The PM is talking up her underdog credentials ahead of this week’s European elections. But many in an impoverished Rome neighbourhood are sceptical

Sitting in the dark, cramped dining room of her home in Tor Bella Monaca, a densely populated council estate on the outskirts of Rome, Giovanna has just returned from one of several cleaning jobs the 70-year-old does to keep her family afloat. Her husband works on construction sites intermittently. The couple, whose youngest son, Cristian, 26, lives at home, might be depicted as borgatara, a slur in Roman dialect that, loosely translated, means a poor person living on the socially deprived fringes of the Italian capital.

Referring to her own upbringing in Garbatella, a traditionally working-class district within easy reach of Rome’s famed monuments, the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni said earlier this month she was “a proud borgatara”.

Cleta Mitchell, a rightwing attorney tied to Trump, has joined with anti-immigrant groups to pour resources into election effort

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who helped Donald Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, has joined forces with far-right anti-immigrant groups to pour resources into stoking unfounded fears of non-US citizens voting in federal elections.

Launched by powerful figures on the right, the effort includes members of Trump’s inner circle, rightwing nativist groups that promote restricting legal immigration and election-denying activists like Mitchell. Leaders of some of the prominent groups have become active on Capitol Hill, even appearing alongside the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to introduce a bill requiring people to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Suspect wounded and officer injured after stabbing of far-right activist at rally in Mannheim

German police have shot and wounded a man who injured six people in a knife attack on a rightwing demonstration in the south-western city of Mannheim.

Footage showed a bearded man wearing glasses attacking people in the city’s central Marktplatz. One person appeared to be stabbed in the leg and a police officer who tried to intervene appeared to be cut in the neck. Another officer then shot the attacker.

Marine Le Pen’s rupture with her German allies reveals a tactical fault line between the ‘old’ right and the ‘new’

Momentous change is afoot within Europe’s far right. Just as voters across 27 countries prepare to go to the polls in EU elections, a split over the German far right’s allegiance to the Third Reich is driving a realignment.

The far-right Identity and Democracy (ID) group in the European parliament last week expelled the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) faction from its ranks after a furore involving the leading AfD candidate Maximilian Krah.

Enlarge (credit: Bloomberg / Contributor | Bloomberg)

YouTube's Content ID system—which automatically detects content registered by rightsholders—is "completely fucking broken," a YouTuber called "Albino" declared in a rant on X (formerly Twitter) viewed more than 950,000 times.

Albino, who is also a popular Twitch streamer, complained that his YouTube video playing through Fallout was demonetized because a Samsung washing machine randomly chimed to signal a laundry cycle had finished while he was streaming.

Apparently, YouTube had automatically scanned Albino's video and detected the washing machine chime as a song called "Done"—which Albino quickly saw was uploaded to YouTube by a musician known as Audego nine years ago.

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Gabriel Attal cautions against backing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which leads solidly in polls for European elections

The French prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has said voters choosing the far right in the European elections next week risk becoming like British people who regret backing Brexit.

“Don’t be like the British who cried after Brexit,” he told RTL radio on Thursday. “A large majority of British people regret Brexit and sometimes regret not turning out to vote, or voting for something that was negative for their country.

US anti-pornography campaigning group has advised, promoted and endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ activists and politicians in Uganda

A long-standing US anti-pornography campaigning group has advised, promoted and endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ activists and politicians in Uganda, including a governing party member who endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ laws by saying gays “should be castrated”, and a virulently homophobic founder of a “militaristic” Christian boys camp.

The revelations about Washington DC-based National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) and its spin-offs and affiliates – based on documents, audio and video recordings and open-source materials – raise questions about its recent disavowals of its history of anti-LGBTQ+ positions, and its role in Uganda’s passage last year of laws on homosexuality which are among the most punitive and restrictive in the world.

Marion Maréchal’s Reconquête received nine times more donations than Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, analysis reveals

• Quarter of political donations in EU go to extremist and populist parties, data reveals
• Only seven EU countries require parties to reveal identity of all private donors

Political funding in France has swerved to the right, with private donations to the small nationalist group backed by Marine Le Pen’s niece overtaking those raised by President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling party.

Reconquête received €5.5m (£4.7m) from private donors in 2022, the year Macron secured a second term after a final round showdown against Le Pen, analysis by the Guardian of the annual reports of the 15 main French parties shows.

Politicians capable of international leadership on Gaza can also defeat the dishonesty that says Ireland is full

The poet Patrick Kavanagh was inspired to write sonnets about the “leafy-with-love” banks of the Grand Canal near Baggot Street bridge in south-central Dublin. There was not much poetry or love on the same stretch of the canal the other day, as rain whipped a row of brightly coloured tents neatly lining the towpath, side by side.

