EU Turmoil Over Nazi Events And Plot To Deport Millions (Worthy News Focus)
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BERLIN/ROME/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – The European Union entered the weekend after days of upheaval resembling the Nazi era in two of its largest economies, Germany and Italy.
In comments seen by Worthy News on Friday, Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz lashed out at a reported far-right meeting where plans were discussed to deport millions of immigrants, even those with German citizenship.
German media said politicians from the far-right Alternative for German (AfD) party and neo-Nazis met at a villa near a lake outside Berlin to discuss the crackdown on immigrants.
The alleged plan, which was published in an article by the investigative journalists’ group Correctiv on Wednesday, led to uproar in the country as it echoes the Nazis’ ideology of deporting all people who are not “ethnically German.”
Besides at least one AfD legislator and party supporters, Neo-Nazis from across Germany and Austria, as well as a member of the white supremacist Generation Identity group, also attended, the outlet said.
Additionally, two members of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) party are said to have participated.
Scholz warned, however, that Germany would not allow anyone living in the country to be judged based on whether they have foreign roots.
PROTECTING EVERYONE
“We protect everyone — regardless of origin, skin color or how uncomfortable someone is for fanatics with assimilation fantasies,” the chancellor wrote on social network X, formerly Twitter.
“Anyone who opposes our free democratic order” is a case for Germany’s domestic intelligence office and the judiciary, he said. Scholtz stressed that learning the lessons from Germany’s history should not just have been lip service.
Scholz was referring to the Nazis’ Third Reich dictatorship in 1933-45, which made race ideology, ostracism, and deportation of Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and many others the cornerstone of its politics.
Some six million Jews and others the German Nazis didn’t like were murdered, most of them after being deported to death camps such as in Poland and elsewhere during the Holocaust, or Shoah, of World War Two.
The tensions in Germany came just days after hundreds of people gave a fascist Nazi salute at a rally in Rome, sparking condemnation and calls for the country’s rightwing nationalist prime minister to take action.
A video circulating online showed hundreds of people making the banned salute at an event last Sunday commemorating the killing of three neo-fascist youths in the Italian capital in 1978.
The Acca Larentia killings, as they’re known, are marked annually, but this year’s public display and an apparent lack of police intervention drew criticism from opposition lawmakers.
RESEMBLING NAZI-ERA
The people in the video, almost resembling footage from the Nazi era, stood in at least a dozen rows. When prompted by a voice shouting outside the frame, they raised their right arms in a salute dating to the regime of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator.
They appeared to shout “present” three times in unison in response to someone yelling: “For all fallen comrades,” a typical rallying cry at neo-fascist events.
The developments have been linked to outrage about the ongoing influx of people fleeing war, persecution, and poverty into Italy and the rest of Europe. Additionally, there have been a growing number of antisemitic incidents and rallies in
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who did not immediately comment on the rally, has praised the late Nazis-praising dictator Mussolini in her youth.
However, she has since changed her stance, saying in 2021 that there was “no space” in her party “for nostalgia for fascism, racism or antisemitism.”
She recently said her country needs “to intensify the protection of Italian Jews because there is a risk of criminal acts against them in imitation of what we have seen at the hands of Hamas.”
Under Italy’s post-World War II legislation, the use of fascist symbolism, including the straight-armed salute, is banned.
Yet recent events in Italy and Germany highlighted concerns about attempts by younger generations to revive a past that many elderly Europeans were hoping they wouldn’t see again.
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