Sociologist believes that under Meloni’s government racism in Italy has doubled and intensified

Italy also faces a serious problem of racism, which has two cultural origins and which is in a sense “normalized” by the current right-wing and far-right government, says sociologist Leonardo Palmisano.

In an interview with Luce, as Britain is rocked by anti-immigrant protests and violent riots, the author of the recently published book ItalyApartheid, in which he denounces the systemic exploitation and segregation faced by migrant workers in Italy, points out that the situation in that country is also worrying, not least because the current coalition government brings together two political forces, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s League, which have inherited various forms of racism that they have not abandoned.

“Italian racism is special because it has two cultural sources,” says Palmisano, pointing out that “the first is fascist,” and referring to the racial laws promulgated by Mussolini as “the ideological core of fascism,” as well as “northern racism, in other words, against the south, which also came from far away and was ideologically revived by the Northern League, founded by Umberto Bossi and which in recent years has become Salvini’s League.