What’s Happening in Italy Is Scary, and It’s Spreading
What’s Happening in Italy Is Scary, and It’s Spreading
What a difference a few months can make.
Ahead of Italy’s election last fall, Giorgia Meloni was widely depicted as a menace. By this summer, everything — her youthful admiration for Benito Mussolini, her party’s links to neofascists, her often extreme rhetoric — had been forgiven. Praised for her practicality and support for Ukraine, Ms. Meloni has established herself as a reliable Western partner, central to Group of 7 meetings and NATO summits alike. A visit to Washington, which takes place on Thursday, seals her status as a valued member of the international community.
But the comforting tale of a populist firebrand turned pragmatist overlooks something important: what’s been happening in Italy. Ms. Meloni’s administration has spent its first months accusing minorities of undermining the triad of God, nation and family, with dire practical consequences for migrants, nongovernmental organizations and same-sex parents. Efforts to weaken anti-torture legislation, stack the public broadcaster with loyalists and rewrite Italy’s postwar constitution to increase executive power are similarly troubling. Ms. Meloni’s government isn’t just nativist but has a harsh authoritarian streak, too.
For Italy, this is bad enough. But much of its significance lies beyond its borders, showing how the far right can break down historic barriers with the center right. Allies of Ms. Meloni are already in power in Poland, also newly legitimized by their support for Ukraine. In Sweden, a center-right coalition relies on the nativist Sweden Democrats’ support to govern. In Finland, the anti-immigrant Finns Party went one better and joined the government. Though these parties, like many of their European counterparts, once rejected membership in NATO and the European Union, today they seek a place in the main Euro-Atlantic institutions, transforming them from within. In this project, Ms. Meloni is leading the way.
Since becoming prime minister, Ms. Meloni has certainly moderated her language. In official settings, she’s at pains to appear considered and cautious — an act aided by her preference for televised addresses rather than questioning by journalists. Yet she can also rely on colleagues in her Brothers of Italy party to be less restrained. Taking aim at one of the government’s main targets, L.G.B.T.Q. parents, party leaders have called surrogate parenting a “crime worse than pedophilia,” claiming that gay people are “passing off” foreign kids as their own. Ms. Meloni can appear aloof from such rhetoric, even suggesting unhappiness with its extremism. But her decisions in office reflect zealotry, not caution. The government extended a ban on surrogacy to criminalize adoptions in other countries and ordered municipalities to stop registering same-sex parents, leaving children in legal limbo.
[...]
Journalists, too, are under pressure. Sitting ministers have threatened — and in some cases pursued — a raft of libel suits against the Italian press in an apparent bid to intimidate critics. The public broadcaster RAI is also under threat, and not just because its mission for the next five years includes “promoting birthrates.” After its chief executive and leading presenters resigned, citing political pressure from the new government, it now resembles tele-Meloni, with rampant handpicking of personnel. The new director general, Giampaolo Rossi, is a pro-Meloni hard-liner who previously distinguished himself as an organizer of an annual Brothers of Italy festival. In the aftermath of his appointment, news outlets published scores of his anti-immigration social media posts and an interview with a neofascist journal in which he condemned the antifascist “caricature” hanging over public life
This is not his concern alone. Burying the antifascist legacy of the wartime Resistance matters deeply to the Brothers of Italy, a party rooted in its fascist forefathers’ great defeat in 1945. As prime minister, Ms. Meloni has referred to Italy’s postwar antifascist culture as a repressive ideology, responsible even for the murder of right-wing militants in the political violence of the 1970s. It’s not just history to be rewritten. The postwar Constitution, drawn up by the Resistance-era parties, is also ripe for revision: The Brothers of Italy aims to create a directly elected head of government and a strong executive freer of constraint. No matter its novelty, Ms. Meloni’s administration has every chance of imposing enduring changes in the political order.
[...]
Success is hardly inevitable. Ahead of last week’s election in Spain, Ms. Meloni addressed her nationalist ally Vox, declaring that the “patriots’ time has come”; in fact, its vote share fell and right-wing parties failed to secure a majority. Even so, Vox has become an enduring part of the electoral arena and a regular ally for conservatives. Despite their growing success, such forces have for years been painted as insurgent outsiders representing long-ignored voters. The more disturbing truth is that they are no longer parties of protest, but increasingly welcome in the mainstream. For proof, just look to Washington on Thursday.
What’s missing is what a huge difference the media makes. Once you control the media, you basically control the country, as can be seen in Hungary, Poland and Russia. All of these states have put in massive efforts to install their own cronies as media leadership, and you can see this happening in other countries too. Now it’s Italy.
Then on the other hand, you have billionaires that flood the people with cheap tabloid bullshit, of course to paralyze honest debates around things that actually matter (climate change, wealth inequality, etc) and instead refocus the populace on scape goats (LGBTQ rights, abortion, etc).
Far too often, „serious“ media fails to defend against the bullshit, and at some point will also report on these „issues“ as „this is what the country is talking about“. What they are ignoring is that this conversation is deliberately led by bad actors, and by picking it up they are legitimizing their positions.
