Italian top court OKs Fascist salute as right-wing coalition heads for election victory

As Italy gets ready for its first general election in five years, the New York Times has its hair on fire over the growing popularity of "right-wing" political parties. You already know, don't you, what epithet they're hurling at groups like the Brothers of Italy. That's right. They're using the F-word -- Fascists! In "Anti-Fascist Protesters Rally in Italy as Mussolini’s Heirs Gain Ground" (24/2/48) one terrified scribe writes, "The re-emergence of extremist violence, harassment and xenophobia has gripped Italy and forced the country to reckon with the hard-right and fascist ideologies fueled by a lingering financial crisis and migration."

"Fueled by migration"... Imagine that! As if Italians would be different from the Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, Germans and other Europeans who reject the "suicide by diversity" of the Christian West espoused by such misguided "leaders" as Angela Merkel, who is, until next month at least, still the Chancellor Germany. Italians are just as fed up as the rest with having to welcome, feed, clothe and house the masses of mainly Muslim migrants being fished out of the Mediterranean every week.

Those are the same "refugees" who bite the hands that feed them, going on orgies of robbery, rape and general mayhem. It is only natural that there should be an awakening of the xenophobia which is part of human nature. And it is only natural that those feelings should find expression in what the Times calls "extremist violence, harassment and xenophobia".

As the elections approach, politically inspired violence has become an almost daily occurrence. Earlier this month, in the city of Macerata, a "fascist extremist" (the Times again) carrying a candle with an image of Mussolini opened fire on African migrants, wounding at least six people before he was arrested. Interior Minister Marco Minniti described the shootings as an "evident display of racial hatred."

Earlier this week, Italy's supreme Court of Cassation ruled that giving a Fascist salute is OK. Provided it's "commemorative" and non-violent, the straight-arm salute popularized by Mussolini is considered a free expression of thought, the court said, acquitting two Brothers of Italy (FdI) supporters who gave the salute in Milan in 2014. They had been charged under a law including such salutes as "complicity in Fascist demonstrations", which are prohibited by a postwar law banning the "apology of Fascism".

Forza Nuova, an Italian party which marches with that salute, has repeatedly clashed with the police and masked and violent antifa protesters. Members of CasaPound, a political party that proudly claims to admire Mussolini, recently invaded the emergency area of a hospital in Bolzano to protest against homeless "refugees" taking refuge there overnight.

As anti-immigrant backlash intensifies and the antifa-fomented violence worsens, the "progressives" are pointing the finger of blame at Matteo Salvini, the secretary of the League party, and Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy, the modern heirs of the party that rose from the ashes of Mussolini’s Fascists. For the coming elections, Mr Salvini and Ms Meloni have joined forces with former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. As of this writing, their coalition is leading in the polls. Stay tuned!