Segre commn obtains footage of FdI youth-wing scandal

(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 2 - The parliamentary commission for combating intolerance, racism, anti-Semitism and instigation to hatred and violence has decided to obtain footage from undercover reports by news website Fanpage on alleged neo-Fascist, neo-Nazi and antisemitic sentiment voiced by some members of the youth wing of Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, sources said on Tuesday.
    Two leading members of FdI youth wing Gioventù Nazionale (National Youth, GN) resigned last week over the reports.
    Meloni has said anti-Semitic sentiments are incompatible with the right-wing FdI, while also blasting the methods used by Fanpage, saying they were the stuff of a "regime".
    The decision to obtain the footage by the commission, named after Holocaust survivor and Life Senator Liliana Segre, who pushed for it to be created, was backed by all the parliamentary parties, the sources said.
    The first GN official to quit, leader Flaminia Pace, allegedly made antisemitic remarks about an FdI Senator and former spokeswoman for the Rome Jewish community, Ester Mieli.
    Pace also alleged said she would like to see centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) leader Elly Schlein "impaled".
    Schlein has Jewish roots.
    The second GN member to resign was Elisa Segnini, secretary to FdI's leader on the House budget committee, Ylenja Lucaselli, after the probe recorded her saying she had "never stopped being racist and Fascist".
    The Fanpage exposé also allegedly caught GN members hailing Mussolini and far-right terrorists who bombed Bologna train station in 1980 killing 85 people, and chanting Duce and Sieg Heil.
    It also allegedly caught senior FdI members greeting each other with 'gladiatorial" gripped forearm gestures that critics say are Fascist but defenders claim are not. (ANSA).