ROME: Italian far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her sister Arianna Meloni both filed defamation suits this week, the former against British rock band Placebo, the latter against a newspaper cartoonist.

Giorgia Meloni, founder and head of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, is suing Placebo frontman Brian Molko after he called her “racist”, “fascist” and a “piece of shit” during a performance in Italy last month.

The premier’s older sister Arianna, who is likely to run in next year’s European parliament elections for Brothers of Italy, is suing the cartoonist for the left-wing Fatto Quotidiano daily.

Mario Natangelo published his cartoon and a partial copy of the police report on Instagram on Friday, saying he would not comment on the case.

“I prefer to let my cartoons speak for me. And my lawyers”, he said.

His drawing depicts Arianna Meloni, wife of Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, in bed with a black man.

Lollobrigida, a close ally of Prime Minister Meloni, sparked outrage in Italy in April by warning against the “ethnic replacement” of Italians by migrants as the country struggles to reverse a flagging birth rate.

In the cartoon, the man asks Meloni: “What about your husband?” To which she replies: “Don’t worry, he spends his days out fighting ethnic replacement.”

The Brothers of Italy party was born out of the post-fascist movement founded by supporters of Benito Mussolini after the Second World War.

Published in Dawn, Aug 5th, 2023