The official figures of hate crimes in Italy are increased by particular civil society initiatives such as that of Italian journalists who created a map10 that locates racist aggressions or the reports of the Italian NGO Lunaria, which every year publishes a report on violent episodes with a racist or discriminatory background. These data point to 564 hate incidents in 2017 and 628 in 2018.

In total, in the ten years between 1 January 2007 and 31 May 2017, the NGO Lunaria documented 5,853 cases of racist discrimination, speech, propaganda material, crimes, property damage, assaults and murders. Of these, 1,483 relate to the period between 1 January 2015 and 31 May 2017, which is covered by this study.

According to the data collected by our study in the unofficial data category, Italy records a high number of hate crimes with a figure of 1,094 since 2015. The motivation that produces the most incidents is racism and xenophobia (603 cases, 55.2% of the total), i.e. more than half of all crimes are produced by this catalyst of hatred and intolerance.

In second and third position, but far behind racist and xenophobic crimes, are crimes against Christian symbols with 127 cases (11.61%) and anti-Semitic crimes with 112 (10.24%).

The rest of the motivations are widely spread among: homophobia (86, 7.86%), anti-Gypsy 52 (4.75%), attacks against persons with disabilities 44 (4.02%), Islamophobia 34 (3.11%), COVID-19 discrimination 22 (2.01%) and attacks against Holocaust victims 13 (1.19%).

The rest of the data are much lower in cases of political intolerance (0.9%) or no data at all is collected (victims of terrorism, attacks against members of other religions). The overall trend of hate crime incidents in Italy is upwards.

¹⁰ https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1kjmhct5NVKjSwAfo9OndqprhgQ6OEr8A&ll=41.693812625085826%2C12.411597450000045&z=6)

Table 18: Annual evolution of hate crimes in Italy by type of motivation, 2015-June 2020

* Data for the first 6 months of 2020

Motivational incidents with a racist background, with a greater or lesser degree of gravity, have a strong presence in Italian society. The world of sport has been affected by speeches and incidents of prejudice and even racist hatred. Italian athlete Daisy Osakue suffered corneal damage in July 2018 after being pelted with eggs from a speeding vehicle.

In the 2016-2017 season, Ghanain footballer Sulley Muntari, who played for Pescara, left the pitch at Cagliari after being subjected to racist shouting. That cost him a second yellow card and subsequent sending-off from the match, which was eventually overturned on appeal. Before them, the Ivorian Zoro, the Ghanaian Boateng, the Nigerian Omolade or the Cameroonian Samuel Eto’o had to suffer racist acts, without any real sanctions.

Juventus French midfielder Blaise Matuidi was the victim of humiliating insults on two occasions, one in January 2018 at Cagliari and another in December 2017 at Hellas Verona.

The reproduction of “monkey sounds” are a recurrent phenomenon in Italian football, as suffered on several occasions by the player Kalidou Koulibaly, notably in Rome in 2016, during a match against Lazio, and in December 2018 in Milan.

The climate of condoned intolerant discourse disinhibits and encourages the violent radicalisation of football fans. Football fans are a breeding ground in several of the countries in this study for extremist and violent radicalisation on the left and right. Four people were stabbed and another was run over by a van during clashes between Milanese and Napoli football team ultras two kilometres from the Giuseppe Meazza stadium in Milan in 2018. There is thus a phenomenon of violent intolerant identitarianism in football.

In 2019, a police operation culminated a two-year investigation in 16 cities that broke up a group planning to form a neo-Nazi party. Pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, knives, crossbows and books on Mussolini and Hitler in their possession were seized.

A total of twelve neo-Nazi militants aged between 26 and 62 were identified. Among them was Francesca Rizzi, recently accused of insulting Auschwitz survivor Senator Liliana Segre. The social media groups were called “Ordine Ario Romano” (Aryan Roman Order) and “Judenfreie Liga” (League Free of Jews). They instigated hatred against Jews and immigrants and also carried out “planning activities, still in embryonic stage” to cause damage to a NATO facility with homemade explosive devices made following internet instructions, working in collaboration with militants of similar foreign groups active in Portugal.

