The Italian Parliament descended into chaos and Piazza Montecitorio was locked down after far-right lawmakers attempted to host a press conference on "remigration" featuring CasaPound, Italy's most prominent neo-fascist organization.
Opposition members occupied the conference room and sang "Bella Ciao"—the Italian anti-fascist anthem—as parliamentary officials canceled all press conferences for the day and cited public order concerns.
The attempted event, organized by League party deputy Domenico Furgiuele, was billed as a discussion of "remigration"—a sanitized term for the forced deportation of migrants and their descendants, even those born in Europe. The concept has gained traction among Europe's far-right parties as a policy framework for ethnic cleansing with better branding.
From Mussolini Nostalgia to Parliament Hallways
CasaPound Italia, named after fascist poet Ezra Pound, has long occupied the fringes of Italian politics. The group openly celebrates Benito Mussolini's legacy and has been linked to violence against migrants and anti-fascist activists.
That such an organization was invited to speak inside the Italian Parliament—in rooms where the postwar republic was built on anti-fascist principles—represents a normalization that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
The episode reveals how far the Overton window has shifted in European politics. "Remigration" is no longer confined to internet forums and extremist rallies. It's being discussed in parliamentary buildings, packaged as immigration policy rather than what it actually is: a proposal for demographic engineering along ethnic lines.
Brussels Watches, Warily
The incident comes as the European Commission monitors Italy's increasingly cozy relationship with far-right movements. While Giorgia Meloni's government has maintained a relatively technocratic approach to governance, coalition partners from the League have pushed boundaries on migration rhetoric and neo-fascist adjacency.
Opposition lawmakers who occupied the conference room and sang "Bella Ciao" weren't engaging in political theater. They were defending the line between conservative immigration policy and fascist nostalgia—a line that becomes blurrier every time CasaPound gets a microphone in a government building.
Brussels decides more than you think, but it can't decide what Italy allows inside its own parliament. That's a choice Italian lawmakers are making themselves, one "remigration" conference at a time.
