Partit Popolari, led by former AN activist Paul Salomone, is latest far-right grouping

Far-right activists who picketed a Black Lives Matter demonstration in February are joining forces with Paul Salomone, one-time member of Azzjoni Nazzjonali and ANR on a new far-right ticket.

Partit Popolari will be Malta’s third far-right party after Imperium Europa and Moviment Patriotti Maltin.

Salomone, a building operations manager who is an avid scale modelling enthusiast and Mauser rifle collector, was a foremost activist of the Alleanza Nazzjonali Repubblikana, a right-wing formation that organised an anti-immigration demonstration in 2006.

Salomone was then charged, and later acquitted in 2013, of inciting racial hatred during his ANR speech.

In 2019, Salomone was still an active member of Imperium Europa, where he toasted the party’s results in the European Parliament elections of that year.

“My oath is to protect our religion, our forefathers’ culture, our children’s future and that of future generations,” Salomone states on the Facebook page of PP.

PP officials include Mario Attard. He is also joined by Raymond Ambrogio, a former police officer who led the BLM picket in June 2020.

The PP states that it is “against illegal immigration in all forms” and opposes the abuse of asylum rights that facilitate economic migration.

It also says that Maltese citizenship should only be claimed by direct descendance, or by Maltese claimants who were born outside of Malta before 1964.

It also declares “full support for the army and the forces of law and order.”

Salomone is one of the swathe of right-wing and religious activists opposing the Equality Act, claiming the law, which guarantees equal access to goods and services, will “strip us off our own identity, it’s a continuous attack against our fathers’ culture, an attack on religion and attack on the traditional family.”

“This law shall pave the way for child abortion,  give the power to the state to manipulate your children into degeneration, and shall in the near future pave the way for legislation of drugs and paedophilia.”

He has also claimed US president-elect Joe Biden of waging war against Russia on behalf of the Jewish banking family Rothschild,  so that “Rothschild get hold of the immense gold reserves that Russia possesses together with its rich oilfields, gas reserves, iron ore, and other materials.”