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Why a wave of anti-Salvini protests is sweeping Italy

The removal of a protest banner against Italian far-right League leader and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has sparked widespread protests around the country.

Published: 17 May 2019 09:09 CEST
Why a wave of anti-Salvini protests is sweeping Italy
Riot police clashed with anti-League protestors in Naples on Thursday. Photo: CARLO HERMANN/AFP

The previously sporadic protests became a wave after authorities in northern city Bergamo on Monday ordered firefighters to remove a banner reading “You're not welcome” ahead of the minister's visit.

Firefighers removing the protest banner ahead of Salvini's visit to Bergamo on Monday. Photo: Giorigio Gori/Twitter

Photo and video footage of the removal went viral, triggering widespread anger and concerns about attempts to curb freedom of expression and peaceful protest.

In response, protestors hung hundreds of similar protest banners in the city of Campobasso on Wednesday ahead of Salvini's rally,

Protests continued in Naples on Thursday, where Salvini received an even colder reception from residents angry about the minister insulting southern Italians.

A banner reading 'Naples renounces Salvini' on an apartment building in the city yesterday. Photo: Carlo Hermann/AFP

The wave of protest comes as the social-media obsessed anti-immigrant League party leader continues his tour of Italy, frantically campaigning ahead of next week's European parliamentary elections.

Banners across Naples told Salvini he wasn't welcome ahead of his arrival for a securty meeting in the city, and riot police were sent in to quell protests as anti-League demonstrators gathered in a city square.

“Salvini go home!”, “Naples doesn't want you!”, “No to the minister of hate”, read some of the banners hanging from the city's famed balconies.

Many banners in Campobasso, Naples and elsewhere made references to “terroni”, a derogatory word equivalent to “rednecks” or “country bumpkins” that Salvini has used to describe southerners.

Salvini frequently derided southern Italians before his northern-separatist party, formerly known as the Northern League, became a national entity, chasing votes across the country with its “Italians first” slogan.

The minister has been widely mocked on social media, as Twitter users post photos of their favourite protest banners under the hashtag #Salvinitoglianchequesti (Salvini take these down as well)

“When are you going to work?” asked other banners, after Italian daily La Repubblica revealed this week that Salvini had spent just 17 days at the interior ministry so far this year.

A protest banner reading 'Salvini racist not in my name'. Photo: Carlo Hermann/AFP

Other banners goaded the nationalist about the 49 million euros of misspent public money that his party is supposed to pay back in instalments, or the Zorro toy Salvini revealed this week was stolen from him as a child.

“Some of the banners make me laugh,” Salvin tweeted, claiming that there have been 126 banners this year containing “insults and death threats”.

Protestors also continue to play photo and video pranks on the minister while he thinks they're posing for selfies.

The trend took off after two women kissed in a photo with the minister, known for his anti-LGBT views, and police seized the phone of a woman who made a video of herself asking Salvini whether he still thought southerners were “terroni”.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Rome have opened an investigation following allegations in Italian media that Salvini has been misusing police aircraft to attend League party rallies around Italy. The minister denies any wrongdoing.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Published: 28 April 2024 15:54 CEST
Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

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