Why the upcoming Italian elections should worry us, yet Italy might have more democratic anti-bodies than one might think

Fingers crossed ! Could you say a bit about what “right-of-right” means, and the basis of its electoral support? I’m assuming some mix of Christian nationalism, anti-immigrant rhetoric and residual nostalgia for fascism, but I don’t know how that would translate into policy.

JQ
I don’t see how there could be any “residual nostalgia for fascism”. Hardly anybody is that old.

Re: nostalgia of fascism: Meloni is the leader of FdI, that is literally the reborn fascist party (italian costitution forbids the fascist party, but in the 50s some ex fascists founded a new party, the MSI; the constitutional court ruled that as long as they played by democratic rules it was ok; said MSI decades later was renamed in FdI).
That said, FdI has been in government with Berlusconi and Lega all the times Berlusconi won the elections, and I have no reason to think they ate actually more right wing than Lega. The real problem is just that if they win too big they can basically rewrite the constitution, that might happen because of the first past the post part of the voting system plus the fact that the left is divided in 3 different coalition, so with 45% of the votes the right might get 2/3 of the seats, that in tun mean that they can change the constitution without the need for a referendum.
Meloni has clearly stated that she wants to turn Italy in a presidential republic.

@Brett 2: the whole point of the check and balance is that they maximize democratic action and make the politicians more accountable to the public, because it is more difficult for them to just win big once and put forward changes that are impossible or very difficult to undo.
With a first past the post system, or a presidential system, a large part of the voters are simply ignored, and this is not accountability.

MisterMr said “With a first past the post system, or a presidential system, a large part of the voters are simply ignored, and this is not accountability.”

“Neoliberalism succeeded in elevating open markets above national polities. But now, we are witnessing a backlash in the form of nativist populism. Trump’s election and Brexit were the opening shots, but ethno-nationalism has since surfaced just about everywhere. (Though ethno-nationalists have not yet gained power in Europe outside of Poland and Hungary, they could soon do so in Italy). And so, like Gerstle, Thompson must leave open the question of whether democracy can survive.”

From “What’s Breaking Democracy?”
(Article wiven around 2 book review.)
Sep 16, 2022
WILLIAM H. JANEWAY

Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era, Oxford University Press, 2022.
Helen Thompson, Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century, Oxford University Press, 2022.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/democratic-dysfunction-neoliberalism-energy-economics-william-h-janeway-2022-09

My reaction to your points 1 and 3 is: although I don’t know that you’re right about these things I certainly can’t say that you’re wrong about them, but what’s more important is this: suppose you’re right that this is the way things are in Italy, how strong is your basis for supposing that these things are not about to change?

and this –
‘ROME — Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who is likely to be the next prime minister of Italy, used to dress up as a hobbit.

As a youth activist in the post-Fascist Italian Social Movement, she and her fellowship of militants, with nicknames like Frodo and Hobbit, revered “The Lord of the Rings” and other works by the British writer J.R.R. Tolkien. They visited schools in character. They gathered at the “sounding of the horn of Boromir” for cultural chats. She attended “Hobbit Camp” and sang along with the extremist folk band Compagnia dell’Anello, or Fellowship of the Ring.

All of that might seem some youthful infatuation with a work usually associated with fantasy-fiction and big-budget epics rather than political militancy. But in Italy, “The Lord of the Rings” has for a half-century been a central pillar upon which descendants of post-Fascism reconstructed a hard-right identity, looking to a traditionalist mythic age for symbols, heroes and creation myths free of Fascist taboos.
“I think that Tolkien could say better than us what conservatives believe in,” said Ms. Meloni, 45. More than just her favorite book series, “The Lord of the Rings” was also a sacred text. “I don’t consider ‘The Lord of the Rings’ fantasy,” she said’.

Tolkien’s agrarian universe, full of virtuous good guys defending their idyllic, wooded kingdoms from hordes of dark and violent orcs, has for decades prompted scholarly, and convention center, debate over the author’s racial and ideological biases, his view of modernity and globalization. More recently, his works have also provided a fertile shire for nationalists who see themselves in his heroic archetypes’.
(from the NYT)

You’re white and cis though, not to put too fine a point on it. Easy to be complacent when you’re not on the fascists’ target list.

I’m being as careful as I can not to make assumptions – I know you’re cis but white is just inference. And I do understand whistling in the dark – I’m having to do some of that myself here in the U.K. given the track record of our new PM – but it’s hard to avoid the impression of complacency when you’re posting on a liberal blog with a headline of “why I’m not as worried as everyone tells me I should be”.

Clearly I am still rubbish at this stuff, in spite of all the years in the UK…what I meant is simply that the coalition is not “right of centre” (i.e. only moderately right), nor right, period, but even further to the right, i.e. right-of-right.

The usual English-language expression would be ‘far right’ or ‘extreme right’–which, to be fair, is what I immediately understood you to be meaning.

But if I am right, then 1 and 3 are very much about resilience in the face of shocks rather than about how things are here and now, so…

You wrote that ‘Italy never got rid of Democrazia Cristiana‘. I wouldn’t know about that, but what I do know is that ‘Italy never has got rid of them’ is not much of a basis for concluding ‘Italy never will get rid of them’.

What Engels said @26. Being on a left/liberal blog shouldn’t mean always having to say you are sorry. Some charity should have been given to your obviously well-intended remarks.

Re “I am still rubbish at this stuff, in spite of all the years in the UK.” I’d just like to point out that you’ve been there long enough to pick up some uniquely Brit expressions, like “rubbish at this stuff”! Brava!

