ROME — The far-right administration of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has reportedly pulled back from anti-porn language that had been inserted into a controversial “youth crime” executive order, which was fast-tracked after the media sensationalized specific incidents of sexual assaults.
According to Italian news service Ansa, the Council of Ministers approved the executive decree delineating Meloni’s initiatives to fight juvenile delinquency, and the final draft contained “no restriction on minors' access to porn sites.”
Meloni's Minister for the Family, Birth Rate and Equal Opportunities, Eugenia Roccella, had pushed strongly for anti-porn language in the executive order, but flip-flopped in recent weeks on her reasoning. She said she believed there was a “cause and effect” link between watching violent porn online and actual rape and sexual abuse, but also admitted that “a direct causal link has not been proven.”
Roccella is a polarizing right-wing politician and anti-abortion-rights crusader who has accused Italy’s antifascist movement of being "fascistic" against the right.
Several members of the current government have been accused of outright fascist sympathies.
In 2019, when she was the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, now-Prime Minister Meloni personally sponsored the political career of Caio Giulio Cesare Mussolini, great-grandson of the founder of Italy’s historic Fascist Party. As a teenager, Meloni “was an activist with the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI), a now dissolved neofascist movement that was openly apologetic for former dictator Benito Mussolini’s regime,” Foreign Policy reported.