The wounded lion on the Ponte dei Leoni in the city of Monza, near Milan in Lombardy, is still caged, but recovering. Behind a translucent cover, the marble statue's mouth seems intact. One could almost forget that this lion, a symbol of Austrian occupation, erected in 1840, had, in January, become a symbol of the crime-related and identitarian anxieties that now gripped the city of 123,000 inhabitants. On New Year's Eve, a group of young people had detonated a firecracker in the lion's jaw, and video footage of the incident posted on social media caused a scandal.

Paolo Pilotto, the center-left (Democratic Party) mayor of the city, one of the most prosperous and peaceful in Italy, was accused of being too soft on crime. Even though the far right has been in power in Italy since 2022, local far-right representatives decried the incident as a symbol of the "failure of integration policies" and "uncontrolled immigration policies." Silvia Sardone, a member of the far-right Lega party, which comprises part of the governing coalition and has ties to neo-fascist circles, claimed the incident was conducted by maranza, a racist term referring to young men of Arab descent from the suburbs.

Since then, the government has boosted the idea that Italian cities were prey to a crime and security crisis. As next year's parliamentary elections approach, this has fueled the far-right's identitarian rhetoric. This discourse has been pushed to escalate further by the National Future (FN) party, which has prospered by touting a supposed connection between security and ethnic homogenization, which it claims could be achieved through its slogan: "remigration." You have 76.75% of this article left to read. The rest is forrs only.