A candidate for Italian parliament for the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party, favored in the September 25 parliamentary election, has been suspended for praising Adolf Hitler on social media.
The same party was responsible for firing him and ending the controversy that could strike its leader, Giorgia Meloni, who is a candidate to become Italy’s next prime minister.
Meloni wants to give his party a respectable image and forget his origins as heir to the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the neo-fascist party founded after World War II by supporters of Benito Mussolini.
Calogero Pisano, leader of Meloni’s party in the province of Agrigento, Sicily, and a member of the national leadership, has been suspended from his internal duties “with immediate effect”, according to a statement the party formation sent to AFP on Tuesday.
“He does not represent the Brothers of Italy at any level and it is forbidden to use their logo,” the note underlines, recognizing that he could be legally sanctioned.
In a 2014 Facebook post, commenting on the slogan launched by the Brothers of Italy – “Italy above all” – with a photo of Giorgia Meloni, Pisano noted: “He reminds me of a great statesman from 70 years ago”, specifying that he was not talking about Benito Mussolini, but about a ‘German’.
In other publications he expressed his attachment to historical fascism.
Democratic Party vice president (centre-left), Peppe Provenzano, responded to the case being denounced by La Repubblica newspaper.
“Deep roots never freeze,” he wrote on his Twitter account, noting that Meloni’s party uses as its emblem the green-white-red tricolor flame, a symbol invented in 1946 by the group of fascist veterans who founded the MSI.
Ruth Dureghello, president of the Jewish community in Rome, said it was “unacceptable that someone who praises Hitler should sit in parliament”.
Giorgia Meloni, who in the 1990s claimed that Mussolini was a “good politician”, recently stated that “the desire for fascism has no place” in her party.
Source: DN