Then they invite complete lunatics to discussion to provide a „balanced viewpoint“, when there is no balanced viewpoint to be had for certain issues: the earth is round, climate change is happening, and it is our fault. Period. There can be no further discussions on the facts.
The misinformation campaigns are massive, the astroturfing is massive, and is probably happening even here. It is too cheap and works too well to not do it.
Thank you for your write up. It's becoming harder and harder to stay up to date on all the new wannabe fascists in Europe.
I'll drop in with my thoughts on it in Germany. In Germany, the far right party is at 20% in recent opinion polls. Scary. But 60% of the potential right voters say they just vote them out of protest. It wouldn't be that hard for the other parties to turn that ship around, but I don't see anything happening. The big parties are following their utterly liberal ultra capitalist line, which of course makes people poorer, which generates a lot of displeasure in these uncertain times. People are looking for simple answers. And while "smash capitalism" would be the simple correct answer for 98% of people, sadly there is no party that propagates that. So "it's because of the immigrants, it's because of the dictators in the EU" from the right that gets fed to the people as a simple answer, and they get the vote.
But IMO, this protest vote only goes to the right because of a lack of alternatives. The problem is our left party is too busy with wokeness topics (which are important, sure, but they still just don't resonate in most people) and in fighting among themselves. So nobody votes for them as a protest as they absolutely lack any substance right now. And our left still has a "Russia problem" as they mostly emerged from the letters of eastern Germany. This is course doesn't help. So people vote for the right.
I still hope a new left party would emerge, but as long as there isn't, and as long as the big center-"left" party doesn't change course, I see the rights just getting stronger. Especially since the center rights adopt talking points from the far right, as they see it gets them votes.
Another interesting (and scary) fact is, that the several right parties in Europe formerly were totally against Europe. They still are, just not openly anymore. Now they learned that in order to destroy the EU, it's easier to get voted into it, closing ranks with all the other nationalists, and starting to dismantle it from within.
I'll just repeat what @superkret@lemmy.world said, build networks, maybe we gonna need them soon!
Religio-Fascists led by a megalomaniac took over India in 2014. People ignored their fascism and voted for religion :(
I can’t even remember the last time Italy hit the news for a positive thing, we’re doing pretty well with this streak tbh
The left has its responsibility in this. People are struggling with the bills at the end of the month. The left speaks of minorities and has a similar neoliberal economic view. The politics on minorities are important and the left have to keep them in their program/agenda. Adopt a real left economic view.
But, people don't care about you if you're talking about it in the news and debates. The left has to center their campaign around the daily struggles to speak to the people with the people language.
The greens parties have a similar issue. People know them for ecology and ? People don't know the other parts of the program of the greens parties. They have to stop speaking about ecology and begin with the other topics so people knows how they can help them with the end of the month.
These all need to connect with people again with the people language.
It's not something new that is spreading, it has been the case for over a century. We have always been ruled by corrupted politicians, they always lies during elections and then push for authoritarian measures that benefits the elites. People seem to realize this only when the party they don't like gets elected, "left" and "right" is a trick to keep these two up in power in a cycle. This Meloni scum is nothing new, they are a puppet of people who have been ruling the country since 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli
I feel like I have written this way too often within the past year, but… fascists doing fascist stuff
It has been happening all around Europe and the rest of the world. It seems you missed what the fuck is going on in the last couple years in world politics.
I sincerely believe that the right wing populism in Europe is the inevitable backlash to Angela Merkel's open door policy on immigration and "refuges" in the EU.
Gladio, a gift that keeps on giving.
classic eu
Italian here: she is not far right as our left it is not left. Meloni is the most pro immigration government in italy in decades. She open the border and we have a massive regular/irregular immigration. She simply lied to her voter base posing as anti immigration party. The far left and m5s were much more strict about new people entering the country. The left and the right in italy are pro capital and pro usa parties so we have mass immigration to lower wages. Both sides.
I’d say this swing to the hard right in Europe is partly the fault of the left. In many countries left wing parties were in power during the 80’s and 90’s. During their reign they failed to properly address the immigration and integration issues that came from the previous governments inviting lots of uneducated people over from North Africa and Turkey for cheap labor. People were already raising concerns that immigrants not integrating well could lead to problems. Yet the left would always put these people down as racists and then did nothing. Lo and behold thirty years later, 3rd gen immigrants from those countries lead the stats of unemployment, high school drop out and crime rates. Even if you correct those numbers for social economic backgrounds. Yes crime rates are overall falling but the crimes committed by these groups are very visible, like for example armed robberies, break-ins, blowing up ATMs, assault and even stabbings. Plus these immigrant youths who loiter all day and night make people feel unsafe in their own neighborhood since they often harass people and participate in vandalism. And the ranks of crime organizations are filled with these immigrants. It’s not really surprising that Europe is creeping to the right even the centrist liberal parties haven’t done enough to address those concerns, they probably made it even worse since all they cared about is the economy and the stock exchange and their tough on crime approach hardly did anything.