A 15-year-old boy who stood up to far-right activists during violent protests in Rome has won plaudits across Italy.

The boy, Simone, was filmed speaking out in defence of minorities on Tuesday, when hundreds of far-right activists and residents took to the streets of Torre Maura, a Rome suburb. They were demonstrating against the temporary rehousing of 70 Roma people at a reception centre in the area.

While one of the leaders of the neo-fascist CasaPound party was telling journalists that local people did not want the Roma around, Simone raised his hand and intervened, saying: “I don’t think like you.

“What you are doing here in Torre Maura is exploiting the anger of the people. You turn this anger into votes, for your interests.

“This thing of always going against minorities is not OK with me. When you then talk about European funds to invest in the neighbourhood, I think those funds must be spent on everyone. No one should be left behind. Neither the Italians, nor the Roma, nor the Africans should be abandoned.”

The video of Simone went viral within a few hours and was picked up by the Italian media. Some newspapers described him as the “new hero of the left”.

Laura Boldrini, a former president of the Italian parliament and the leader of the opposition Free and Equal party, said Simone had told Italy’s 21st-century fascists “that the distress of the inhabitants of the suburbs should not be exploited”.

The protests started on Tuesday afternoon after the local authorities announced a bus would transfer 70 Roma to a reception centre in Torre Maura, an eastern suburb of the Italian capital. Within a few hours, about 300 protesters gathered in front of the entrance of the building, setting fire to cars and bins.

In the afternoon, the far-right Forza Nuova party said in a statement: “We are ready to raise black flags and the Italian flag against the invasion and ethnic substitution.”

In a video published by la Repubblica, protesters were shown trampling on food destined for the Roma, and someone could be heard shouting: “They must die of hunger.”

On Wednesday, Rome’s city council, which is controlled by the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), appeared to capitulate and announced it had decided to relocate the Roma in another area.

In July last year, the far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, vowed to turn “words into action” in his drive to expel thousands of Roma from Italy, and called for a new census of Roma and for all non-Italian Roma to be removed from the country.

In February, Italy’s intelligence agency warned in a briefing to the country’s parliament that attacks on immigrants and others from minority backgrounds could increase in the run-up to May’s European elections.

The number of racially motivated attacks has risen sharply in Italy, tripling between 2017 and 2018, when the League entered government in coalition with the anti-establishment M5S.