Fakir and the State’s “Hunt for Foreigners”
From Abderrahim Fakir to Rachid Nachad, the rise of racism that has evolved from political rhetoric into law, security practices, and institutional impunity
by Youssef Siher
On Sunday, July 19, 2026, shortly after noon, at the Pilastro neighborhood in Bologna, two police officers were holding a 42-year-old man face-down on the ground. His name was Abderrahim Fakir; he had arrived in Italy from Morocco when he was seven years old, lived in Borgonuovo with his wife, and ran a porterage business. After spraying him with pepper spray, the officers pinned him face-down on the ground. They pressed his head against the asphalt to immobilize him and pinned his wrists behind his back with their knees in an attempt to handcuff him. There is a video, now in the public domain, in which Fakir can be heard screaming “Help, stop!” for long, interminable minutes, while no one around him seems to bat an eye. Then he stops speaking. Then he stops moving. Fakir dies there, on the scorching asphalt, under the July sun, while the 118 emergency responders—who had been present since the beginning of the incident—stand by and watch.
The Bologna District Attorney’s Office states that it has opened an investigation and obtained the bodycam footage, and that six people—four medical personnel and two police officers—are involved in the probe. Above all, a family’s wound remains open, and it is worth trying, right from the start, to engage in a line of reasoning that does not depend on any investigation, any verdict, or any legal truth that will be established in the months or years to come. Because the point is not—or is not only—what happened on Via Svevo that Sunday. The point is why, every time something like this happens, we find ourselves back at square one, with the same script, with the same sense of déjà vu.
The Symptom, Not the Exception
Fakir is not an isolated case, and that is precisely the first thing to note. Not to downplay his death, but to restore its true significance. Just six months earlier, on January 26, 2026, a police officer shot and killed Abderrahim Mansour, a 28-year-old Moroccan, with a shot to the head in the Rogoredo woods in Milan during a drug stop: the initial claim of self-defense crumbled in the weeks that followed, leading to the officer’s arrest for first-degree murder. And just in recent days, during the trial for the murder of Rachid Nachad — a 32-year-old Moroccan man killed in 2023 in the woods of Castelveccana, in the province of Varese, during a drug raid by the Carabinieri — a detail has emerged in the court records that speaks louder than any analysis: a WhatsApp chat named “Mao Hunting” was found on the phones of the officers involved, which the family’s lawyers have translated as “hunt for the Moroccan.”
This alone is enough to demonstrate that dehumanization is not merely a remnant of barroom slang, but coexists—silently and collectively—within the very institutions that wear a uniform. Eighteen months earlier, a Carabinieri chase in Milan ended with the killing of Ramy Elgaml, 19, and Fares Bouzidi falling into a coma. The interpretation that ties these events together is neither conspiratorial nor simplistic: it is that in Italy, for some time now, there has been a continuum ranging from symbolic denigration—language, stereotypes, the systematic construction of the racialized body as dangerous—to physical violence, and that often that violence comes precisely from the institutions that should, in theory, protect everyone equally.
It’s Not Stigmatized, It’s Trivialized
If the first issue is the recurring nature of these incidents, the second—perhaps more insidious—is how politics and public opinion react every time one of these incidents occurs. And here, the Fakir case offers, once again, a perfect example. On the one hand, the so-called parliamentary opposition demands truth and transparency, echoes the family’s grief, and calls for “the truth to come to light,” but almost never questions the social and political factors that made that death possible: the security decrees passed—with their own support—over the years, the regulatory framework that protects law enforcement officials, and the militarization of working-class neighborhoods that no government, of any political persuasion, has ever truly dismantled. The result is that even the reaction of those who claim to be outraged ends up being just as self-referential as that of those who downplay the incident: it is confined to the individual case, to a parliamentary question, to a spontaneous protest, without ever tracing it back to the structural framework that made it possible.
On the other hand, the leader of the Fratelli d’Italia group in the Chamber of Deputies, Galeazzo Bignami, closes the case while Abderrahim’s body still lies on the asphalt of Via Svevo: “The intervention, requested by citizens and to which citizens contributed, was carried out professionally and in a manner appropriate to the situation at hand,” he declares—reducing a man who died of suffocation under the weight of two officers to a well-executed administrative procedure, a service performed to the highest standards—and then adds that he personally called the police chief to express his support for the two officers involved.
Bignami’s rhetoric is the language with which the Italian right-wing government systematically addresses every episode of institutional violence against racialized bodies: even before the facts are established, there is preventive solidarity with law enforcement and a preemptive acquittal. And here lies the point that truly matters: the real cultural battle is neither won nor lost based on the conviction or acquittal of an individual officer—whether Bignami or Vannacci. It is won or lost based on how the silent majority of Italian society reacts to these outbursts.
