About

Salvini in Brussels (Salvini a Bruxelles) is a photoshop meme based on a photograph of Italian politician Matteo Salvini speaking on the phone next to an armed Belgian guard at the entrance of the European Parliament building shortly after the coordinated bombings at the airport and a metro station in Brussels, Belgium in March 2016.

Origin

On March 22nd, 2016, the official Facebook page of Matteo Salvini, the leader of the Italian regionalist party Lega Nord (Northern League), uploaded several photographs of the politician posing in front of heavily guarded sites across the city's downtown. Among them were a photograph of Salvini speaking on the phone next to an armed Belgian guard outside of the European Union headquarters, with the caption reading:

"Army and bulletproof vests at the entrance of the parliament. City stopped, just sirens, ambulances and helicopters. And someone keeps saying that we haven't declared war. Wake up! Prayer isn't enough anymore.

According to numerous Italian news reports, the outspoken leader of the anti-EU regionalist party was about to board a flight back to Italy from Belgium earlier that morning, but after the Brussel bombings prompted a virtual lockdown across the city, he was turned away by the police and instructed to return to his office at the EU headquarters. Within the first 24 hours of the Facebook post, Salvini's photograph garnered over 69,000 likes (including 2,275 angry and 877 sad reactions), 19,000 shares and 4,800 comments.

Spread

The photograph of Salvini, who has recently garnered notoriety in Italy and other parts of Europe for his advocacy of extreme anti-immigration policies and staunch opposition against the authorities of the EU, was soon met with jeers from his critics on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere on the social media, where many criticized the politician for his overt attempt at self-promotional photo-ops in the midst of a national security crisis in the administrative capital of Europe.

Between March 22nd and March 23rd, 2016, dozens of photoshopped images showing Salvini blended into iconic photographs throughout modern history emerged on Twitter under the hashtag #SalviniOvunque^[5] (English: Salvini Everywhere) and #Sciacallo (English: Jackal), in a similar vein to the previous satires of other politicians' tactless attempts at photo-ops during the times of hardship, including British prime minister David Cameron's Crimean Crisis phone call with Barack Obama, as well as former French president Nicolas Sarkozy's Berlin Wall Gaffe and Charlie Hebdo attack rally.

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