After four members of the youth wing of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party were beaten, the prime minister condemned what she called politically motivated hatred, Reuters reports.
Witnesses said the four young men were beaten as they displayed posters commemorating the victims of the 1978 attack. Three young men were killed on the 7th of January that year on Via Acca Larenta, a popular gathering place for Italy’s far-right. Meloni called the 1978 events a painful chapter in Italian history in a statement, adding that they were dark years of terrorism and politically motivated hatred, during which the blood of many innocent people was shed in all the camps.
The three teenagers killed in 1978 were members of the now-defunct youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party founded after World War II. Two of the teenagers are believed to have been killed by left-wing partisans, while another was killed by police bullets during riots that day. No one has been prosecuted for the murders.
Meloni stressed that Italians have a duty to preserve the memory and reaffirm that
politically motivated violence, in all its forms, always leads to defeat and is never justified.
The four young people beaten on the 7th of January represent the youth wing of Meloni’s party. None of them were reported to be seriously injured, but their car’s windshield was smashed. Meloni said Italy must choose respect, dialogue and humane coexistence, and noted that when an idea is silenced by force, democracy is the loser.
The Fratelli d’Italia party traces its roots to the MSI, but the prime minister has denied that her party has close ties to the far-right, and said in 2023 that her government was not nostalgic for fascism. A year later, after a media investigation revealed a video showing some party members using fascist salutes, Meloni said that anyone who worshipped Italy’s fascist past should be expelled from the party.
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