In Italy, Government Cracks Down on Hard Left and Pro-Palestinian Groups

Italy’s no-nonsense prime minister, the steely and very intelligent Giorgia Meloni, has ordered a police crackdown on both the hard left and on pro-Palestinian groups. It began with a police raid to evict violent leftists from their headquarters in Turin. More on this crackdown can be found here: “Analysis: Italy targets radical Left and Hamas-linked groups,” by Luca Steinmann, Brussels Signal, December 23, 2025:

Violent clashes erupted in Italy over the weekend of December 20-21 after police moved to evict Askatasuna, a long-standing hard-Left social centre in Turin.

The move triggered two days of street unrest and political fallout, which underscored a broader confrontation between the state and radical movements.

“The eviction of Askatasuna is only the beginning: Bulldozers against social centres that have become dens of criminals,” said Deputy Prime Minister and Lega party leader Matteo Salvini.

Salvini presented the operation as part of a wider crackdown ordered by Giorgia Meloni’s government.

Senior Italian officials say the strategy follows two parallel tracks. One is targeting extremist hard-Left networks operating under the Antifa label. The second consists of also focusing on pro-Palestinian groups which the government sees as ideologically aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas….

The breaking point came with a violent assault on the headquarters of La Stampa on November 29, accusing the newspaper of being pro-Israel, during a nationwide strike attended by Antifa and pro-Palestinian groups.

Prosecutors allege Askatasuna-linked militants carried out the attack,  marking a shift from tolerated illegality to direct political violence.

City officials said the incident ended its informal tolerance of the centre. Turin’s mayor stated: “What happened at La Stampa is a break with the past. No space can be legitimised if it resorts to violence. Freedom of expression cannot coexist with attacks on the press.”…

The violent attack of the far-left and pro-Palestinian demonstrators, who were enraged at what they described as the “pro-Israel” stance of the newspaper, on the offices of La Stampa based at the social center of Atakasuna, has led to the mayor of Turin, himself a moderate leftist, to support the government’s shutting down of the Atakasuna building, and to evict the leftists who used it as their social centre.

The eviction was an attempt to crack down on people who violently attacked the offices of La Stampa in an attempt to punish it for its editorial stance. In other words, the far-left and pro-Palestinian demonstrators wanted to prevent the newspaper from exercising its freedom of speech. That is not something that any Western country should be expected to tolerate.

Many in the radical Left see Israel as a proxy of the United States and the West. Meanwhile many pro-Palestinian movements—particularly ones linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas—frame the conflict in religious terms.

Israel is not a proxy, but rather, an ally of the United States, and a member of the West that is now under assault from jihadists intent, through terrorism, conventional combat (qital), economic warfare and, above all, by demographic conquest from within, to conquer the world for Allah. As Muhammad famously said, “Islam is to dominate, and not to be dominated.”

Vidino notes these groups are strategically flexible. They discuss the conflict in religious terms within Muslim communities but present Hamas as a national liberation movement focused on Palestinian human rights when engaging with the left….

These pro-Palestinian groups present two versions of themselves. To fellow Muslims, they describe the war against the Jewish state as what, in truth, it is: a religious conflict, based on the Muslim belief that any territory that Muslims once possessed must forever remain the possession of Muslims. To left-wing non-Muslims, they present the conflict as one of Palestinians conducting a war of national liberation against the colonial-settler, apartheid, genocidal state of Israel that sits on land “stolen” from the Palestinians.

Vidino adds: “The Italian government’s action fits into a broader Western trend of increased attention to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. Measures being taken against Islamism in Italy borrow heavily from the approaches of other European countries. There is concern that, following the massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations in recent months, part of this movement could take an Islamist turn, with a potential risk of jihadist radicalisation in the future.”

There is no “potential risk” — what Italian officials fear could happen in the future has already come to pass. The pro-Palestinian demonstrators have already “taken an Islamist turn,” and the “jihadist radicalization” of these people was completed even before the war in Gaza began.

The operation against Askatasuna is therefore a political and symbolic move within a national strategy of preventing the intertwining of radical movements, says Vidino.

The far-left and the pro-Palestinian groups are already intertwined. The government needs to do far more than shut down this Askatasuna social centre in Turin where both groups have used. It has to come at both groups hammer-and-tongs, rounding up Muslim migrants who constitute the hard-core of these pro-Palestinian groups, and finding ways to deport them, as a “danger to social cohesion” and a “threat to the Italian state.” That deportation should begin at once, and it should concentrate Muslim minds wonderfully, as they see so many of their fellows put on planes back to their hellish countries of origin. They will suddenly become reluctant to shout “globalize the intifada” and similar genocidal sentiments on the streets of Italy, or indeed to shout anything at all. As for those enemies of freedom on the far left, those who take part in violent demonstrations — such as the one that took place outside the offices of La Stampa — should be rounded up and given prison sentences commensurate with their attempt to physically intimidate others into silence, as they tried to do with the La Stampa editors who in their view were too pro-Israel.

Deportations for one group, prison sentences for the other — those who use violence to shut down their perceived enemies — and pretty soon the once-tottering ship of state will have righted itself, in both meanings of the word.