>>>ANSA/Furore over Fascist salutes at Acca Larentia event

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 8 - Democratic Party (PD) Secretary Elly Schlein on Monday led opposition outrage at the Fascist salutes made on Sunday by about a thousand participants at a ceremony commemorating the murder of two right-wing militants during Italy's 'Years of Lead' of political violence in the 1970s and 80s.
    The salutes were made during a ceremony recalling the Acca Larentia massacre in which two members of the youth wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI), Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta, aged 13 and 17, were shot dead, allegedly by far left militants, outside the party's Rome headquarters in the street named after a Roman goddess.
    A third MSI youth wing member, Stefano Recchioni, 19, was fatally injured by a stray bullet during ensuing clashes by members of the youth wing, the Fronte della Gioventù, who rioted after the deaths, and police.
    Then Fronte della Gioventù leader Gianfranco Fini, later a foreign minister in Silvio Berlusconi's second government from 2001 to 2006, was wounded by a gas canister.
    "Rome, January 7, 2024. And it seems like 1924," Schlein said on social media in a post with a photo of the Fascist salutes by the hundreds of demonstrators, who also shouted "present and correct", like Mussolini's black shirts.
    "We will present a question in parliament to (Interior) Minister (Matteo) Piantedosi," said Schlein.
    "What happened is not acceptable.
    "Neofascist organizations must be dissolved, as stated by the Constitution".
    The question, filed later Monday, asked authorities to say what they intended to do to avoid recurrences of such events and to combat "with all means the apology of Fascism and the organisation of Fascist demonstrations".
    The opposition left-wing populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) said it would file a criminal complaint to Rome prosecutors after the "extremely serious events including apology of Fascism".
    The opposition in general called on Premier Giorgio Meloni and her Brothers of Italy (FdI) party in particular, an heir to the MSI, to condemn the Fascist salutes.
    The PD said "Meloni's silence embarrasses Italy" after she failed to speak out while other FdI members did.
    Lazio Governor and FdI bigwig Francesco Rocca was present at the ceremony but stressed that he had not been present when the salutes were made.
    He also said that commemorating the incident was important saying "there are no second-class deaths", with far right victims of the Year of Lead just as important as far left ones.
    Former MSI bigwig and centre right post Berlusconi Forza Italia Senate Whip Maurizio Gasparri said the leftist militants who allegedly killed the two Fronte della Gioventu members were never apprehended and suggested the case had been buried by Rome police and prosecutors headquarters, which in those years was nicknamed by the media "the foggy port" for the number of cases that disappeared inside it.
    He suggested that no serious effort was ever made to find the culprits, "so as not to displease the Left", and said other cases of anti-far-right violence had been similarly and quietly left to fade away.
    One of the weapons used at via Acca Larentia was later found in a hideout used by the biggest leftist protagonist of the years of terror, the Red Brigades (BR).
    FdI heavyweight Fabio Rampelli, a deputy House Speaker, said his party was "light years away" from the Fascist salutes and had not taken part in that demo, instead attending two alternative events.
    FdI issued a statement accusing the Left of hypocrisy in apparently not being aware that the Acca Larentia 'massacre' had been commemorated every year since 1978, and not doing anything to stop the Fascist salutes that marked the ceremony even when the PD was in power.
    DIGOS security police said they will compile a report for Rome prosecutors.
    Centrist opposition Azione leader Carlo Calenda said the salutes were "unacceptable in any European democracy".
    Rome's Jewish community called the salutes an "unacceptable outrage" that "rubs salt into our wounds".
    Extraparliamentary Neofascist group CasaPound vowed: "we will be there every January 7".
    The MSI was first brought into the 'Constitutional arc" of respectable political mainstream parties by Berlusconi in 1994 and morphed a year later under Fini's leadership into the more moderate National Alliance, a more direct precursor of FdI.
    Meloni has consistently condemned Mussolini's suspension of democracy and its "odious" racial laws against the Jews but the FdI still features in its logo the neofascist flame logo that first appeared in the MSI when it was founded by Fascist diehards after the Second World War.
    FdI is in the European Conservatives caucus founded by former British Prime Minister David Cameron.
    Acca Larentia was a Roman fertility goddess.
    The street named after her is in Rome's Tuscolano district.
    (ANSA).