@roger gathman 30

In reality the crisis in Ukraine has nothing to do with this, among the main right wing parties in Italy FdI is the most pro nato, pro sanctions, pro sending weapons to Ukraine, and is the one that is expected to win big.

For various reasons we had various “bipartisan” governments in Italy in the last 10 years, and FdI was the only party that kept out of these bipartisan governments, so it will get a lot of votes for this, largely draining other right wing parties.

On the other side, on the left, the total of the votes is the same of the right, but it is broken between 3 “coalitions”, and in italian electoral law coalitions are what counts for first past the post, so even if the “left” (in the broadest term) has the same votes than the right, the right is going to win big.

I think that the interpretation that this boom of the far right is due to the international situation is a self delusion of those who are against the sanctions and the sales of weapons in Ukraine, in reality this is not the case.

33; Both Berlusconi and Salvini have mentioned their discaccord with the sanctions on Russia. It is easy to envision this happening after the election of the far right. The playing field, with EU countries failing significantly to do anything about the EU power system over the two decades of Putin’s rule, and now doing something drastic that loads pain on the middle and working classes, is set up for gains by the right over centrists who really have nothing to say except: infinite freedom, man.

AND
again –
about ‘the biggest issue in Europe – the energy crisis’ –

‘Europe knows Putin must be resisted at all cost.
It will be expensive and messy but the challenges aren’t going to stop us from starting on the path to a Putin free and reduced fossil fueled future’.
and
‘Well – the strategic error and reliance on free market principles for gas supplies has rocked the German political class, shaken up industry and panicked residential consumers.

So – we are rolling up sleeves, turning down lights, getting on with terminal construction and in the meantime everyone will suffer what we must. This will be stoically endured by some and not so much by others. But fighting over who is the political top dog in the wrong column won’t provide a solution although it does make for fun talking head sport on the Sunday night TV.

No one wants Russian mercenaries shooting innocents and shelling EU towns, villages & cities for sport. We’re not having it.

Haven’t heard calls yet for the sacrifice of Ukrainischen territory to make Russia happy, but Germany and the EU must deal with the new cost of heating and electricity.

Happily, we aren’t confused by Fox News over who caused those costs to go up’.
(top comments from European Readers of the NY Times)

@35

They did, but this became a burden for them in the elections. Meloni, expected to get about 25% of the vote, repeatedly said that she is very pro nato; Salvini is around 13% of the vote and made some pro russian noises but had to negate them because they are vote losers, Berlusconi recently said that Putin attacked Ukraine just because he wanted to put nice people in power, but he only gets 7% of the votes.
Polls say that 75% of italians agree with sanctions against Russia.

It is possible that, after the right gets in power, they will shift more to a pro russian stance, but this is not the same of voters voting them because this is what they want; if Meloni in particular does she will betray a lot of what she said during the campaign.

Also: rising prices of energy also hit small business a lot, perhaps more than they hurt the working class proper. Italy is a small business dominated country, and this is what the right (in particular the Lega) represent.

And so:
As for all Right Wing Nationalists the demonization of other countries has shaped the career of Giorgia Meloni. For years she has been describing the EU as a “German-French superstate” that is guided solely by the will of those in power in Berlin and Paris –
and about her “special aversion against Germany” she writes in her autobiography that ‘at the end of her school days, she surprisingly was tested in German. Theme: Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”.
Since then, their rejection of Germany has only intensified. At a recent election campaign event in Milan, for example, she attributed the failure of the negotiations on an EU-wide gas price cap to the Netherlands – and Germany. The Netherlands are against it, according to Meloni, because they are the location of the gas exchange. And Germany, because “it is the richest and can therefore afford higher prices than the others.
BUT –
the next day, in an election campaign debate, she followed up with the contradictory argument: ‘Germany pays 30 percent less for Russian gas than the other EU countries and therefore has no interest in the gas price cap’.
AND while other populists such as Matteo Salvini from the right-wing Lega or politicians from the Five Star Movement have so far relied on resentment towards Germany in order to just collect votes, Meloni is personally convinced that Germany is the source of –
all evil in the EU.
BUT
she was never “anti-German,” she said in the latest interviews.

On the other hand in the her program for the 2014 European elections she declared that Italy had to withdraw from the EU fiscal pact, which “in the name of the austerity policy promoted by Germany – will force Italy to carry out ‘blood-and-tear manoeuvres’ for at least 20 years ‘’which will “bring Italy’s economy to its knees” and “intensify” the impoverishment of families.

BUT
meanwhile she has moved away from such demands too – as well as from the idea of leaving the euro because – somehow she became aware, that Italy is a lot better off with the creditworthiness of the euro and the economical protection by the EU.
SO –
her new promise is therefore to change the EU from within to Italy’s advantage.
For example, by relaxing the stability pact and –
(Attention joke!)
‘Helping in order to devalue the Euro down to the level of the old and beautiful Italian
Liras.

So –
PLEASE
https://youtu.be/a0LSVoTdunI

since your argument is that it is indefensible because it is indefensible, you must be right.

The statement (1) ‘It is indefensible’ and the statement (2) ‘It is indefensible because it is indefensible’ are not synonymous. Statement (1) represents my position. Statement (2) is not an accurate representation of my position, and if you genuinely think it is then I must not have made myself clear to you and would appreciate any suggestions about how I could have been clearer.

So I am not sure where the “indefensibility” comes in.

Vladimir Putin’s decision in February 2022 to send Russian troops into Ukraine has made the situation worse, not better, and it was easily predictable at the time that this would be so. His decision caused death, destruction, and other suffering on a greater scale than had been taking place previously, and there was no basis at the time for supposing that it could result in benefits that could justify it.

If you disagree, and think his decision was defensible, then you should be able to explain how it could be defended. