XENOPHOBIA, RADICAL NATIONALISM, AND EXPRESSIONS OF HATRED IN ITALY (2018-2020)
The Italian Police, as Dr. Anna Castriota claims, recorded circa over one-thousands of hate crimes in 2019 (data not available yet for the 2020). Of these hate crimes, 310 were inciting to violence; 241 were physical assault, and only one case was homicide. The cases recorded were hate crimes having ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation as well as bias against Roma and Sinti, and people with disability. The targeted group was immigrants and, more generally, foreigners, this is why most of the known hate crimes were related to racism and xenophobia. In 2019, 805 police reports concerned bias. Among these crimes, the most frequent ones were incitement to violence, desecration of graves, physical assaults, and threats. People with disabilities were the second most targeted group. Although in the last two years (2018-2020) in Italy the number of hate crime rose, a survey conducted in 2019, demonstrated that the Italian believed that the measures taken by the Italian authorities to fight discrimination were necessary.
