Performing the fascist salute is only a crime if it endangers public order or risks leading to a revival of the banned fascist party, Italy’s top court said in a ruling that has been hailed by neofascists.
In making its ruling on Thursday, the court of cassation ordered a second appeals trial for eight neofascist militants who made the salute during a commemorative event in Milan in 2016 marking the anniversary of the killing of a fellow militant in the city in 1975.
The ruling means that the gesture, also known as the Roman salute, is not a crime if performed at events akin to a recent rally in Rome that provoked an outcry.
“The decision of the cassation court establishes that the Roman salute is not a crime unless there is a concrete danger of the reconstruction of the fascist party, as provided by Article 5 of the Scelba law, or there are concrete aims of racial discrimination and violence, as provided by the Mancino law,” Domenico Di Tullio, lawyer for two of the defendants, told the Italian press.
The 1952 Scelba law banned apology for fascism and the reorganisation of Benito Mussolini’s fascist party, while the 1993 Mancino law banned racist violence and hate speech.
The court’s ruling comes after a chilling video emerged of hundreds of men making fascist salutes during an event in Rome in early January marking the 46th anniversary of the killing of three militants from the youth wing of the now defunct Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neofascist party founded after the second world war which eventually morphed into Brothers of Italy, the party led by prime minister Giorgia Meloni.
The annual gathering takes place outside what used to be MSI’s headquarters on Via Acca Larentia, in the east of the Italian capital.
Casapound, the neofascist party which organises the event, hailed the court’s ruling as “an historic victory”.
“Of course, we will continue making the Roman salute,” Luca Marsella, Casapound’s spokesperson, told the Ansa news agency.
The Rome event was condemned by opposition parties, who called for Meloni’s government to ban neofascist groups, as well as Forza Italia, a partner in her coalition.
Meloni presents Brothers of Italy as a conservative champion of patriotism and has claimed there are no “nostalgic fascists, racists or antisemites in the Brothers of Italy DNA”.
