Category Archives: Brothers of Italy

Italy’s far-right government revives holiday for saint at ‘core of our nation’s identity’

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Millions of Italian workers expected to get day off every 4 October in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi

Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government in Italy has revived a national holiday in honour of the country’s popular patron saint, Francis of Assisi, in a nod to “the very core of our nation’s identity”.

Millions of Italian workers are expected to get a day off each 4 October, the feast day of Saint Francis, after the lower house of parliament approved overwhelmingly a bill making it a public holiday. The measure will pass to the senate for the final nod.

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Placebo frontman Brian Molko charged with calling Meloni ‘fascist’ and ‘racist’

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The singer is being charged with defamation of the far-right Italian prime minister leader while performing at a festival in Turin in 2023

Placebo frontman Brian Molko is being charged with defamation after appearing to call the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, a “piece of shit, fascist, racist” in Italian while performing at a festival in Turin in 2023.

In August 2023, Meloni sued Molko over the comments. Prosecutors subsequently opened an investigation into the claims and have charged Molko with “contempt of the institutions”.

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Giorgia Meloni among far-right figures to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration

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Italian PM’s office confirms she will join far-right politicians including France’s Éric Zemmour in Washington

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, joining other European far-right figures including Éric Zemmour, a one-time French presidential candidate known for his xenophobia.

Meloni’s attendance at the event in Washington DC on Monday was confirmed by her office and will be seen as further cementing relations with the US president-elect.

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Italy passes law clamping down on surrogacy tourism

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Italians who go abroad to have a baby via surrogacy will face jail terms and fines of up to €1m

Italy’s parliament has made it illegal for couples to go abroad to have a baby via surrogacy – a pet project of the prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s party that activists say is meant to target same-sex partners.

Since taking office in 2022, Meloni has pursued a highly conservative social agenda, looking to promote what she sees as traditional family values, making it progressively harder for LGBTQ couples to become legal parents.

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Enrico Berlinguer: the 1970s communist hero inspiring Italy’s youth – and the far right

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Italian PM Giorgia Meloni among those admiring Berlinguer as new film and exhibitions celebrate his role as a unifier

Enrico Berlinguer was a giant of the Italian left in the 1970s and 80s, coming close to leading the Communist party into government through a “historic compromise” with the country’s Christian Democrats, and championing “Eurocommunism”, a liberal, anti-Stalinist version of Marxism that briefly swept the continent.

But his death 40 years ago, and the collapse of Europe’s communist parties in the late 1980s, eclipsed Berlinguer’s legacy, and Italy has since moved across the political spectrum, electing the far-right Giorgia Meloni as prime minister in 2022.

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European elections’ main impact likely to be felt in national capitals

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Mainstream groups hold on to majority in European parliament but far right gains weaken governments in France and Germany

So in the end, with a couple of alarming wobbles, the centre held. As polls predicted, the mainstream pro-EU alliance of centre-right, centre-left, liberal and Green parties in the European parliament hung on, quite comfortably, to its majority.

Europe’s national conservative and far-right forces made big gains, ending up with just under a quarter of MEPs in the 720-seat assembly – their highest tally ever. But they did not do uniformly well, and in some places fared worse than forecast.

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‘She just says blah blah’: why Italy’s downtrodden believe Meloni is doing nothing for them

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The PM is talking up her underdog credentials ahead of this week’s European elections. But many in an impoverished Rome neighbourhood are sceptical

Sitting in the dark, cramped dining room of her home in Tor Bella Monaca, a densely populated council estate on the outskirts of Rome, Giovanna has just returned from one of several cleaning jobs the 70-year-old does to keep her family afloat. Her husband works on construction sites intermittently. The couple, whose youngest son, Cristian, 26, lives at home, might be depicted as borgatara, a slur in Roman dialect that, loosely translated, means a poor person living on the socially deprived fringes of the Italian capital.

Referring to her own upbringing in Garbatella, a traditionally working-class district within easy reach of Rome’s famed monuments, the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said earlier this month she was “a proud borgatara”.

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Greens ‘will not back von der Leyen’ for re-election if she does deal with far right

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German Green MEP chair warns that EU plan to tackle climate crisis will be put at risk by agreement with hard right parties

Green members of the European parliament will not support Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as the commission president if she makes a deal with hard-right nationalists, the party’s joint lead candidate has said.

Terry Reintke, the German Green MEP chair, said her group would “absolutely” not support von der Leyen – the incumbent centre-right commission president who is seeking a second term – if she made a deal with the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s group in the European parliament, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

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Far-right EU election gains could boost nationalist parties on home turf

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Polls indicate a surge for the right across the continent in next month’s ballots but the centrists are still likely to hold sway in parliament

Far-right gains in next month’s European elections will be hard, if not impossible, to parlay into more power in parliament, experts say, but they could boost nationalist parties in EU capitals – with potentially greater consequences.

Polling suggests far-right and hardline conservative parties could finish first in nine EU states, including Austria, France and the Netherlands, in the polls between 6 and 9 June, and second or third in another nine, including Germany, Spain, Portugal and Sweden.

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Model seeks legal advice after Salvini’s party uses image for anti-Islam poster

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Anna Haholkina tells of shock and says no one from deputy Italian PM’s League sought her permission

A woman whose photograph was used in a poster campaign by Italy’s far-right League, a member of Giorgia Meloni’s ruling coalition, has said she will consult lawyers, describing the images as “racist”.

