‘Facciamo come in Francia!’ shouted the masked and hooded rioters on Sunday in Milan and other major Italian cities, notably Turin and Bologna. ‘Let’s do like in France!’ By far the worst violence was in Milan around the Duomo where about 3,000 rioters fought running battles with police and sacked and looted countless high-end shops.

Most of the 200 rioters arrested in Milan on Sunday, plus the 70 odd on Saturday during similar though less destructive scenes, were Italian citizens who are the children of immigrants, according to media reports. They are known in Italian as ‘di seconda generazione’. Around 60 of those arrested were foreign nationals. Eighty per cent were teenagers under the age of 18, some as young as 12. Far-left white activists were a small minority.

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Though on a far smaller scale than the riots in France where at the weekend there were 2,700 arrests and where a far higher proportion of the rioters appear to have been far-left white activists, the riots in Italy are deeply disturbing nonetheless.

They are a symptom of a sick society – a symptom evident to a lesser or greater degree across Europe – of a society seemingly incapable anymore of producing economic growth, or children, while government spending, especially on welfare, pensions and health, continues to grow and grow. This is a most depressing prospect for anyone young, of whatever colour, however industrious. For them there is it seems, or so they say, no future. It is also a depressing prospect for the rest of us.

I am not trying to justify the rioters, merely to describe the zeitgeist.

The rioters had apparently decided to descend on Milan and devastate the city centre after the call went out on social media platforms such as TikTok and Whatsapp. The dynamics of why so many should heed such a call to cause mayhem remain unknown. Once there, many communicated with each other in Arabic. Many shouted ‘Allah u Akbah’. Some brandished Palestinian flags. But there were no banners of any kind. There was no political party or movement involved. Their only creed, it seems, is the thrill they get from attacking the police, setting rubbish bins and cars on fire, and destroying and looting luxury goods shops.

One masked rioter, asked by a television reporter why he was there, replied: ‘Revolt!’ ‘Against what?’ asked the reporter. ‘The state, politics!’

‘Quite simply they hate the country that has welcomed them, the last thing they think about is integration […] they attack and assault shops that have nothing to do with basic necessities. They don’t look for food but designer shoes and clothes’, wrote Alessandro Sallusti, the editor of the Milan daily Libero on Monday when most high end shops in the centre such as Gucci, Chanel, Dior and Hermes remained closed with their shop fronts devoid of merchandise.........

© The Spectator