Italian Jews on Tuesday protested the
commemoration of the founding of the postwar neofascist Italian
Social Movement (MSI) party by former MSI bigwig and current
Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa, saying it was a continuation of
a government of Fascist diehards who helped the Nazis take
Italian Jews to their death camps.
On Monday La Russa marked the 76th anniversary of the MSI's
founding on December 26 1946 by members of the Fascist WWII
Italian Social Republic (RSI), a puppet State of the Nazis.
La Russa, who collects Fascist memorabilia, said on Instagram he
was doing so in the memory of his father, one of the founders of
the Sicilian branch of the MSI.
La Russa is a leading member of Premier Giorgia Meloni's
conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI) party. Italy's first woman
premier, shortly before she was voted in, once more condemned
Fascism for its suspension of democracy and its "odious" racial
laws against the Jews.
The president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI),
Noemi Di Segni, said Tuesday that it was "grave" that
high-ranking institutional figures like La Russa, whom she did
not name, had marked the anniversary of the MSI's founding,
"legitimising nostalgic sentiments".
She said that this was all the more regrettable since Tuesday
marked the 75th anniversary of the promulgation of Italy's
postwar anti-fascist Constitution.
"Today we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the primulgation of
the Republican Constitution, the affirmation of our antifascist
democracy," said Di Segni.
"And yet there are those who have decided to hail another
anniversary, that of the foundation of the MSI, a party which,
after the fall of the Fascist regime, placed itself in
ideological and political continuity with the RSI, a government
of Fascist diehards which actively collaborated in the
deportation of Italian Jews.
"(It is) grave that it is the bearers of high institutional
posts that reaffirms this, legitimising those nostalgic
sentiments".
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