Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

POLITICS

Italian PM Meloni and sister sue rock band and cartoonist

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her sister Arianna both filed defamation lawsuits this week – the former against the lead singer of rock band Placebo, the latter against a newspaper cartoonist.

Published: 4 August 2023 15:53 CEST
Placebo lead singer
Placebo lead singer Brian Molko is being sued by Italian PM Giorgia Meloni over insults uttered during a performance in Italy in mid-July. Photo by Guillaume SOUVANT / AFP

Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, is suing Placebo frontman Brian Molko after he called her “racist”, “fascist” and a “piece of shit” during a performance in Italy in July.

READ ALSO: Italy investigates Placebo frontman over calling Giorgia Meloni ‘fascist’

Meloni’s older sister Arianna, who may run in next year’s European parliament elections for Brothers of Italy according to media reports, is meanwhile suing the cartoonist for the left-wing Fatto Quotidiano daily.

Mario Natangelo published his cartoon and a partial copy of the police report on Instagram on Friday, saying he would not comment on the case.

“I prefer to let my cartoons speak for me. And my lawyers”, he said.

His drawing depicts Arianna Meloni, who is also the wife of Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, in bed with a black man.

In the cartoon, the man asks Meloni, “what about your husband?”, to which she replies: “Don’t worry, he spends his days out fighting ethnic replacement”.

It appeared to be a reference to comments made by Lollobrigida, a close ally of Prime Minister Meloni, in April about the “ethnic replacement” of Italians by migrants.

READ ALSO: Second Italian minister takes anti-mafia reporter Saviano to court

Brothers of Italy rose to power in elections last year on a strongly nativist, anti-immigrant platform, and Meloni has repeatedly and explicitly promoted the so-called great replacement theory, a conspiracy theory endorsed by the extreme and radical right in many countries worldwide.

Meloni has repeatedly denied accusations that Brothers of Italy is a “fascist” party, despite it being a descendent of the neofascist Italian Social Movement founded by supporters of dictator Benito Mussolini after the Second World War.

Meloni has also used Italy’s anti-defamation laws to sue prominent journalist Roberto Saviano for calling her a “bastard” in a television interview in 2020, much to the alarm of press freedom watchdogs.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

POLITICS

Italy’s Meloni criticises her own government’s ‘Big Brother tax’ law

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday criticised an "invasive" tax evasion measure reintroduced by her own government, sparking accusations of incompetence from opposition lawmakers.

Published: 22 May 2024 17:12 CEST
Italy's Meloni criticises her own government's 'Big Brother tax' law

The measure, allowing Italy’s tax authorities to check bank accounts to look for discrepancies between someone’s declared income and their spending, was abolished in 2018 but its return was announced in the government’s official journal of business this week.

Meloni had previously been strongly critical of the ‘redditometro’ measure, and took to social media on Wednesday to defend herself from accusations of hypocrisy.

“Never will any ‘Big Brother tax’ be introduced by this government,” she wrote on Facebook.

Meloni said she had asked deputy economy minister Maurizio Leo – a member of her own far-right Brothers of Italy party, who introduced the measure – to bring it to the next cabinet meeting.

“And if changes are necessary, I will be the first to ask,” she wrote.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, who heads the right-wing Forza Italia party, also railed against what he called an “obsolete tool”.

He called for it to be revoked, saying it did not fight tax evasion but “oppresses, invades people’s lives”.

Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League party, said it was “one of the horrors of the past” and deserved to stay there.

Opposition parties revelled in the turmoil within the governing coalition, where tensions are already high ahead of European Parliament elections in which all three parties are competing with each other.

“They are not bad, they are just incapable,” said former premier Matteo Renzi, now leader of a small centrist party.

Another former premier, Five Star Movement leader Giuseppe Conte, asked of Meloni: “Was she asleep?”

The measure allows tax authorities to take into account when assessing someone’s real income elements including jewellery, life insurance, horse ownership, gas and electricity bills, pets and hairdressing expenses.

According to the government, tax evasion and fraud cost the Italian state around 95 to 100 billion euros each year.

SHOW COMMENTS