VIDEO captures the weird moment an Italian mayor tackles a local weather change protester as he tried to cover the town hall in paint.
Dario Nardella, mayor of Florence, may be seen in the video charging away mid-interview to bodily manhandle an environmental activist.
Nardella, 47, who has been mayor of the Italian city since 2014, seems suitably trendy in a leather jacket and chinos as he confronts the protester.
Earlier footage exhibits him chatting with digital camera on the historic Piazza della Signoria when he spots an activist behind him making an attempt to vandalise the 13-century Palazzo Vecchio, which homes Florence’s city hall.
All of the sudden, he turns round and sprints off in the direction of the scene, where a younger man is turning a fireplace extinguisher crammed with orange paint on the constructing’s historic partitions.
Nardella shoves the man till he puts down the hearth extinguisher, getting in his face to confront him as the protester is led away by a policeman.
In Italian, he shouts: “What the f*** are you doing, what the f*** are you doing?” at the shocked man.
The mayor, who represents Italy’s Democratic Get together, was later pictured getting involved in the cleanup to remove the paint from the walls with an influence hose.
He might be overheard muttering: “Barbarians, uncivilised,” in accordance with studies within the Italian publication Republicca.
Footage of the bespectacled mayor in his leather jacket crouched down in anguish in front of the paint-smeared wall, went viral on Italian social media, and memes comparing him to Superman have been created.
One meme exhibits him making an attempt to carry up the famously crooked Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Cops say two activists, aged 23 and 32, have been detained following the stunt.
Both are believed to have hyperlinks to the Ultima Generazione (Last Era) group, which has carried out a variety of comparable protests in current months to protest what they see as a scarcity of motion to combat climate change.
Among the stunts carried out, they have coated Van Gogh’s famous Sunflowers with pea soup, and thrown mashed potatoes over a Monet portray.
Others have glued their palms to well-known artworks and blocked off busy roads.
The group claimed Friday’s actions got here in response to the Italian finances amendments which would have reduce numerous environmentally dangerous subsidies.
Nardella later took to Twitter, branding the activists “barbarians”.
He wrote: “The attack on art, culture and wonder, that are helpless in the face of violence and that are created for the great of humanity can by no means justify the battle for a cause, even probably the most acceptable.”
And he slammed the apparent hypocrisy of the local weather change protesters because the cleansing operation to remove the paint required the losing of hundreds of litres of water.
He added: “As regards to the surroundings and drought, more than 5,000 litres of water have been consumed to wash up Palazzo Vecchio from the ‘environmental blitz’. Five thousand.”
