Georgia Meloni appoints deputy pictured with Nazi armband to government

The appointment to the Italian government of a far-right deputy photographed in 2005 with a Nazi armband arouses controversy in the country, Tuesday, November 1. Galeazzo Bignami, elected to the chamber on the Fratelli d’Italia list, the post-fascist party of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, was appointed Minister Delegate for Infrastructure on Monday. But this 47-year-old lawyer was photographed at a party seventeen years ago, wearing a black outfit and wearing an armband with the swastika on his left arm.

El nuevo número dos del Ministerio de Infraestructura de Italia del gobierno de Meloni, Galeazzo Bignami, luciendo un brazalete con una esvástica. pic.twitter.com/PBPbnZe3Hu

— Miquel Ramos (@Miquel_R) November 1, 2022

His appointment is “an offense, an indecency vis-à-vis the Constitution, memory, history and the victims of the swastika”a symbol used by the Nazis, reacted on Twitter the deputy of the Democratic Party Marco Furfaro. Galeazzo Bignami condemned in a statement “any form of totalitarianism, liberticidal and anti-democratic expression”calling Nazism a “pure evil”. The 2005 photo was taken “in a private context” and “I apologized more than once”he pointed out.

Other appointments of deputy ministers announced on Monday have been criticized by the left-wing opposition. Claudio Durigon, at the Ministry of Labor, had proposed in 2021 to rename a park in Latina, south of Rome, bearing the name of the murdered anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, to give it that of Arnaldo Mussolini, the brother of the dictator. The controversy had forced him to resign. “When the past does not pass. Dark shadows on the choice of delegate ministers”headlined the center-left daily La Repubblica.