Populist Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini reacted with anger following the latest far-left protests against him on the European election campaign trail, labelling them “fascists.”
The far-left protesters, many of whom come from the Italian left-wing social centres that are often communist or anarchist, chanted “Fascist! Fascist!” at the Lega leader following a meeting in the northern commune of Settimo Torinese in the city of Turin, according to a report from Italian newspaper Il Giornale.
“You go around Piedmont looking for fascists, but you are the only fascists,” Salvini said to the protesters.
“I get angry when on the TV someone on the left attacks me because he says ‘Italians have also emigrated around the world'” he said and later added, “They should rinse their mouths before comparing those who went to the mines in Belgium or make a fortune in the United States, in Switzerland or in Germany to those who come here to mess up at 35 euros a day.”
“They lack education,” Salvini said of the protesters and called them products of the far-left social centres. Telling the protestors to get a job instead, he continued, “I have patience but if those people put their hands on even just a decent person who is in the square I get angry like a beast. Go to work if you are able to do so, be ashamed.”
Since becoming Interior Minister and co-Deputy Prime Minister, Salvini has faced multiple threats from far-left extremists, including some who have outright called for his assassination.
In September of last year, the Autonomous University Collective (CUA) group in Bologna put up posters showing Salvini’s face with a target on it and the caption, “Assassin. Take aim at this.”
Anarchist extremists also took credit for the bombing of an office of Lega in Treviso in August of 2018, which saw two bombs placed at the office, with the first designed to lure in emergency services workers and a second bigger bomb to be triggered upon their arrival. Police were able to disarm the explosive before it detonated.
In January another Lega office was bombed, and last month authorities arrested two Moroccan migrants believed to be connected to the incident.
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