Italian candidate for premier defends ‘white race’ remark
ROME—The head of an anti-migrant party who is running to be Italy’s premier came to the defense Monday of an Italian gubernatorial candidate who advocated for clamping down on immigrants’ numbers to preserve “our white race.”
While political opponents condemned the comment by Attilio Fontana, who is running for the governorship of prosperous Lombardy, his League party leader, Matteo Salvini, said Fontana had rightly raised a worry about an “invasion” by Muslims.
Fontana, who is running with support from a centeralliance, whose backers include former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, made the incendiary comments on Sunday on Radio Padania, the mouthpiece of the League.
He said that being unwilling to “accept all” immigrants “isn’t a question of being xenophobic or racist, but a question of being logical or rational.”
“We can’t (accept all) because we all don’t fit, thus we must make choices,” Fontana said. “We must decide if our ethnicity, if our white race, if our society must continue to exist or if it must be cancelled out.”
As outrage grew, Fontana, sought to downplay the remarks on Monday while out on the campaign trail in northern Italy. He explained that his remark, indicating the white race should get priority to live in Italy, to “a lapse, an error in expression. I meant to say we must all re-organize a different kind of welcome that respects our history, our society.”