Her bellowing cry – “Attenzione pickpocket!” – has turned her into a social media superstar, with videos featuring her crusade against petty crime racking up millions of views, spawning a trove of flattering news profiles and even a handful of dance tracks that riff on her signature catchphrase.
This week, however, it emerged that Monica Poli, TikTok’s celebrated citizen vigilante who publicly shames pickpockets by alerting tourists to their presence, is a councillor for Italy’s far-right Lega (League) party. Led by Matteo Salvini, the party has long been linked to draconian policies and incendiary rhetoric targeting asylum seekers, immigrants and the LGBTQ+ community.
But it is the country’s Roma population who have been at the brunt of many of the party’s fiercest attacks, setting off concerns that Poli’s efforts may be less about fighting crime and instead about perpetuating the kind of discrimination that has helped her party galvanise votes.
“It’s the loudest dog whistle,” said Percy Henderson, an employee of Traveller Pride who was among those who flagged Poli’s political affiliation on social media. “Every country that has Romany people in it has its own personal dog whistle for what they are accused of … Pickpocketing is one that follows Roma all over Europe.”
Henderson described the videos – which show Poli yelling her booming catchphrase at alleged pickpockets – as part of a broader effort to push Roma out of public spaces. “It is just like a random Gypsy that she’s yelling at, queueing up to go on a boat or standing outside a cafe,” said Henderson.
In a recent profile by the New York Times, Poli hinted at the role that emotions play in guiding her crusade. “When I see them, I know they are pickpockets,” she told the newspaper when asked if she was ever concerned that she might be calling out someone who is not a pickpocket.
“It is so strange to say … I have something inside me and I recognise it immediately.” The profile did not give further details on what Poli described as a “sixth sense”, nor did it mention her political affiliation. (After publication the NYT added a footnote acknowledging that it had initially “omitted background information about Monica Poli” and clarifying that she was a member of the Lega.)
Days later, the 57-year-old went further in another interview. “They are gangs from eastern Europe,” she told the newspaper Corriere del Veneto, adding that “most of them are domiciled in Roma camps”.
Poli did not reply to a request for comment from the Guardian. The group that she belongs to, Cittadini Non Distratti, or Undistracted Citizens – made up of about 50 volunteers whose efforts have been credited with being behind a third of the arrests of pickpockets in the city – said in a statement that while volunteers had their own personal political orientation, the group was “united under a single, common, non-partisan” aim of tackling the “social scourge of pickpocketing”.
The issue is not the focus on pickpockets, but rather Poli’s connection to Lega, a party that has long sought to gain votes by framing Roma – one of the country’s most marginalised communities – as a threat to society, said Laura Cervi, an associate professor at Barcelona’s Universitat Autònoma who has studied Lega’s use of anti-Roma messaging.
“Lega has a real obsession with the Roma community,” said Cervi. The focus has deepened since Salvini stepped up to the helm, with the far-right leader proposing that Roma camps be bulldozed, that all non-Italian Roma be expelled from the country and expressing regret that some Roma cannot be deported as they are Italian nationals.
In a country with one of the lowest percentages of Roma and Sinti people, but where anti-Roma sentiment runs higher than the European average, Roma are an easy target for rightwing populism, said Cervi.
The link to pickpocketing is another way to push this forward, with its subtle suggestion that there are parts of Italy that are out of control and in need of a firmer hand. “It’s very easy to capitalise on this because when you live in a highly touristic area, pickpockets are a real problem,” said Cervi.
The strategy has proved successful for Lega; Salvini is now the country’s deputy prime minister and part of a coalition led by the far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
It has left Italy’s Roma community grappling with serious consequences, said Bernard Rorke of the European Roma Rights Centre. “At the very highest levels of government, what we have is the kind of hate speech that creates a sort of climate that’s permissive and that facilitates hate crimes and public violence against Roma,” he said, pointing to the trebling of racially motivated attacks between 2017 and 2018, following Lega’s rise to power as part of a coalition government.
“So literally they’re failing to deal adequately with hate crime,” he added. “And they’re actually sort of creating a climate where there is, in some cases, incitement to commit [hate] crimes.”
