100,000 people join anti-fascist demo called by Sardines Movement

Max Civili
Press TV, Rome

On Saturday, about 100,000 people from across Italy packed Rome's historic San Giovanni square to hold a demonstration against growing nationalism in the country.

The initiative had been called by the Sardines Movement, a newly founded grassroots group formed about a month ago as a flash mob in Italy's northern city of Bologna against the leader of the far-right League party Matteo Salvini, who aims to win a regional election there in January next year.

Tens of similar demonstrations have been held in a number of other Italian cities over the past weeks and the members of the youth-driven movement have opted to call themselves the Sardines because of the crowds that have packed themselves tightly like the fish in past rallies.

At all Sardines Movement's rallies signs with political slogans are banned, with demonstrators encouraged instead to carry placards in the shape of sardines.

Also refugees and migrant movements have joined the Sardines' rallies demanding the Italian government to change its migration policies.

The latest opinion polls put Salvini's the League over 30% against around 20% for the next largest party, the center-left Democratic Party while support to the 5SM has dropped to about 15%.

Former deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini has in the past days mocked the Sardines movement on social media, saying he prefers kittens as “they eat sardines when hungry”. But despite all these, there’s no doubt that the movement recalling piscatorial wildlife has managed to rival Salvini's dominance of the Italian squares.

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