And the most widespread reaction in Italy is not stigmatization—it is not saying, “This language is unacceptable, and those who use it must be politically isolated.” The most common reaction is trivialization: dismissing Vannacci as a folkloric figure, “the mad general,” good for memes and satirical front pages; brushing off Sardone as a city councilwoman who campaigns on identity politics; viewing Bignami as a case of clumsy political communication, not one of substance. This attitude—the irony, the bored annoyance, the “it’s just stuff they say to stir up a fuss”—is itself part of the problem, because it consumes the outrage without producing any consequences. One can laugh at language that, in the meantime, is redefining what can be said in public.
The Door Has Been Smashed Open
The point—and this is the heart of the entire argument—is not what will become of Vannacci, Sardone, or this or that leader of Fratelli d’Italia. They might lose the election, be overtaken by others, end up on the sidelines, or fight among themselves as they already do. Nothing substantial would change. Because what they’ve done over the past few years isn’t win a debate—it’s kicked down a door. They’ve made it publicly acceptable—in institutional settings, on campaign platforms, and in books complete with government endorsements—to use language that, in a healthy society, should be confined to the very fringes of public discourse: remigration, hierarchies among human beings, and structural suspicion toward migrant and racialized bodies. And once that door is broken down, it remains open. It does not close when the minister changes, nor even if the party that broke it down loses the election. It remains there, open, available to anyone who wants to walk through it: a police officer deciding how to treat a person on the ground, a citizen who feels entitled to intervene “to help” the officers against someone crying out for help, a paramedic who looks on with indifference, a journalist who chooses which adjectives to use, a judge who assesses a victim’s credibility.
The Law as a Shield
There is one final piece—perhaps the most decisive one—that makes the metaphor of the broken-down door not merely cultural but directly tangible: the law itself, transformed into a tool of preventive cover for those who commit violence in the name of the state. As of the time of writing—July 21, 2026—the Bologna District Attorney’s Office has announced that, in the Fakir case, it has applied for the first time the so-called “criminal shield” introduced by the security package approved last February: the two police officers and the four 118 emergency responders who intervened at Pilastro were not entered into the ordinary registry of suspects, but into a separate, preliminary registry—Form 45 bis—intended for cases in which an act potentially constituting a crime was committed “in the presence of a clear justifying cause,” namely the legitimate use of weapons or the fulfillment of a duty. To put it another way: even before the prosecutor’s office can formally allege any liability, the law itself presumes, as a starting point, that the officer acted lawfully. This is not a technical procedural detail; it is a reversal of the burden of proof in the common understanding with which the incident has been recounted and judged from day one.
This shield did not arise in a vacuum. It is the latest piece in a regulatory sequence spanning over twenty years—from the Bossi-Fini law to the various “security packages” enacted by successive governments, up to the most recent security decree, which introduces, alongside the criminal immunity shield for law enforcement, new restrictions on street protests, preventive detention for individuals deemed “dangerous,” and the expansion of “red zones”—which has consistently shifted the regulatory focus from protecting the rights of the most vulnerable citizens to the preventive protection of those who exercise the state’s coercive power. It is here that the link between political narrative and violent action ceases to be a mere interpretive suggestion and becomes a direct, almost mechanical mechanism. An institutional representative who intervenes against a racialized body knows, even before acting, that they can count on two layers of cover: the narrative one, guaranteed by those—a Bignami, a Vannacci, an entire media and political apparatus—who are ready to label the intervention “professional” even before an investigation confirms it; and criminal and judicial cover, guaranteed by legislation specifically designed to slow down—and in many cases thwart—the determination of responsibility.
The Neighborhood as a Militarized Zone
And there is an even more immediate, almost physical level on which this infrastructure takes shape every day: that of the urban space where racialized and marginalized communities go about their daily lives. For Fakir, Pilastro was not just any neighborhood where one might be stopped by chance: it is a neighborhood that, like many Italian suburbs, has long coexisted with a permanent police presence—no longer exceptional but ordinary. Bologna has had its “red zones” since October 2024—that is, increasingly expansive areas of the city where the prefecture and police headquarters can order the removal of people deemed undesirable, without any crime having been committed but based on a discretionary assessment of danger. In short, Il Pilastro was already living—even before July 19—under a constant security presence, normalized to the point of no longer making the news. It is the same mechanism that has affected Corvetto in Milan—the neighborhood of Ramy Elgaml, which has also been included within the city’s “red zones”—and that is being repeated, under different names, in dozens of Italian suburbs.
This is not a mere anecdote: it is the material context within which Fakir’s death must be understood. When a working-class neighborhood is transformed—through prefectural ordinances, urban DASPO orders, permanent patrols, and surveillance cameras—into a permanent “conflict zone,” the very dynamics of the encounter between citizen and state change: those who live there do not encounter law enforcement as a guarantee of shared security, but as a presence to which the role of suspect is already assigned, by default. The militarization of daily life does not automatically result in violence with every single intervention, but it lays the groundwork for it: it normalizes the constant presence of uniforms, and above all, it teaches—day after day—those who live in these neighborhoods that public space is never truly theirs and that every street corner can, at any moment, become a site of control.