The occupants I met were mostly keeping hidden from the rain and, perhaps, from those who kick the tents and attack volunteer helpers, or the self-styled “patriots” who travel the country burning down designated refugee accommodation sites, chanting that Ireland is full.

Katherine Butler is the Guardian’s associate editor for Europe

German Green MEP chair warns that EU plan to tackle climate crisis will be put at risk by agreement with hard right parties

Green members of the European parliament will not support Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as the commission president if she makes a deal with hard-right nationalists, the party’s joint lead candidate has said.

Terry Reintke, the German Green MEP chair, said her group would “absolutely” not support von der Leyen – the incumbent centre-right commission president who is seeking a second term – if she made a deal with the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s group in the European parliament, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).

Enlarge (credit: Bungie)

They wanted to make money by selling cheating tools to Destiny 2 players. They may have ended up setting US legal precedent.

After a trial in federal court in Seattle last week, a jury found cheat-seller AimJunkies, along with its parent company Phoenix Digital and four of its employees and contractors, liable for copyright infringement and assigned damages to each of them. The jury split $63,210 in damages, with $20,000 to Phoenix Digital itself and just under $11,000 each to the four individuals. That's just under the $65,000 revenue the defendants claimed to have generated from 1,400 copies of its Destiny 2 cheats.

Bungie's case appears to have gone further than any other game-cheating suit has made it in the US court system. Because cheating at an online game is not, in itself, illegal, game firms typically lean on the anti-circumvention aspects of the 1998 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). That's how the makers of Grand Theft Auto V, Overwatch, Rainbow Six, and Fortnite have pursued their cheat-making antagonists. Bungie, in taking their claim past settlement and then winning a copyright claim from a jury, has perhaps provided game makers a case to point to in future proceedings, and perhaps more incentive.

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Managers say no place at beer festival for song adapted with Nazi slogan ‘Germany for the Germans, foreigners out’

The managers of Munich’s Oktoberfest have said they will seek to ban an Italian disco hit from being played at the world’s most famous beer festival after its hijacking by far-right revellers.

In recent months the schmaltzy love lyrics of L’amour Toujours, a catchy 2001 hit by Italian DJ Gigi D’Agostino, have repeatedly been drowned out at public gatherings by a Nazi slogan: “Germany for the Germans, foreigners out”.

EU institutions have already let people of colour down. Now the rise of the far right poses an even greater threat

My inbox is inundated with messages telling me to use my vote in the European elections because if I don’t “others will decide for you”. My head agrees with the messages from EU politicians that I should do my bit for democracy. But for the first time, my heart isn’t in it.

As a European who is also brown and Muslim – and who has long wanted the EU “project” to work – I am terrified at the extent of power and influence wielded, inside and outside government, by politicians who are unashamedly racist, xenophobic and Islamophobic and whose vision of Europe – whatever they may say in public – is also inherently hostile to women, Jews and gay people. And I am worried that it is going to get even worse.

Officials hope for strong youth turnout but experts say this does not translate into support for EU as far right makes inroads

The town has a farm, a university and a factory, but nobody agrees on where to put the police station. Around a large table in a stuffy room in a museum basement next to the Royal Palace of Brussels, a group of teenagers are haggling over the construction of a fictional town that has run out of budget.

The group of 21 sixth formers from the south Belgian city of Mons have already divided into four political parties and fixed their priorities. Health, jobs and equality were high on everyone’s list. Now they have to find consensus on building a town, trading views over where to place brightly coloured blocks – standing for amenities – on the gleaming white table.

French far right leader suggests alliance of ID and ECR groups, including Italian PM’s Brothers of Italy

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has suggested the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, join forces with her in a new alliance, as the EU’s resurgent but divided nationalist parties gear up for European parliamentary elections next month.

The move came as European centre-left parties reiterated a warning to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, that they would not support her bid for a second term if it entailed the backing of hard-right parties – including Meloni’s.

Source: www.darkreading.com – Author: Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer Source: Eakrin Rasadonyindee via Shutterstock Modern cybersecurity technologies produce massive quantities of data, which requires rethinking how to store and manage all the different types of information being generated. Many cybersecurity platforms are increasingly relying on one of two database technologies — graph or streaming databases — […]

La entrada Picking the Right Database Tech for Cybersecurity Defense – Source: www.darkreading.com se publicó primero en CISO2CISO.COM & CYBER SECURITY GROUP.

Trump has railed against urban centers run by Democrats, and Project 2025 lays out how to crack down on them

To hear Donald Trump tell it, America’s cities are in dire shape and in need of a federal intervention.

