A populist protest leader’s claim that Italy is “slave to Jewish bankers” has drawn condemnation.

Andrea Zunino, spokesman for the Forconi, or Pitchforks Movement, which spearheaded widespread anti-government and anti-austerity protests in Italy last week, made the comment in an interview with La Repubblica newspaper Friday.

“We want the government to resign,” he told the interviewer. “We want the sovereignty of Italy, which today is slave to the bankers, like the Rothschilds. It is curious that five or six of the richest people in the world are Jews, but this is something I need to investigate.”

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Zunino “is powered by the most violent and sinister anti-Semitic stereotypes,” Renzo Gattegna, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said in a statement. In doing so, Gattegna said, he offends not only the memory of Holocaust victims but “above all the intelligence, democratic conscience, and maturity of the Italian people whose instances he wants to represent, clearly inadequately, in streets and piazzas across the country.”

Under the loose umbrella of the Forconi Movement, also known as the December 9 movement, thousands of angry Italians took to the streets last week to protest the political system; Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s government; the European Union; austerity; and globalization. The protests brought together widely diverging groups from right and left, including truck drivers, farmers, shop-owners, and militant football fan groups. Condemnation of Forconi’s statement also came from outside the Jewish world. According to Il Messaggero newspaper, Foad Aodi, president of the Community of the Arab World in Italy organization, called Zunino’s words “delusional, dangerous and manipulative regarding religions and the Jewish religion.”

Center-right parliament member Elena Centemero said “we cannot support those who, to express their dissent, choose violent shortcuts, lawlessness or recourse to anachronistic and unfounded accusations and stereotypes such as those against people of the Jewish religion.”

The Anti-Defamation League also condemned the remarks. “These appalling comments display a deep-seated anti-Semitic hatred which never belongs in politics or anywhere in Italian society. Whatever grievances the Italian protest movement may have, anti-Semitism is simply unacceptable,” ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said in a statement.

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