Neo-fascists take advantage of ‘no-vax’ anger, create dilemma for Italy – India Times Hindi News

ROME (AP) – A violent outburst of anger from an ultra-right party over Italy’s coronavirus restrictions is forcing officials to wrestle with the country’s fascist legacy and fueling fears that it will make its way into parliament. Will make An attempt may be made to repeat last week’s flurry.

Starting Friday, anyone entering workplaces in Italy using the country’s Green Pass to prove their status must receive at least one dose of the vaccine, or have recently recovered from COVID-19 or two Will test negative within days. Italians already use passes to enter restaurants, theaters, gyms and other indoor entertainment, or to enter long-distance buses, trains or domestic flights.

But 10,000 opponents of that government decree staged a protest in Rome’s sprawling Piazza del Popolo last Saturday, which escalated into dangerous violence.

This is a mix and overlap of extreme rights and concerns against Italy’s vaccine mandate, even though opponents of vaccines are still a distinct minority in a country where 80% of people 12 years of age and older have access to full vaccines. Is. Good vaccination.

Thousands marched through the Italian capital on Saturday in a rally inspired by the political extreme right, and hundreds made their way through the headquarters of the left-leaning CGIL labor union. The police thwarted his repeated attempts to reach the office of the Prime Minister of Italy and the seat of parliament.

Protesters smashed union computers, broke phone lines and ransacked offices, when first trying to use metal bars to break into CGIL’s front door, then smashing through a window. Unions have supported Green Pass to make Italy’s workplaces safer.

CGIL leader Maurizio Landini drew parallels to attacks against labor organizers by Benito Mussolini’s newly formed fascists a century earlier as he tightened his dictatorial grip on Italy.

For some who witnessed the violence, the attack also gave rise to images of an attack by an angry mob of the US Capitol on January 6 in protest against the failed re-election bid of then US President Donald Trump.

“What we saw in the last days was really shocking,” said Ruth Duregello, president of Rome’s Jewish community.

Premier Mario Draghi told reporters his government was “reflecting” on parliamentary motions recorded or supported by leftist, populist and centrist parties this week, urging the government to oust the far-right party Forza Nuova, whose The leaders encouraged the attack on the union office. .

On Monday, at the behest of prosecutors in Rome, Italy’s telecommunications police force took down the website of Forza Nuova for alleged criminal incitement.

Hours after the CGIL attack, anti-vaccine protesters also stormed the hospital’s emergency room, where one demonstrator was feeling ill, scaring patients and injuring two nurses and three police officers.

In response, Rome will have two more marches this Saturday: one by opponents of Green Pass and another to show solidarity for CGIL and what Landini describes as an “antidote to violence”.

Police and intelligence officials on Wednesday looked at how to deal with potential violence triggered by workplace virus mandates and the start of dual demonstrations.

Rome will also hold a runaway mayoral election on Sunday between a centre-left candidate and a right-wing candidate chosen by the leader of a rapidly growing national opposition party with neo-fascist roots.

The co-founders of Forza Nuova (New Army) and its Rome leader are among dozens of people arrested in Saturday’s violence. He is a founder of the imprisoned extreme-right extremist group Armed Revolutionary Nucleus, which terrorized Italy in the 1980s, and a northern Italian restaurant writer who defied a national lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

President of Rome’s Jewish Community, Ruth Duregello (courtesy)

Duragello described the “fraud” in Rome as a “serious, traumatic event” conducted by those who seek to create disorder and oriented consensus, drawing on prejudice in Italian society. In a tweet, he called for an immediate investigation into “neo-fascist movements and the networks that support them”.

Also troubling Italy’s small Jewish community, there have been anti-Semitic remarks by Rome’s mayoral candidate, who has been elected by the leader of Italy’s far-right brothers, the main opposition in parliament, Giorgia Meloni. It recently emerged that Enrico Michetti wrote in 2020 that the Holocaust receives so much attention because Jews “have banks.” he keeps since apologizing For “hurting feelings” of Jews.

In the first round of municipal voting in Rome, the dictator’s granddaughter, Rachel Mussolini, received the most votes for a council post.

Meloni has long rejected opponents’ demands that she explicitly condemn the legacy of Mussolini’s fascist regime.
Speaking in parliament on Wednesday, Meloni distanced his party from Forza Nuova, criticizing the Green Pass workplace rule.

“We are light years away from any subversive movement, especially Forza Nuova,” she said. She then accused Draghi’s broad coalition, which gathered earlier this year to lead the country through the pandemic, of “pretending that the people on the street on Saturday were not passing the government (Green)”. We are demonstrating their disagreement about not recognizing them. Right. To act.”

The leader of the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, Giorgia Meloni, wears a mask in the colors of the Italian flag as she attends a session of the Italian Parliament in Rome on April 16, 20. (AP via Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse)

Meloni “lives on obscurity, he has one foot in the legacy of fascism,” said Antonio Parisella, a retired professor of contemporary Italian history.

Pericella, who directed Rome’s Liberation Museum, said “Mussolini did good things,” such as the common “myth” that he ran trains on time and eradicated malaria, which is prevalent in much of Italy’s society.

Donatella di Cesare, professor of philosophy at the University of Rome, wrote on the front page of LA, “Animosity with (green) pass, vaccine hate” is something that “the post-fascist right knows very well how to use”. . The Stampa newspaper.

Milan’s counter-terrorism prosecutor Alberto Nobili told Radio 24 this week that in addition to the overly correct display under the “symbol of no wax”, investigators in that city have found that “anarchist groups and extreme leftist groups” are also part of the public. Huh. . trying to exploit. Anger.

Elsewhere in Europe, from Slovenia to Greece, some far-right parties have joined the anti-vaccine movement.

In France, the situation is more complicated. Some far-right leaders worked closely with anti-vaccine protesters. But the far-right National Rally party of firebrand Marine Le Pen in France has not called for and criticized such protests. Many anti-vaccine protesters in France have refused to march to the far south.