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Five Star bloggers ‘potential rapists’: MP

Italy's lower house speaker has accused the anti-establishment Five Star Movement of instigating violence and slammed bloggers on the party website as "potential rapists" following a flurry of sexist abuse online.

Five Star bloggers 'potential rapists': MP
Laura Boldrini says bloggers for Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement are "potential rapists". Photo: Alberto Gianera/Wikipedia

Laura Boldrini was commenting on a post on the Facebook page belonging to the Five Star Movement's leader Beppe Grillo, which asked on Saturday "what would you do if you found Boldrini in your car?"

The question, which accompanied a satirical video and was taken up on the movement's official website, sparked a series of abusive comments, including calls for Boldrini to be raped.

The post was an "instigation to violence, just look at the comments it prompted, nearly all of which were made in a sexist context," Boldrini said in an interview late Sunday on Italian television.

"Those who take part in the blog do not want to debate, but to offend and humiliate on a sexual level. They are almost potential rapists," she added.

The post on former comedian Beppe Grillo's page came in the wake of a fierce fall-out between the Five Star Movement (M5S) and Boldrini over a controversial measure aimed to shore up Italy's public accounts.

On Wednesday, Boldrini used her so-called "guillotine" powers to cut short a filibuster by M5S deputies who were attempting to block the adoption of the complicated decree, which passes part of the cost of scrapping an unpopular housing tax onto Italy's banks.

Her interruption and order for the lower house to vote immediately on the decree sparked fury among the M5S deputies, some of whom reportedly slung sexist insults at her while others stormed government benches, whistled and symbolically gagged themselves.

Grillo has since held an online vote to ask M5S members how they would like to react to the "guillotine", the majority of which voted to demand Boldrini resign.

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FIVE STAR MOVEMENT

Anti-vaxxers not welcome here, says gelateria owner

The owner of a gelateria in the North of Italy has sparked heated debate after he displayed a sign outside his ice cream parlour telling anti-vaccination campaigners they are not welcome there.

Anti-vaxxers not welcome here, says gelateria owner
Photo: ezoom100/Depositphotos

“Free-vax, no-vax, you are a danger to the community you live in,” reads the sign outside Cremeria Spinola in the town of Chiavari in Genova, the text of which was also posted to the shop’s Facebook page.

“Your innocent children should be kept out of the schools where, in addition to their own lives, they will put at risk the lives of almost 10,000 immunosuppressed children who can’t get vaccinated.”

“I don’t want your homicidal laws in my country and I don’t need your money. You're not welcome in my ice cream parlour” the notice concludes.

The gelateria's owner, Matteo Spinola, 43, told La Repubblica that he does not have children of his own but that he shares the concerns of his friends who do have children and felt that he could not keep silent after Italy's mandatory vaccination law was overturned this week.

The Milleproroghe decree, approved by the Italian Senate on Monday, weakens the Lorenzin decree of July 2017, which made it compulsory for children under 16 to be vaccinated against ten common diseases before they were allowed to enroll in school.

For the coming school year Italian children will be able to attend school without their parents providing proof of vaccination.

Vaccination has become a divisive issue in Italy in recent months, with several key figures in the country's populist Five Star Movement-League coalition government expressing scepticism about its value.

Davide Barillari, a Five Star Movement councillor for the region of Lazio, came under fire for writing a Facebook post on Monday in which he posed the question “When was it decided that science was more important than politics?”, and declared “Politics comes before science.”

Italy’s Five Star Movement Health Minister Giulia Grillo raised eyebrows for telling Corriere della Sera in an interview yesterday that deaths from measles was something Italy would have to accept, saying, “You can not delude people that nobody will die. We must be realistic.”

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