Lega and FI distance themselves from Lollobrigida: “Ethnic replacement? We wouldn’t have used those words”

After the outburst and the controversy, the distinctions and the (shy) distances arrive. “We would not have used those words”: this is the summary of the statements by Lega and Forza Italia, after Minister Lollobrigida returned to talking about “ethnic replacement”, in reference to the immigration issue and the lack of workforce in some sectors.

“He used an expression that undoubtedly lends itself to controversy“, then says the group leader in the Senate of the League Maximilian Romeo, who, however, immediately after, tries to reduce the controversies: “We continue to be interviewed daily. A word said not in the right, most correct way is enough and the controversies immediately mount”. It’s the same line as my colleague Richard Molinari. Ethnic replacement? “Would I use it? “No, it is an expression that I would not use”, declares the president of the Carroccio deputies in the Chamber, before reiterating his party’s position on immigration: “The government’s message is clear: whoever enters illegally in Italy it is not guaranteed to stay there, while we want to save those fleeing wars and those who want to enter through legal channels”.

Far more explicit was instead another important Northern League member, Gianmarco Centinaio, a former minister during the Conte I government. “Lollobrigida spoke really bad words, he got the form wrong and often form is substance”, is the version of the current vice president of the Senate. Speaking to La7, you then added however that you do not consider the agriculture minister’s reasoning on the need to help Italian couples to have more children “wrong”.

Kind of the same position found in Forza Italia. “It’s a way of saying that I don’t use and I wouldn’t use”, he says Alexander Cattaneo. “But Lollobrigida has already clarified his thoughts, I don’t see the reason for all this fuss”. The former blue group leader in the Chamber explains it thus: “These are words that I have heard several times during the electoral campaign, that same expression was repeated in the rallies and we were not scandalized”. She then reiterated the support of her party in government: “The model of immigration that the left would like, based on welcoming everyone, cannot be. It’s not a viable solution,” Cattaneo said again. While his party colleague Renato Schifani, president of a region such as Sicily which faces the phenomenon of immigration at the forefront, he maintains: “I would not have said what Lollobrigida said, for me the human being exists and deserves respect in his human, ethical and social dignity, beyond the color of the skin color and its origin”.

But alongside the clarifications of Lega and Forza Italia, words also arrived in defense of the Melonian loyalist. The almost obvious ones, for example, of Fabio Rampelli, who expressed support for his party colleague: “The accusation leveled against him of ‘white suprematism’ – by Elly Schlein – is a colossal lie worthy of a lawsuit. My solidarity with him and the entire government”. But above all those of another minister of this executive, Eugenia Rockella, who harshly attacked the left in a Facebook post. “The invectives against Minister Lollobrigida, as well as a polemical drift that attaches itself to every pretext, reveal the ideology that has contributed to bringing our country into the grip of the demographic freeze that grips it today”, says the head of the Family , who immediately increases the dose: “It is a globalist ideology which implies a creeping neo-colonialism and which, with the uncontrolled circulation of the workforce, leaves the privileged with their privileges and the poor with poverty”.