ITALY: Giorgia Meloni’s close political ally Francesco Lollobrigida has come under fire for his remarks about the threat of “ethnic replacement” among Italians.
“We’re replacing them with someone else,” remarked Francesco Lollobrigida, Italy’s minister of agriculture, about the country’s declining birthrate. He said, “That’s not the way to go.” Besides being Meloni’s brother-in-law, Lollobrigida is a member of the same extreme right-wing group.
Elly Schlein, the head of the opposition center-Left Democratic Party, denounced Lollobrigida’s comments on an ethnic replacement as “disgusting” and claimed they were reminiscent of Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule. She claimed that the words had a white supremacist ring to them, transporting the audience to the 1930s.
The right-wing Italian government, which took office in October 2022, has prioritised low birth rates. Meloni, the head of the Brothers of Italy party, ran for office on a platform that included support for in vitro fertilisation. She said that Italy has neglected to fund incentives to increase the birth rate for a long enough period of time.
Italy had one of the lowest birth rates in the world in 2022, with fewer than 400,000 births. Additionally, a large proportion of births were registered to Italians who were not native speakers. The term “ethnic replacement” used by Lollobrigida echoes the Great Replacement hypothesis, a far-right conspiracy theory embraced by white nationalists.
The gunman who murdered 10 black people in Buffalo, New York, is said to have written a manifesto advocating for a covert strategy to replace white people through immigration and other methods. The Great Replacement is the name of a “manifesto” written by the perpetrator of the Christchurch massacre and embraced by Anders Breivik.
In 2016, Giorgia Meloni has said that “ethnic replacement” is in progress due to the arrival of 153,000 immigrants, mostly African men, in Italy. She claims that the government is attempting to “destroy our European and Christian identity with uncontrolled mass migration” and that organisations help refugees neglect the starving Venezuelans of Italian origin.
Giorgia Meloni has received plaudits for her moderate approach to issues, but detractors argue that current events reveal the true colours of the governing coalition.
Recently, the government gave Milan’s municipal council the order to suspend registering children of same-sex parents, and a bill to penalise couples who travel abroad to have a child via surrogacy is being discussed by MPs. Ignazio La Russa, the senate speaker, came under criticism for suggesting he would be unhappy if his kid came out as gay.
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