“What happened is unacceptable. Neo-fascist groups must be disbanded, as the constitution spells out,” she added.
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Schlein, who heads the largest opposition party in the legislature, is among those demanding that Meloni’s interior minister appear in parliament to explain why police apparently did nothing to stop the rally.
She noted with irony that a man was quickly surrounded by anti-terror police last month when he shouted “Long live anti-fascist Italy!” at a La Scala opera house premiere.
“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 Schlein in a post of the social media platform X. Then she added: “Meloni has nothing to say?”
Italy’s post-war constitution forbids the reorganisation of Mussolini’s dissolved Fascist party, but extreme-right groups have sidestepped the problem by giving their organisations new names and claiming to be new entities.
Brothers of Italy made no immediate comment about the rally, while Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who leads the more moderate Forza Italia party, said any celebration of dictatorship should be condemned.
Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.Credit: AP
“There is a law stating that you cannot make an apology of fascism in our country,” he said. “We’re a force that certainly isn’t fascist, we’re anti-fascist.”
All rallies “in support of dictatorships must be condemned”, he said. Meloni praised Mussolini in her youth but has since changed her stance, saying in 2021 that there was “no space” in her party “for nostalgia for fascism, racism or antisemitism”.
Leaders of Italy’s tiny Jewish community also expressed dismay over the fascist salute.
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“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, wrote on X.
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 World War II.
State broadcaster Rai said Italian police were investigating the mass salute.
The late 1970s saw Italy blooded by violence by extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing proponents. The bloody deeds included deadly bombings linked to the far-right, and assassinations and kidnapping claimed by the Red Brigades and other left-wing extremists.
Reuters, AP
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