Anna Haholkina, a Ukrainian-Italian model who lives in Rimini, said she was shocked to see her face on the posters that have sprung up in Milan in recent weeks as the League, which is led by the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, intensifies its anti-Islam stance in the run-up to next month’s European elections.

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Former Uffizi director under fire for joining race to be Florence mayor

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If elected, Eike Schmidt would form a coalition with Brothers of Italy in what could be a major blow for the left

The German-born former director of Florence’s world-famous Uffizi gallery has come under fire for his decision to run for mayor of the city with the far-right coalition that governs Italy, in what could be a major blow for the left.

If elected, Eike Schmidt – who has been credited for modernising the Uffizi – pledged to tackle problems such as security and over-tourism in the Tuscan capital, which for more than three decades has been a leftwing stronghold.

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‘Anti-European’ populists on track for big gains in EU elections, says report

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France, Poland and Austria among nine countries where radical rightwing parties predicted to finish first

Populist “anti-European” parties are heading for big gains in June’s European elections that could shift the parliament’s balance sharply to the right and jeopardise key pillars of the EU’s agenda including climate action, polling suggests.

Polling in all 27 EU member states, combined with modelling of how national parties performed in past European parliament elections, shows radical right parties are on course to finish first in nine countries including Austria, France and Poland.

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Fascist salute not a crime unless a risk to public order, Italy’s top court says

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Ruling by court of cassation allows gesture at rallies but not where it risks ‘revival of fascist party’

Performing the fascist salute is only a crime if it endangers public order or risks leading to a revival of the banned fascist party, Italy’s top court said in a ruling that has been hailed by neofascists.

In making its ruling on Thursday, the court of cassation ordered a second appeals trial for eight neofascist militants who made the salute during a commemorative event in Milan in 2016 marking the anniversary of the killing of a fellow militant in the city in 1975.

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Meloni faces questions after Italian MP’s gun fired at New Year’s Eve party

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Man taken to hospital with bullet wound after incident involving pistol owned by Emanuele Pozzolo

Italian opposition leaders are demanding “clarity” from the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, after a gun owned by an MP from her far-right Brothers of Italy party was accidentally fired at a New Year’s Eve gathering.

Emanuele Pozzolo confirmed that the pistol belonged to him but denied firing the bullet, which grazed the leg of a 31-year-old man who was among the security entourage of the Italian justice ministry undersecretary Andrea Delmastro.

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Italian official rebuked for proclaiming innocence of Bologna terrorists

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Marcello De Angelis, a communications chief for the Lazio region, said he knew the trio were not involved in the 1980 explosion

A senior regional official in Italy who used to be a member of a neofascist group has sparked anger after attempting to clear the names of three people convicted of one of the country’s worst terrorist attacks.

Marcello De Angelis, the communications chief of the Lazio region, made the remarks days after Italy marked the 43rd anniversary of the bombing of Bologna train station, in which 85 people were killed and more than 200 were injured.

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Italian parliament approves bill to criminalise surrogacy abroad

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Surrogacy is already illegal in Italy, while IVF is only available for heterosexual couples

The Italian parliament has approved a bill criminalising people who go abroad to have children via surrogacy, a measure described as “a disgrace”.

The bill, passed in the chamber of deputies with 166 votes in support and 109 against, is aimed only at Italians and envisages fines of up to €1m (£856,690) and jail terms of up to two years for those who break it.

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Italians condemn ‘insult’ of Austrian-Chinese ‘European mozzarella’

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Brothers of Italy councillor in Veneto reports package featuring gondola and Tower of Pisa for ‘counterfeiting’

Sliced mozzarella cheese produced in Austria by a Chinese company and wrapped in packaging featuring images of a gondola and the Leaning Tower of Pisa has been branded the umpteenth “insult to Italian food excellence”.

Tommaso Razzolini, a councillor in the Veneto region for Brothers of Italy, the party leading Italy’s rightwing ruling coalition government, said he reported the existence of the offending mozzarella to the ministry of agriculture and food sovereignty after coming across a photo of it online.

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Italy to let hunters loose against ‘invasion’ of wild boars

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Farmers’ lobby welcomes move by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition, claiming animals are getting ‘ever closer’ to homes

Italy’s ruling right-wing coalition is set to loosen hunting rules to deal with what the country’s farming lobby has called an “invasion” of wild boars.

The boars are common in the countryside, but have recently also been spotted in central parts of Rome, attracted by the Eternal City’s chronically overflowing rubbish skips.

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Giorgia Meloni speaks of ‘burden’ of being Italy’s first female PM

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Leader restates support for Ukraine and vows crackdown on illegal immigration in address to MPs

Giorgia Meloni said she felt a “burden weighing on my shoulders” after “breaking the heavy glass ceiling” to become Italy’s first female prime minister, in an address to parliament restating her pledge to back Ukraine and her opposition to illegal immigration.

Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist roots, has taken the helm of Italy’s most rightwing government – which includes Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia – since the second world war.

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Pope prays for ‘unity and peace in Italy’ as Giorgia Meloni takes power

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Country’s first female prime minister leads the most rightwing government since the second world war

Pope Francis offered prayers for “unity and peace in Italy” as Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, took the helm of the country’s most rightwing government since the second world war.

Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist origins, met the outgoing prime minister, Mario Draghi, for a formal handover ceremony on Sunday. “I did not expect this welcome,” Meloni, 45, said as she was greeted by Draghi, referring to the ceremonial guard. “It’s an emotionally impacting thing.”

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