“We’re going to rebuild our cities into beacons of hope, safety and beauty – better than they have ever been before,” he said during a recent speech to the National Rifle Association in what has become a common refrain on the campaign trail. “We will take over the horribly run capital of our nation, Washington DC.”

Counter rallies in Kaufbeuren show split between supporters of AfD and locals who acknowledge the Bavarian town’s Nazi past

Soaring church spires, the 1,000-year-old town centre unblemished by second world war bombing or graffiti, snow-capped Alps in the middle distance – Kaufbeuren, in Bavaria, can count many blessings.

Unemployment is in the low single digits, the Luftwaffe backed away from plans to move its training school for Eurofighter and Tornado jet technicians elsewhere and crime is at a historic low.

The award-winning Irish author on her Women’s prize-shortlisted novel The Wren, the Wren, waylaying poet Paul Muldoon at an airport and why she no longer writes about her family

Anne Enright’s 12 books include the memoir Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood (2004), The Gathering, which won the 2007 Booker prize, and 2015’s The Green Road, a family saga described by the New Yorker as storytelling with “the blood-pulse of lived gossip”. She’s currently on the shortlist for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction (the winner will be announced on 13 June), with The Wren, the Wren, now out in paperback. It follows the daughter and granddaughter of a fictitious Irish poet, Phil McDaragh, whose poetry – written by Enright – appears in the novel and was initially published under McDaragh’s byline in the London Review of Books. Enright, 61, was speaking from her home in Dublin.

When did you start this novel?
April 2020. I’d just had the last book out [Actress] when the bookshops closed and the market disappeared; I came back from America after a tour that collapsed as the world locked down. It felt like five years of work had been taken away from me.

The Wren, the Wren is published in paperback by Vintage (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Ilaria Salis, 39, says she is being persecuted for her beliefs in case that has led to tensions between two countries

An Italian anti-fascist activist has gone on trial in Hungary for allegedly attacking neo-Nazis, in a case that has sparked tensions between the two EU allies.

Ilaria Salis, 39, arrived at the Budapest court accompanied by her father, with Italy’s ambassador and a throng of Italian journalists also in attendance. She left to applause after the court heard testimony from one of the victims and two witnesses. None of the three could personally identify Salis, as their attackers were masked.

The video shows a group singing replaced lyrics to L’amour Toujours, as one person also lifts his arm in an apparent Nazi salute

Footage from an elite German party island of people singing a Nazi slogan in place of the lyrics of a disco hit has gone viral and triggered a wave of outrage.

The film shows a group on Sylt in North Frisia drinking and dancing together to the 2001 song L’amour Toujours by the Italian musician Gigi D’Agostino. Some in the group sing an old Nazi slogan “Germany for the Germans – foreigners out” in place of the song’s apolitical lyrics.

Grima Wormtongue uses DEI to convince God to let devils do a great replacement. Think about the thought process that went into this strip. [...] Grima Wormtongue, assistant to GOD, is called in front of the uh heaven senate (i assume?) to account for the great replacement of heaven, but his parents survived the HOBBIT HOLOCAUST. there is so much going on here

The comic started out fairly benign as a comedy strip that would sometimes poke fun at politics and religion; however, as the years went on, the strip would become infamous for having not one but two abrupt radical changes in tone. In 2011, the comic strip changed from a comedy gag strip with occasional storylines to a tract that Ishida would use to advance his views on radical feminism, with most of the comic's earlier characters moving into the background or being forgotten about. Then, in 2019, Sinfest changed to a far-right conspiracy theory-promoting webcomic that endorsed QAnon and the anti-vaccination movement, with the transphobia, which had previously only been in the background, cranked up to ten thousand; Israel's invasion of Gaza opened the door to outright anti-Semitism and Nazi-adjacent tropes. All this resulted in Sinfest receiving a reputation on par with StoneToss and Ben Garrison, which is sad, since unlike those webcomics, Sinfest actually used to be good.

This isn't the first time we've seen a comic creator slide into a headspace that seems at odds with reality. (I hesitate to call this type of behavior a mental illness; I think that can be a bit reductive and, barring a psychological examination, probably not accurate anyway.) What's interesting here is that, in most cases, the creator's work was published with enough distance between installments that it can be hard to pinpoint what might've triggered them to go down this path, but Ishida has been publishing daily for decades now. You can follow his work in real time and see precisely when/where turning points occur. Bitter Karella actually did that, reading through the entirety of Sinfest in order in 2022 and offering commentary on Twitter. [...] She summed things up almost too succinctly with "it's not good." I would be curious, though, if a trained psychologist went through and tried to understand what exactly was going on and where things might have gone differently. As has been pointed out by others, Ishida seems to be in his early 50s now and has been working on (as far as anyone can tell) nothing but Sinfest for the the past 20+ years.

