“You are wonderful, you are incredible. This is something that many people envy us for. There are young people who still believe in politics and fight for their ideas. “I am proud of you.” It was December 17 of last year, when Giorgia Meloni, elated just over a year after her appointment as Prime Minister of Italy, thus referred to the young militants of Gioventú Nazionale, National Youth, the youth section of the Brothers of Italy who had contributed to organizing ‘Atreju’, the big training party in Rome.
That same night, after everyone from Elon Musk to Santiago Abascal paraded on stage, for some of those young people the party continued in one of the historic headquarters of the far-right formation, in the center of Rome. There, still wearing the blue Atreju sweatshirt — the same one that Meloni wore that day — they participated in a rock concert, an extreme right-wing rock concert was held, between hymns to Mussolini and Roman greetings. The images were published on Thursday by the Italian newspaper Fanpage.it in a long video report, also broadcast in prime time by the private television network La7.
At work, the result of months of investigation with a journalist infiltrated among the ranks of the puppies of the prime minister’s party, the hidden face of National Youth emerges, the quarry of the formation, heir to that Youth Front of the Social Movement Italy where Meloni herself began her activism at the age of 15, knocking on the doors of the Garbatella section, the historic left-wing neighborhood in which she grew up. While Meloni was busy showing off as host of the G7 in Apulia the presentable face of the extreme right, the investigation revealed how its youth players do not hesitate to define themselves as “fascists.”
The undercover journalist manages to enter the training circles in Rome and participates for months in the activities of the same young people who surrounded Meloni at the end of his intervention in Atreju. From the winter camps – once called ‘Hobbit camps’, in one of the most famous cultural appropriations of the extreme right -, where militants train in Roman fighting, sing hymns to Mussolini or shout the Nazi slogan “sieg heil” ; to the parties and meetings of the militants of the largest of its sections in Rome, where its leader, Flaminia Pace, a young promise of FdI, whose name was already being heard for the administrative elections, does not hesitate to define himself as a fascist. In the videos, other militants refer to the need to censor themselves to avoid being caught by journalists and tarnishing the new image that the party is trying to give.
Pace herself in one of the meetings talks about the possibility of using the money that young people who decide to carry out civil service receive from the state to finance the youth section of the party. While in another passage of the investigation he shamelessly tells how his father was in contact with Francesca Mambro and Valerio Fioravanti, leaders of the far-right terrorist group Nar, convicted, among other crimes, for the 1980 Bologna station attack in which killed 85 people.
Following the activity of the Roman section led by Pace, the investigation of Fanpage It ended up affecting prominent representatives of the Brothers of Italy, who attended the inauguration of their new headquarters, also witnessed by Arianna Meloni, sister of the prime minister who, after coming to power, appointed her responsible for the political secretary.
In the images, FdI deputies Marco Perissa and Paolo Trancassini and Nicola Procaccini, Meloni’s trusted man and who will repeat as MEP, appear while exchanging the “greeting of comrades”, with their forearms crossed.
Some images commented on the social network ECR, Procaccini, giving the so-called ‘fascist salute’. There is no possible normalization of the extreme right in Europe, these shocking images remind us of the unforgivable past of those who still praise fascism, racism, intolerance. Words to which Procaccini has responded by announcing a defamation lawsuit. “I reported the leader of the socialist group to the prosecutors of Rome and Latina because she was not giving a fascist salute, she was simply too close to a person who grabbed my elbow,” the MEP told the newspaper. Domani.
The Fanpage revelations are just the latest episode in the long series that Meloni has had to face on a path towards the normalization of his party, in which the now president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, until recently showed with proud of the bust of Mussolini that he guarded at home. In January, a black tide with arms raised — with hundreds of people who stood at attention and, three times, responded in unison with the Roman salute and the cry of “present” for “all fallen comrades” — gathered in Rome, on Acca Larentia Street to commemorate in front of to the palace that was the headquarters of the Italian Social Movement the murder in 1978 of two militants from the party’s youth section.
