Italian opposition demands investigation after hundreds give fascist salute at Rome rally

ROME —  Opposition politicians in Italy on Monday demanded that the government, headed by far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, explain how hundreds of demonstrators were able to give a banned fascist salute at a Rome rally without police intervention.

The rally Sunday night in a working-class neighborhood commemorated the 1978 slaying of two members of a neo-fascist youth group in an attack later claimed by extreme-left militants.

At one point in Sunday’s rally, participants made a straight-armed salute that harks back to the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. Under postwar legislation, use of fascist symbolism, including the straight-armed gesture known as the Roman salute, is banned.

Democratic Party chief Elly Schlein, who heads the largest opposition party in the legislature, was among those demanding Monday that Meloni’s interior minister appear in Parliament to explain why police apparently did nothing to stop the rally.

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Schlein and others who are outraged by the salute noted with irony that last month, when a theatergoer at La Scala in Milan shouted, “Long live anti-fascist Italy,” he was quickly surrounded by police from Italy’s anti-terrorism squad.

“If you shout ‘Long live anti-fascist Italy’ in a theater, you get identified [by police]; if you go to a neo-fascist gathering with Roman salutes and banner, you don’t,” Schlein posted on the social media platform X. “Meloni has nothing to say?”

State TV channel Rai reported Monday evening that Italian police were investigating the mass salute.

Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani, who leads a center-right party in Meloni’s 14-month-old coalition, was pressed by reporters about the dispute.

“We’re a force that certainly isn’t fascist; we’re anti-fascist,” Tajani said at a news conference. Tajani, who also serves as foreign minister, noted that Italian law prohibits the support of fascism. All rallies “in support of dictatorships must be condemned,” he said.

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, posted to X.

Mussolini’s laws helped pave the way for the deportation of Italian Jews during the German occupation of Rome in the latter years of World War II.

Sunday’s rally was held on the anniversary of the slayings outside an office of what was the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, a party formed after World War II that attracted nostalgists for Mussolini. After the two far-right youths were slain, a third was killed during clashes with police in demonstrations.

Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party has its roots in neo-fascism, has distanced herself from Mussolini’s dictatorial policies, declaring that “the Italian right has handed fascism over to history for decades now.”

The late 1970s saw Italy bloodied by violence by extreme right- and left-wing proponents, including bombings linked to the far-right and assassinations and kidnappings claimed by the Red Brigades and other left-wing militants.