This is how the young people of Brothers of Italy, who are “amazing” for Meloni, spend it

“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, excited just a year after her appointment as Prime Minister of Italy, referred to the young militants of the Gioventù Nazionale, the National Youth, the youth section of the Brothers of Italy who had contributed to the organization of the large training group ‘Atrezzo’ in Rome.

That same night, after everyone from Elon Musk to Santiago Abascal had paraded on stage, some of those young people continued the party in one of the far-right formation’s historic headquarters, in the center of Rome. There, still wearing the blue Atreju sweatshirt – the same one that Meloni wore that day – they attended a rock concert, an extreme right-wing rock concert held amid hymns to Mussolini and Roman greetings. The pictures were published on Thursday in a long video report by the Italian newspaper Fanpage.it, also broadcast in prime time by the private television network La7.

At work, the result of months of investigations with a journalist who infiltrated among the puppies of the prime minister’s party, the hidden face of the National Youth is revealed, the mine of formation, the social movement successor to the Youth Front of Italy where Meloni herself began her activism at the age of 15, knocking on the door of the Garbatella section, the historic leftist neighbourhood where she grew up. While Meloni was busy showing a presentable face of the extreme right in Puglia, the host of the G7, the investigation revealed how her young players do not hesitate to define themselves as “fascists”.

The undercover journalist manages to enter training circles in Rome and for months participates in the activities of the same young people who surrounded Meloni at the end of his intervention in Atrezzo. From the winter camps – once called ‘hobbit camps’, one of the most famous cultural appropriations of the extreme right -, where militants train in Roman combat, sing hymns to Mussolini or shout the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil”; to the parties and meetings of militants of its largest section in Rome, where its leader, Flaminia Pace, a young promise of the FDI whose name was already being heard for the administrative elections, does not hesitate to define herself as a fascist. In the videos, other militants mention the need to censor themselves to avoid being caught by journalists and spoiling the new image that the party is trying to give.

In one meeting, Pace himself talks about the possibility of using the money that young people who decide to do civil service receive from the State to finance the youth section of the party. While in another passage from the investigation he brazenly tells how his father was in contact with Francesca Mambro and Valerio Fioravanti, leaders of the far-right terrorist group Nar, who were convicted, among other crimes, of the 1980 Bologna station attack, which killed 85 people.

Following the activity of the Roman Section, led by Pace, the investigation of fan Page This impressed the leading representatives of the Brothers of Italy, who attended the inauguration of their new headquarters, witnessed also by Arianna Meloni, sister of the Prime Minister, who appointed him as political secretary responsible for his coming to power.

In the images, FdI deputies Marco Perissa and Paolo Trancassini and Nicola Procaccini, Meloni’s trusted man and who will double as MEP, are seen exchanging “comrades’ greetings” with their forearms crossed.

Commenting on some images on the social network ECR, Procaccini showed him giving the so-called ‘fascist salute’. It is not possible to normalise 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 suit. “I reported the leader of the Socialist group to the prosecutors of Rome and Latina because she was not giving the fascist salute, she was simply too close to the person who grabbed my elbow,” the MEP told the newspaper. Domani.

The revelations of the fanpage are the latest in a long series of backlashes Meloni has faced over the course of his party’s normalisation, with the current president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, until recently proudly displayed on his statue of Mussolini he defended at home. In January, a black wave of arms – with hundreds of people standing at attention and, three times, responding in unison with the Roman salute and shouting “Gifts” for “all fallen comrades” – gathered on Rome’s Acca Larentia street in front of the palace that was the headquarters of the Italian Social Movement to commemorate the murder in 1978 of two militants from the party’s youth wing.