Police arrested in 2020 a 22-year-old man from Savona on charges of preparation of supremacist terrorist actions, as well as propaganda and incitement to commit crimes on grounds of racial discrimination aggravated by denialism. This operation led to searches and arrests in the cities of Genoa, Turin, Cagliari, Forlì-Cesena, Palermo, Perugia, Bologna and Cuneo.

The young man was inspired by the American supremacist atomwaffen division and the Nazi Waffen-SS. He gave lectures and disseminated neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic documents on the internet, inciting people to commit extreme acts, even sacrificing their lives, by encouraging “school shootings”. He encouraged the celebration of “rope day”, i.e. the massacre of those considered traitors, in the style of what happened in 2011 and 2019 in Utoya (Norway) and Christchurch (New Zealand), respectively.

“I want to commit a massacre at a feminist rally,” he said, “Jewish and communist women are our enemies. Modern women have no feelings, meat dolls to exterminate,” are some of the phrases intercepted by investigators. “Jews are the first evil to be eliminated. Jews were born to destroy humanity”. And again: “I will really do a massacre. The only thing to do is to die fighting. I have weapons. I will do Traini 2.0”, in reference to the man who in 2018 shot a weapon in the centre of Macerata, wounding 6 victims. “Better to die honourably in a school shooting than to live a shitty life,” he argued.

During the election campaign in January 2020, Matteo Salvini called the intercom of a house in Bologna and directly accused a Tunisian of being a drug dealer, prompting protests from Tunisia. Accompanied by a 61-year-old neighbour, who claimed that her neighbours were drug dealers, Salvini called the house’s intercom and introduced himself: “Good evening, may I come in, please? We have been told that you are the source of drug trafficking in the neighbourhood. Is this accurate or is it a mistake? The case aroused the indignation of the immigrant population.

During Salvini’s time as interior minister, he encouraged speeches on the migration phenomenon that were full of prejudice and intolerance. Populists – in this case right-wing populists – use events that occur, mobilising truths and lies, to polarise and mobilise public opinion, making it difficult to adopt rational public policies.

One example is the death of Mario Cerciello Rega, a 35-year-old carabiniere who had just returned from his honeymoon. He was stabbed to death by a young American tourist, Elder Finnegan Lee, who was about to be arrested for stealing a backpack containing drugs in an affluent neighbourhood near the Vatican. The American tourist later confessed to the crime, but the press initially claimed on social media that the killer was North African, and Salvini amplified the rumour.

“The suspects were filmed by surveillance cameras, they will not escape. Apparently they are not Italian, what a surprise,” the vice-president commented in the morning, calling for “forced labour forever” for these “two bastards”.

Three gypsy sisters, Angelica, Francesca and Elisabeth, aged 4, 8 and 20 respectively, were killed early Wednesday morning in a Molotov cocktail fire thrown into their caravan parked outside a shopping centre in Rome.

On the night of 21-22 February 2015 in Calcio (Bg), Roberto Pantic was shot dead while sleeping in his trailer. The 43-year-old gypsy man was killed by a 357 magnum bullet wound to the back of the head while, together with his wife and ten children, he was sleeping in a camper van parked on a lawn in Lower Bergamasca.

Emmanuel Chidi Namdi, a 36-year-old Nigerian asylum seeker, was killed by Amedeo Mancini. The trial ended with a plea bargain: Mancini was convicted of murder aggravated by racial hatred, but with the mitigating factor of provocation to 4 years imprisonment, which was converted to house arrest.

SACKO SOUMALIA was shot in the head when a man got out of a car and shot AT him and his friends, all sub-Saharan Africans, who were also wounded in the attack.

“We were collecting scrap metal when an old white Fiat Panda stopped and a man got out with a rifle and shot at us four times.” Drane Maoiheri, a 39-year-old Malian, recounts the shooting he was involved in at an old abandoned factory in the countryside of San Calogero (Vibo Valentia), where he was hit in the leg. His compatriot Sacko Soumaila, 29, was shot in the head and killed in the shooting. A third migrant, also from Mali, was also wounded.

Murder in broad daylight. The 22-year-old Guinean, who came to the city as a refugee and was a student at the time, passed a group of boys, and one of them elbowed him.

“Why did you do that?” the boy asked in surprise. “In my house I do what I want, if you don’t like it, go back home,” the attacker replied, punching him in the face. The pack then charged at him and beat him to death.

