The 1952 Scelba Law against apology
for Fascism and attempting to restore the Fascist party must be
used in the case of people making Fascist salutes, the supreme
Court of Cassation said in a keenly awaited ruling in the light
of an incident in which hundreds of neofascists made the salute
on the anniversary of the 1978 Rome murder allegedly by far left
militants of three teen members of the youth wing of the
neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), a distant precursor to
Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party.
In issuing the ruling, the high court ordered a second appeals
trial for eight far-right militants who made the salute during a
commemoration in Milan in 2016.
The Cassation Court say Article 5 of the law should apply in
these cases, which states that "anyone, by taking part in public
meetings, stages demonstrations used by the dissolved Fascist
party or Nazi organisations is to be punished by detention of up
to three years and by fines between 200,000 and 500,000 lire.
It goes on to say: "The judge, in pronouncing the verdict, may
order stripping rights...of the criminal code for a period of
five years."
More than 10 people are under investigation in a Rome probe into
the Fascist salutes made by the many participants at the January
7 commemoration of the 1978 Acca Larentia massacre.
Over 100 people have been identified in relation to what
happened at the commemoration of the Acca Larentia massacre, in
which the three far-right youth militants died.
Far-right groups from many parts of the country took part in the
commemoration and the Rome branch of the DIGOS special security
and political police unit is working with police in several
cities to identify other people involved during the event
outside the former headquarters of the neo-Fascist Italian
Social Movement (MSI) in Via Acca Larentia, which takes its name
from a Roman fertility goddess.
The event was not attended by Premier Meloni's rightwing FdI
party, whose roots go back to the MSI.
Lazio Governor and FdI bigwig Francesco Rocca was present at a
separate ceremony in via Acca Larentia.
Several FdI members have condemned the incident but not Meloni,
who has come under pressure to do so.
Italy's first woman premier, shortly before she was voted in in
autumn 2021, once more condemned Fascism for its suspension of
democracy and its "odious" racial laws against the Jews.
She has rejected attempts to over-emphasize FdI's lineage from
the MSI, while also rejecting calls to remove the MSI's Tricolor
Flame from the party logo, a flame originally representing the
one burning over Mussolini's tomb.
FdI is a member of the European Conservative and Reformists
caucus at the EP, a group founded by former British prime
minister and current Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
Other members are Poland's Law and Justice party , the Sweden
Democrats, Spain's Vox, Alliance for Germany and the Finns
Party.
In the Acca Larentia massacre on January 7, 1978, two members of
MSI's youth wing Fronte della Gioventù, Franco Bigonzetti and
Francesco Ciavatta, aged 18 and 19, were shot dead, allegedly by
far left militants, outside the party's Rome headquarters.
A third MSI youth wing member, Stefano Recchioni, 19, was
fatally injured by a stray bullet during ensuing clashes between
members of the Fronte della Gioventù who rioted after the two
deaths, and police.
The Italian right has claimed no effort was ever made to find
the alleged shooters, as allegedly in a number of other cases
involving far-right victims.
Then Fronte della Gioventù leader Gianfranco Fini, later a
foreign minister in Silvio Berlusconi's second government from
2001 to 2006, was wounded by a police gas canister.
Fini caused a row in 1994 by initially calling Benito Mussolini
the greatest statesman of the 20th century before some time
later, in 2003, calling Fascism "absolute evil".
Fini in 1995 turned the MSI into a more moderate party, National
Alliance (AN), which was later subsumed into Berlusconi's
Freedom Front, in 2009, before Meloni set up FdI four years
later, in 2012.
It was polling at around 4% of the vote in its early years but
surged in popularity more recently after remaining in opposition
to all recent governments, of all stripes.
It polled just under 30% at the September 2021 general election
and is still that high thanks to Meloni's popularity.
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