ID group of populist parties cuts off Alternative für Deutschland after its candidate’s comments that SS were ‘not all criminals’

The far-right German party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has been expelled from its pan-European parliamentary group after a string of recent controversies over its policy choices and the conduct of some of its leaders.

“The bureau of the Identity and Democracy group in the European parliament has decided today to exclude the German delegation, AfD, with immediate effect,” the ID group of populist far-right parties said in a statement on Thursday.

Documents show the Conservative Partnership Institute is pushing its far-right agenda at events involving GOP members

A powerful, rightwing lobbying group is promoting a hard-right policy agenda and cementing ties between the Republican party and the far right at at least 21 events involving senators, members of Congress, and both junior and senior political aides, documents obtained by the Guardian show.

The documents offer previously unreported details of Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI) trainings and “bootcamps” for congressional staff at CPI’s sprawling Maryland ranch, and lavish, star-studded retreats for members of Congress – mostly members of the far-right Freedom caucus – at a string of Florida resorts.

Signatories, including MEP Raphaël Glucksmann and Frans Timmermans, promise to ‘combat hatred, racism and xenophobia’

Leading left-wing parties across Europe have ruled out alliances with the far right and pledged to “relentlessly combat hatred, racism and xenophobia” ahead of European parliamentary elections likely to see significant gains by hardline nationalists.

“Turbulent times require a clear course and a firm attitude. They do not tolerate vagueness or cowardice,” said the joint appeal, published on Thursday and shared with the Guardian. “The time has come to become democrats of combat, no longer of habit or comfort.”

Maximilian Krah’s SS remark highlights growing divisions within European far-right and nationalist groups

• Europe live – latest updates

The lead candidate for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the European parliamentary election has resigned from the German far-right party’s leadership, as growing divisions between Europe’s nationalist parties threaten to undermine their expected gains in next month’s ballot.

Maximilian Krah, who last weekend told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the SS, the Nazis’ main paramilitary force, were “not all criminals”, said in a statement on Wednesday that his comments were “being misused as a pretext to damage our party”.

We are raiding the Guardian Long Read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors.

This week, from 2021: Early in Trump’s presidency, emboldened neo-Nazi and fascist groups came out into the open but were met with widespread revulsion. So the tactics of the far right changed, becoming more insidious – and much more successful. By Brendan O’Connor

Self-styled aristocrat, a former judge and retired military officers among suspected Reichsbürger members appear in court

A group including a self-styled aristocrat, a former far-right politician and retired military officers sought the approval of the Russian state as it plotted a violent “seizure of power” in covert meetings at motorway service stations and a hunting lodge, a court in Germany has heard.

On the first day of their trial, nine defendants appeared in court in Frankfurt charged with high treason, facing allegations they plotted over a period of about 18 months to overthrow the state.

Self-styled Prince Heinrich XIII among alleged ringleaders of plan for violent overthrow of state

The most spectacular of a trio of trials of a sprawling group of far-right conspiracists who plotted to violently overthrow the German state is taking place in Frankfurt amid high security and huge media interest.

On trial are the group’s alleged ringleader, a self-styled aristocrat estate agent known as Prince Heinrich XIII, his Russian girlfriend, and seven other founding members including a former policeman and a former judge who is now an MP for the far-right AfD party.

Le Pen, Orbán and Meloni rail against socialism and ‘massive illegal migration’ at ‘great patriotic convention’ in Madrid

International far-right leaders, including France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei, came together in Madrid to rail against socialism and “massive illegal migration” three weeks before hard-right parties are expected to see a surge in support in June’s European elections.

Sunday’s “great patriotic convention”, which was organised by Spain’s far-right Vox party, offered conservatives and far-right populists a chance to congregate and take aim at a variety of familiar targets, from the welfare state to “wokeness” and the agendas of Brussels-based bureaucrats.

The attempted assassination of a leader sympathetic to Putin has Europe on edge. But exaggerating the fascist threat is also dangerous

The shooting of the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, has dramatised the increasingly angry and polarised landscape of European politics. With just weeks to go before the European parliament elections, it is time to step back from the brink.

This eruption of violence in the midst of the campaign is so shocking that it may, at best, have a chastening effect, softening the venomous tone of political discourse by reminding democracies old and new of what they stand to lose.

Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre

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Lots of complicated details here: too many for me to summarize well. It involves an obscure Section 230 provision—and an even more obscure typo. Read this.