socialmedian: Italy's respectable right wing in a bind

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Italy's respectable right wing in a bind | Roberto Mancini

Source: The Guardian

Nov 07, 2009

Summary

Gianfranco Fini is caught between Berlusconi's waywardness and unreconstructed racists within the Lega Nord

"We must cleanse our streets of the black-skinned, the yellow-skinned, the Roma … I would have all the immigrants put on file, one by one. Unfortunately, this is not allowed by the law. They are the carriers of all sorts of diseases, tuberculosis, Aids, scabies, hepatitis"

This is how Giancarlo Gentilini, former mayor of Treviso (1994-2005) and current deputy mayor, a leading figure in the Lega Nord (Northern League), addressed the Festival of the People of Padania in September 2008. Last month he was convicted by a court in Venice of "inciting racial hatred" and, as a result, will not be allowed to address political rallies for three years.

In the country where Mussolini's racial laws were approved in 1938, the current anti-fascist constitution, which came into force on 1 January 1948 after the liberation struggles, forbids the re-formation of the Fascist party.

In postwar Italy, both fascism and racism – the essence of the extreme right – have therefore h

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