A 19-year-old is under house arrest accused of leading an online network of young neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic extremists. The operation, coordinated by the Milan Prosecutor’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office for minors, also led to 15 searches throughout Italy, nine of which targeted minors. The young man, an Italian resident in Pavia, is believed by investigators to be the promoter and administrator of a group, a chat called “Third Position” which allegedly spread racist and religious propaganda, content minimizing the Shoah and messages apologizing for the genocide of the Jewish people.
At the center of the investigation by the Digos of Milan, with the support of the Digos of Pavia and the Central Directorate of the Prevention Police, is the chat called “Third Position”, a name that recalls the subversive group of the same name from the Seventies and accessible, according to the investigators, to around a hundred users. In that virtual space, neo-fascist, neo-Nazi and openly anti-Semitic materials circulated, with glorification of perpetrators of supremacist massacres such as Brenton Tarrant, responsible for the 2019 Christchurch attack, and references to Stephan Balliet, author of the 2019 attack in Halle, Germany. Among the contents that also emerged was the so-called “white jihad”, an ideological mix between symbols and propaganda of the radical far right and calls for jihadist terrorism, united by anti-Semitism. The 19-year-old would also have created a parallel channel called “Third Position Study Center” and drawn up, with other suspects, a five-point document entitled “Manifesto of the Third Position”, with anti-Semitic contents and subversive intentions. According to the prosecution, the online propaganda also aimed to push the group to act in the “real world”, organizing “Revolutionary Action Squadrons” in the area and calling for attacks, which however never actually took place.
Searches also took place in Calabria in the province of Cosenza
The searches involved young people residing in the provinces of Cagliari, Caserta, Cosenza, Matera, Perugia, Rome, Salerno, Siena, Turin and Viterbo. In a further intervention in Pescara, a 22-year-old was checked, who allegedly displayed firearms on social media and defined himself as the local manager of another group called “Nuova Italia”. During the activities, telephones and computers, propaganda material, various bladed weapons and, in one case, materials considered compatible with the manufacture of explosives were seized.