If you’d like to know more about them, an article in the AP isn’t the right place to find more. But it is a good way to let people know what the US is funding in the world.
I'm not arguing or disagreeing with you -- genuinely curious about your perspective.
The most damning bit in her Wikipedia article is this: "In 1992 Meloni joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist political party founded in 1946 by followers of Italian fascism. She later became the national leader of Student Action, the student movement of the National Alliance (AN), a post-fascist party that became the MSI's legal successor in 1995 and moved towards national conservatism."
But that does not necessarily mean she is herself a fascist, but rather that she was a member of various organizations that were originally founded by fascists then later moderated (roughly similar to the French FN/RN).
On the other hand, lots of people you could fairly describe as fascist or far-right claim to not be so, so it's possible she genuinely is and the moderate turn of these parties is a sham. As someone who doesn't follow Italian politics I have no way of knowing which is the case.
The reason those journalists were targeted is because they infiltrated one of those organizations and found that they were in fact still very much fascist behind closed doors (or at the very least racist and antisemitic).
As long as the executive doesn't control the judges, or insist on carrying a two speed justice, you can't really be fascist country.
Ergo a fascist party is one which is at least nationalist, if not ethnonationalist, and insist on curbing the rule of law : X should be less equal than Y in front of the law (assuming the same social class).
According to Wikipedia: "It is characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy."
Most of these elements are not directly related to antisemitism or racism.
Inane.
It was an atheism joke.
But fairly niche outside of that.
But she didn't have even this excuse of social pressure, did she ?
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-plays-down-her...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/12/matteo-salvini...
Salvini's ties to Russia of course go way beyond a couple Aeroflot tickets: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/salvini...
Concerning why this happened, you seem to know exactly why this happened. I for one am happy to be informed whether this is corruption, fascist crackdown, some unknown italian law that makes it all okay, actually the work of the previous government or maybe these journalists were actually baby kidnappers, whatever. That's pretty much why we need to read an article