According to Bloomberg, Giorgia Meloni’s cabinet has requested a report on the possible role of foreign provocateurs in the unrest that affected Milan and other cities.
The trigger was protests against the rising cost of living in Paris, Milan, and other cities, which over the weekend escalated into looting and arson. Officials were alarmed by the scale of the violence and signs of coordination in some of the attacks.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said on Tuesday at an event in Rome that the events in Milan and other parts of the country are “fundamentally different” from what had happened before. He linked them to what he called “hybrid warfare”, carried out with the help of TikTok, social media, and YouTube.
Crosetto also said that children aged 11–12 who took part in the protests, in his view, may have been subjected to “counter-education”, but he did not provide details. At the same time, the authorities announced measures to prevent new unrest ahead of the next wave of demonstrations scheduled for the coming weekend.
By the end of the year, 500 soldiers will be sent to Milan, where the protests were especially violent. Critics of Meloni’s conservative coalition accused the authorities of using the unrest for political gain ahead of next year’s general elections and of failing to address deep-rooted economic and social problems.
On October 17, protests against the high cost of living took place across France, where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, as well as in several cities in northern Italy. On Saturday, 28 people were detained in Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Bergamo, and Turin, and on Sunday more than 60 participants in the unrest were taken to the police in Milan for questioning.
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