80-Year-Old Italian Farmer Mows Giant Swastika Into Field
Croatia, 2016: A swastika was found to have been mowed into the grass of a soccer field in Split, Croatia, ahead of a match. Image by Getty
By Ari Feldman June 4, 2019
An 80-year-old Italian farmer mowed a giant swastika into a field on a hill, Newsweek reported.
The swastika was drawn in San Damiano D’Asti, a small town about an hour’s drive from Turin. According to La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, the man played the massive crop symbol off as a joke, and then mowed the rest of the field when police came to talk to him about it.
But the swastika did not go over well with the man’s neighbors, whose families were partisans who fought against the Nazis during World War II.
“We want to condemn a shameful gesture that should not go unnoticed. Instead it should awaken the importance of anti-fascism that is an important movement in these hills, once a theatre of the resistance,” said Frederica Valsania.
Italy has seen a resurgence in fascism in recent years. The deputy prime minister and interior minister has enacted rules that effect only “ethnic” shops, such as forcing them to close by 9 p.m. In a few instances, there have been cases of anti-Semitic violence and vandalism.
Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. Contact him at feldman@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aefeldman
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
