Italy’s War on the Roma
Today is International Roma Day. Long oppressed, the beleaguered minority group is facing intensifying racist attacks in Salvini's Italy.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini speaks during a statement after a bilateral meeting prior to the European Union member states’ interior and justice ministers conference on July 11, 2018 in Innsbruck, Austria.Andreas Gebert / Getty
In a television interview last June, Matteo Salvini — ultraright-wing Italian interior minister and deputy prime minister — responded with great modesty to pleas in the press that he rescue the city of Rome from a purported takeover by “gypsies”: “I am not Batman.”
Nevertheless, he proposed a census of Italy’s Roma population such that the non-Italian Roma might be expelled from the country. As for the Italian ones: “Purtroppo te li devi tenere in Italia” — “Unfortunately you have to keep them in Italy.”
Sane observers immediately denounced Salvini’s plan of action, warning that, besides not really being legal, an ethnicity-based population tally was reminiscent of a certain Benito Mussolini. Then again, maybe that was the point.
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