6 SHOT DEAD BY A LEAGUE CANDIDATE. Another case that generated scandal was that of Northern League candidate Luca Traini, who shot at black people, injuring six in Macerata in 2018.

Several days before the attack, the mutilated body of a young drug addict, Pamela Mastropietro, had been found. The last two people they had frequented, two Nigerian drug dealers, were charged. Traini claimed in his confession that he had gone out “nigger hunting” to avenge the death of the young woman and with the intention of killing all the immigrants who sold drugs.

Surge of violence against migrants over a lie. Pamela Pistis in late August 2017 claimed that she had been kidnapped by a group of migrants, which led to a violent protest in the neighbourhood that ended with a young Eritrean man, Yacob Misgn, being injured; it was later discovered that Pistis had lied.

A 3-year-old boy of North African origin is kicked in the abdomen for approaching a pram . The minor was with his 8 and 10 year old siblings together with his mother at a doctor’s office, when his mother gave her children money to go out to buy ice cream. The victim then approached a pram out of curiosity but the father, according to a witness, kicked him in the abdomen.

The little boy was immediately helped by passers-by, who called for help. He was reported for “aggravated injury”.

HARASSMENT OF A FAMILY FOR TAKING IN A YOUNG SENEGALESE MAN. Threats against a family in Melegnano (Milan) who had taken in a 22-year-old Senegalese man. The couple Paolo Pozzi and Angela Bedoni took in a 22-year-old Senegalese man, Bakary Dandio, into their home in Melegnano, in the province of Milan. For two consecutive weeks, graffiti containing racist threats and insults appeared on the façade of his home: “Pay for being here, you fucking nigger” and “Kill the nigger”, the latter accompanied by a swastika. Bedoni blamed the graffiti on the “pronouncements, behaviour, legislative acts of political forces and some of their exponents”, as well as “a systematic disinformation campaign regarding the real relevance of migratory flows”.

Caso Sandro Gozi. Sandro Gozi, the former secretary for European affairs in the Renzi and Gentiloni governments, stood for the Renaissance list for the European elections in 2019. After the elections, the French government offered him the post of director of European affairs.

Italian nationalist and populist parties unleashed a campaign against Gozi, accusing him of treason, lack of independence and integrity.
The president of Fratelli d’Italia, Giorgia Meloni, accused Sandro Gozi of treason and called for his Italian citizenship to be withdrawn, based on false assertions and a clear campaign of ideological intolerance.
Gozi resigned, stating that he saw no other way to regain his freedom of opinion, which had been undermined by the attacks.

After the British left the European Parliament in February 2020, Gozi, with the enlargement of the quota of MEPs in several countries, joined the Renew Europe group as an MEP.

Manada de menores atacan a una pareja gay. Un grupo de ocho jóvenes, seis menores de edad, agreden a una pareja gay en Milán. Ocho jóvenes, dos de 15 años, cuatro de 17 y dos de 19, son detenidos por agredir de forma violenta a una pareja gay a la salida de una discoteca en via Montemartini, en la zona de Corvetto, en Milán. Los hechos ocurrieron el 22 de enero de 2017. La pareja víctima de la agresión, de 20 y 25 años, denunciaron los hechos en redes sociales.

ATTACKS ON JOURNALISTS AND REPORTERS IN THE COURSE OF CLASHES DURING A DEMONSTRATION BY THE FAR-RIGHT GROUP RAGAZZI D’ITALIA. The course of a demonstration by the far-right group Ragazzi d’Italia was the scene of violence by participants against journalists and reporters covering the event, at least one of whom was injured.

Nazi salutes in front of the Italian parliament coinciding with the passing of a law to ban fascist symbols and salutes. In 2018, in the face of the advance of far-right parties in Italy led by Forza Nuova, the Italian parliament, with a Democratic Party majority, backed a bill aimed at curbing the public display of fascist symbols and the use of the Roman salute. Opponents of the bill, including the Forza Italia party and the Five Star Movement, argue that it places barriers to freedom of expression. Coinciding with the passing of the bill, groups of supporters rallied outside parliament to perform the fascist salute.

Neo-Nazi sympathisers outside the Italian Parliament