E.U. did extremists a favor by abandoning Italy on immigration

A deplorable tactic, it goes without saying — but Italy's partners in the European Union aren't blameless. When they left Italy alone to deal with the refugee crisis, they did the country's extremists a great favor. It's a choice they may come to regret.

Last week police arrested a Nigerian drug-dealer for allegedly killing a young girl and hiding her dismembered body in two suitcases. Days later, in an alleged act of revenge, a far-right extremist went on a shooting rampage, injuring six African immigrants. Parts of the center-right coalition, which is leading in the polls and could win an outright majority, responded with the race card.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the xenophobic Northern League, said uncontrolled immigration was to blame. The extremist arrested for the shootings had links with the League, which he represented in a local election last year — a connection the party should be ashamed of. And it's doubly offensive for Salvini in effect to blame immigrants for the attack, when immigrants were the victims.

Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister and leader of Forza Italia, also piled on. He pledged to deport 600,000 illegal immigrants, saying this was a "social time bomb ready to explode." Frans Timmermans, first vice president of the European Commission, condemned the shootings, rightly calling them "a willful attack on our most fundamental values." Yet to many voters these words from Europe will ring hollow. Italians feel that the rest of the E.U. turned a blind eye to their struggle to manage the inflow of migrants from Africa.

FROM AN EDITORIAL ON BLOOMBERG VIEW