Outrage after Italy reporter attacked at neo-fascist event

Rome: Italian politicians including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed outrage Sunday after a journalist was beaten up in the northern city of Turin by suspected neo-fascists.

On Saturday night, the reporter for La Stampa daily came upon by chance a party being held by the neo-fascist fringe group CasaPound, involving smoke bombs and fireworks. He started filming with his phone.

According to his footage and an account by the newspaper, a group of men came up to him and asked, “Are you one of us?” Then they attacked him, causing him to require hospital treatment.

Meloni, the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, offered her solidarity with the journalist, Andrea Joly, over the “unacceptable attack.”

It was “an act of violence that I strongly condemn and for which I hope those responsible will be identified as quickly as possible,” she said in a statement.

Elly Schlein, leader of the center-left opposition Democratic Party, also offered her solidarity with Joly and condemned a “climate of impunity.”

“What else are we waiting for before neo-fascist organizations are dissolved, as the constitution says?” she asked.

The attack was one of two incidents of random violence that made headlines this weekend in Italy, after a shocking video emerged of two gay men being beaten up by three men and a woman in Rome.

That attack also drew condemnation from across the political spectrum.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Sunday deplored “too much violence and intolerance in Italy against those who do not think like you,” writing on X, formerly Twitter, that he “strongly condemned any violence.”