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POLITICS

Italy’s new conservative Families Minister had his site hacked with ads for sex drugs

Lorenzo Fontana, Italy's new Minister for Families and Disabilities who has made negative statements about gay families and reproductive rights, was targeted by hackers who inserted adverts for erectile dysfunction remedies into the search results for his website.

Published: 4 June 2018 18:31 CEST
Italy's new conservative Families Minister had his site hacked with ads for sex drugs
Italy's Minister for Families and Disabilities, Lorenzo Fontana of the League. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

The attack, known as a pharma hack, placed ads for an anti-impotence drug in the description of Fontana's official website when it appeared in Google search results. 

The problem appeared to have been fixed by Monday afternoon. The minister's homepage itself was not affected.

An ally of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and like him one of the right-wing populist League party's appointments to Italy's new cabinet, Fontana was already causing controversy after less than 24 hours in office.

A conservative Catholic, the newly appointed minister told an interviewer that same-sex parents “don't exist at the moment, as far as the law is concerned” and said he believed in “natural” families with one mother and one father. He also said that he would try to reduce the number of abortions carried out in Italy, including by giving doctors greater liberty to try and dissuade women from seeking them. 

READ ALSO: The long road to legal abortion in Italy – and why many women are still denied it


A Sicilian woman marches with a banner saying 'Free to choose'. Photo: Francesco Villa/AFP

Before becoming minister Fontana participated in anti-abortion rallies, including one at which he told the crowd that gay marriage, changing attitudes to gender and mass immigration were helping to “wipe out our community and our traditions”. He has expressed admiration for President Vladimir Putin's Russia, where the state outlaws the public defence of homosexuality and where hate crimes are rife, and said that European women should have more children.

While Salvini said that his ally's views were not reflected in the new government's programme, Fontana's comments drew a fierce response from rights activists, who responded with the hashtag “noi esistiamo” (“we exist”) on social media. Pop star Tiziano Ferro, who came out as gay eight years ago, wrote on Instagram that: “I don't want support, it would be enough for me to no longer feel invisible.”

Italy was one of the last Western nations to recognize civil unions between gay partners and offers them fewer legal rights than many of its European neighbours, including Catholic Portugal and Spain.

While Italy does not guarantee same-sex couples the right to jointly adopt children or stepchildren, in a landmark move this year, the city of Turin allowed children conceived by artificial insemination or surrogacy to be legally registered to both same-sex parents. Some local authorities have also recognized joint adoptions carried out abroad.

Meanwhile abortion has been legal in Italy for the past 40 years, but many women are still unable to access the procedure due to a clause that allows doctors to refuse to carry it out on the grounds of conscientious objection. According to health ministry figures, just over 70 percent of gynaecologists in Italy refuse to perform abortions, a rate that has risen over the past ten years.

READ ALSO: 


Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

POLITICS

Italy’s ruling party shrugs off youth wing’s Fascist salutes

Italian PM Giorgia Meloni's far-right Brothers of Italy party on Wednesday dismissed an undercover media investigation into the Fascist leanings of its youth wing.

Published: 20 June 2024 09:04 CEST
Italy's ruling party shrugs off youth wing's Fascist salutes

“The journalistic report was built on the basis of fragmented, decontextualised images, taken in a private setting,” said Luca Ciriani, minister for relations with parliament and a member of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party.

The investigation published last week by Italian news website Fanpage included video of members of the National Youth, the junior wing of Brothers of Italy, which has post-fascist roots, in Rome.

In images secretly filmed by an undercover journalist, they are seen performing Fascist salutes, chanting the Nazi ‘Sieg Heil’ greeting and shouting ‘Duce’ in support of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

At one meeting, a youth party leader appears to explain how the movement plans to fraudulently pocket state funds.

“The national youth movement has never been reported for attacks on left-wing collectives, nor has it ever publicly displayed banners with extremist slogans or references to Fascism and Nazism,” Ciriani told parliament.

He brushed off a question from the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) on whether the government would “intervene to prevent Fascist propaganda”, saying the footage doesn’t necessarily constitute a legal matter.

PD deputy Michela Di Biase said her party was “dramatically concerned” by the report.

READ ALSO: Outrage in Italy over stamp honouring Fascist founder of Rome football club

“The images that we all saw are an apology for Fascism in the full sense of the term. Girls and boys who are formed in the myth of those who have stained the history of our country with blood, persecution,” she said.

Asked about the report on Monday, European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer did not mention Italy directly but condemned “Fascist symbolism”, saying “we do not believe it is appropriate, we condemn it, we think it is morally wrong”.

Although Italian law bans the apology for – or justification of – Mussolini’s Fascism, it is rarely enforced.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: What are Italy’s laws against support for fascism?

Meloni was a teenage activist with the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed by supporters of Mussolini after World War II.

The most right-wing leader to take office since 1945, she has sought to distance herself from her party’s legacy without entirely renouncing it.

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