Why the Door Won’t Close
There are at least four structural reasons why, once opened, this door tends to remain open, and none of these reasons depends on the fate of individual actors.
The first is that, in a society plagued by economic insecurity, growing inequality, and widespread distrust of institutions, racist rhetoric functions as an outlet. Identifying an external enemy—recognizable by skin color or country of origin—is simpler—and more rewarding in terms of public support—than explaining the structural causes of social unrest: job insecurity, the neglect of the suburbs, and the crisis in public healthcare. Those who offer this shortcut don’t need to be right; they just need to be repeated.
The second is that the movement opposing this drift struggles, in Italy, to equip itself with adequate analytical and political tools. All too often, the reaction to individual incidents is limited to the outrage of the moment—the protest, the hashtag, the (understandable but often fruitless) comparison with George Floyd—without this outrage translating into a structural analysis capable of connecting the dots: the Bossi-Fini law, the security decrees, the use of force in the suburbs, and racial profiling. Without this connection, each case remains an isolated incident, consumed by the news cycle within a few days.
The third is the lack of electoral benefit in openly mobilizing against this language. In a political system where even the opposition fears appearing “too partisan” on issues that the right has made divisive, the most common reaction is lukewarm condemnation, a call for “clarity,” but never a head-on cultural battle over the language itself. The incident is condemned, but rarely the framework that makes it possible.
Finally, the fourth reason is that extra-parliamentary politics as a whole has systematically chosen reactive posturing over the construction of a popular and credible alternative. For years, there has been a lack of patient efforts to build a social and political bloc that would make anti-racism not a niche identity label, but a concrete proposal—housing, jobs, healthcare, justice—capable of speaking to those who today are tempted by the racist shortcut precisely because no one is offering them anything else.
Breaking Free from Powerlessness
If this is indeed the case, then the responsibility for closing that door cannot be delegated solely to a change in leadership or to an investigation aimed at assigning blame. There are at least two areas where, starting right now, something more enduring than the news cycle is at stake.
The first concerns the diaspora communities themselves. The system that normalizes this violence also relies on instilling a sense of powerlessness in those who suffer it: the feeling that every death is a bolt from the blue to be mourned in private, not a political issue to be addressed collectively; that the only possible course of action is to passively await an investigation that almost never delivers justice; that imagining an alternative—or even demanding one—is a luxury not afforded to those who already live on the margins. It is precisely this powerlessness that must be rejected. Diaspora communities cannot limit themselves to being the subject of news reports but must be able to recognize themselves—and organize themselves—as full-fledged political actors: networks of mutual legal and psychological aid for affected families; support groups that do not fade with the emotion of the moment but are structured for the long term; and autonomous political representation capable of advancing their own demands, without always having to rely on the benevolent mediation of someone else.
Solidarity is not enough if it remains an individual and isolated gesture: it must become organization—the ability to set common goals and measure progress over time, not just in the urgency of mourning. Only by becoming agents of their own destiny—and not passive objects whose fate is decided by others each time—can diaspora communities transform recurring pain into real bargaining power.
The second area concerns those who, from a position of greater security, already claim to stand in solidarity: the movements, political parties, and social organizations that oppose this drift. Here, the risk—equally real—is the self-referential nature of the “anti” stance: anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-Vannacci, anti-government. An identity built on opposition, which is exhausted in denunciation and public outrage without ever translating into a verifiable, concrete proposal.
Those who oppose this normalization have a responsibility—if they wish to be more than a symbolic counterpart perpetually outnumbered—to put their energy, expertise, and networks at the service of building a concrete alternative. But this is a responsibility that must be exercised with great care: we must not reproduce—even in good faith—the same paternalistic logic that for centuries has made decisions on behalf of those who were colonized, administered, or “helped”—that is, the logic whereby there are those who already know what the right solution is and those who must simply accept it. Even the most sincere solidarity, when it arrives pre-packaged by those in a position of greater privilege, risks reproducing the very power dynamic it claims to want to dismantle: someone who speaks, and someone who simply listens.
The true alternative cannot be devised at a desk and then imposed on the communities that are currently being demonized and militarized: it must emerge from them, from the practices they already build on their own when the state abandons or represses them—mutual aid networks, housing struggles, forms of collective defense against police violence, support for the Palestinian cause—and those who call themselves allies have the task of making themselves available to those voices, not of replacing them, not of translating them into a language that is more reassuring to outside observers, not of deciding on their behalf what constitutes a legitimate struggle and what does not. An opposition that limits itself to occupying the squares of outrage, speaking on behalf of those who could speak for themselves, simply leaves the field open to those who know how to make an offer—however toxic it may be. We must build, together—not in place of—with patience and without shortcuts or delegating responsibility, something stronger than the fear they have sold us.
