we don’t have, time to waste with those who want to turn us back, or with those who turn us into a puppet. I do not have, and we do not have, time to waste with those who, unknowingly or not, become a tool in the hands of the adversary. Those who are not able to understand this, those who have not understood this path, those who are not in a position to keep up, cannot be part of Brothers of Italy.”
The right has buried Fascism – Meloni
Meloni reiterated, as she has on several previous occasions, the Italian Right has long buried Fascism and consigned it to the dustbin of history.
“I have said and repeated it dozens of times, but just in case we need to repeat it: there is no room in Fratelli d’Italia for racist or anti-Semitic positions, just as there is no room for nostalgics of 20th century totalitarianism, or for any manifestation of stupid folklore.
“The right-wing parties from which many of us come from have already come to terms with the past and with the twenty-year fascist period several decades ago, and this is all the more true for a young political movement like ours, which since its foundation has moreover made the choice to open up to political cultures compatible with ours, welcoming people who also came from political paths different from that of the historical right.”
Meloni describes FdI as a conservative party akin to Britain’s Conservatives, the US Republicans, or Israel’s Likud. She leads the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR), which includes Spain’s Vox, Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS), and the Sweden Democrats. She is also a friend and ally of Viktor Orban of Hungary and Marine Le Pen of France.
Her party’s flame logo allegedly refers to the one on Mussolini’s tomb.
