This Italian MP Actually Wore Blackface in Parliament

Extreme right-wing politician Gianluca Buonanno steered Italian politics right into appalling racist buffoonery on Wednesday night. In a protest against supposedly generous benefits to immigrants, he produced a makeup kit in parliament and started to dab his face in order to make it darker.

“To get money, perhaps we all need to make ourselves darker,” he told the Chamber of Deputies.

Buonanno’s political party, Lega Nord or the Northern League, are notorious for xenophobic tirades, such as their attack on the country’s first black minister, Cecile Kyenge, for “favoring negritude.”

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