Vadim Khludzinsky17:49, 01/20/24
The country’s Supreme Court rules that greetings are legal as long as they do not threaten public order.
Italy’s Supreme Court has ruled that fascist salutes are legal at rallies as long as they do not threaten public order or risk reviving the country’s banned fascist party. CNN reports this .
It is noted that several members of Italian opposition parties and Jewish community leaders criticized the decision and plan to challenge it.
“The decision comes nearly two weeks after video showed more than 150 men performing the fascist salute, sometimes called the ‘Roman salute,’ in central Rome to commemorate the January 7, 1978 killing of two members of a far-right youth group.” , says the article.
The media clarifies that the decision of the Italian Supreme Court is not related to the recent rally on January 7, which took place in front of the former headquarters of the neo-fascist party Italian Social Movement (MSI), where Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney began her political activities. There were no arrests in connection with the rally at that time.
In its decision, the court ordered a second appeal trial in the case of eight men convicted of performing a “Sieg Heil” at an event in Milan in 2016 to commemorate the 1975 killing of a militant belonging to the neo-fascist CasaPound movement. Their 2016 conviction was upheld after a first appeal.
“The decision of the Court of Cassation establishes that the Roman salute is not a crime unless there is a specific danger of the reconstruction of the fascist party, as provided for in Article 5 of the Scelba Law, or there are no specific aims of racial discrimination and violence,” said the lawyer for the two defendants, Domenico Di Tullio.
(C)UNIAN 2024
No problem with that, but will true pro-ruSSian Nazi salutes be banned instead?
I guess the Italian Supreme Court thought it outght to make a stand for freedom of speech in this case. Still, I think that’s a very misguided decision. A democracy has to defend itself against anti-democratic-movements. And fascists certainly fit that definition. So, Italian lawmakers had enacted a reasonable exception to freedom of speech by outlawing such shows of anti-democratic attitude and the judges shouldn’t have second-guessed this in this case. Their court order doesn’t even clarifying the issue, since it will inevitably result in more lawsuits about under what circumstances that extremist salute is allowed and when not. Instead of providing a clear cut rule, that would make life easier for everybody, this only muddies the legal waters. A rather bad decision.