Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Tuesday called on her party’s leaders to reject anti-Semitism, racism and nostalgia for totalitarian regimes, after an Italian news outlet captured members of her party’s youth wing glorifying fascism on hidden cameras.
“I am angry and saddened by the way we were represented by the behavior of some young people from our movement,” Ms. Meloni wrote in an e-mail, seen by The New York Times, to the leaders of her party, the Brothers of Italy.
The news report, which appeared in two episodes last month, was filmed by a journalist from the Italian news platform Fanpage.it posing as an activist from the National Youth, the youth wing of the Brothers of Italy.
The report said hidden cameras showed members of the movement giving fascist salutes, praising Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, ordering others to distribute stickers with fascist slogans and identifying themselves as fascists. People identified by the report as members of the youth group were filmed shouting “Sieg heil,” a phrase adopted by the Nazis. Other people identified as members of the youth wing were filmed making racist and anti-Semitic remarks.
The report was a blow to Ms Meloni, who, despite her roots in a party born from the ruins of fascism, has tried to move on with her life and vowed to portray herself as a modern, pragmatic leader, saying time and again that fascism belongs to history.
But almost two years after taking office, she had to remind her party’s leadership that they needed to leave that legacy behind. It showed that the transformation was not complete and that nostalgia for elements of Italy’s darkest past still lingers, at least in some parts of a party that went from a fringe movement to Italy’s largest governing force.
“At my age, do I have to go through this again?” asked Italian senator and Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre, 93, on Italian television after seeing the Fanpage reports. “Do I have to be expelled from my country, as I was once expelled?”
Lawmakers on the left rebelled. Michela Di Biase, a lawmaker from Italy’s Democratic Party, accused Ms. Meloni’s party youth of idealizing those who “have stained the history of our country with the blood of persecution.”
Ms Meloni and lawmakers from her party criticised the journalist’s methods, saying the news report did not reflect the true identity of her party or its youth movement, but a small minority. Luca Ciriani, a lawmaker with Brothers of Italy, said the report was constructed from fragmented, out-of-context images. Other party members acknowledged and condemned the behaviour.
But Mrs. Meloni also felt the need to speak out.
“There is no place in our ranks for those who play a caricature role that only serves the narrative our opponents want to create about us,” she wrote in the letter. “I and we have no time to waste with those who want to set us back.”
She also reminded party leaders that Brothers of Italy stood by the European Parliament’s 2019 resolution condemning all dictatorships of the 20th century. It is “a position,” she said, “that I do not intend to question.”
Two members of the youth wing, Elisa Segnini and Flaminia Pace, named in the report, resigned from their official positions after the report was released but have not been expelled from the movement, said Donatella Di Nitto, a spokeswoman for the Brothers of Italy.
Ms Segnini left her job with a party lawmaker and Ms Pace resigned from the Italian Youth Council, a group representing young people.
Ms Di Nitto said Ms Segnini and Ms Pace would not comment. She added that there had been no other layoffs or evictions, “for now.”
