Giorgia Meloni did not like the caricature published by the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano about her sister Arianna, wife of the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida. The Italian prime minister considers the cartoon published in which her sister appears in bed with a man to be disrespectful.
“The one portrayed in the cartoon is Arianna. A person who does not hold public office, guilty above all of being my sister. Hit on the front page with unworthy allusions, in contempt of any respect for a woman, a mother, a person whose life it is used and destroyed only to attack a government considered an enemy,” Meloni wrote on her social media.
In the cartoon, under the phrase “I aim to encourage birth rates, meanwhile at Lollobrigida’s house”, a woman appears in bed with a black man who asks her: “And your husband?” and she replies: “Don’t worry, he’s been out all day fighting ethnic substitution.”
The cartoon refers to the political controversy that broke out in Italy after the Minister of Agriculture stated that, in the face of the unprecedented birth crisis in Italy, one cannot “give in to the idea of ethnic substitution”, a concept used by white supremacy in many countries like the United States.
Meloni also protested against “the deafening silence on the part of those who from morning to night try to talk to us about moralism” and that “plastically demonstrates the bad faith with which we are surrounded.” “But if someone thinks to stop us like this, they are very wrong. The more I surround myself with this ferocity, the more convinced I am that I have to do my job well. With love. We leave evil without limits to the self-proclaimed good,” added the far-right leader .
Lollobrigida’s controversial words about “ethnic substitution” were described by the opposition leader, Elly Schlein, at the head of the progressive Democratic Party (PD), as “disgusting and unacceptable.” “They take us back to the 1930s, they are words that have the flavor of white supremacy,” said Schlein, who asked that “Meloni and the government distance themselves from these statements.”
Meloni’s minister and brother-in-law later assured that it was “ignorance”, because he did not know the theories of supremacism, and not racism.
“Il Fatto Quotidiano shows, once again, that it has serious problems with satire. The cartoon published today, sordid, vulgar and macho, is not funny and goes beyond any limit of decency,” said Tommaso Foti, spokesman for the Chamber of Deputies from Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy.
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