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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.

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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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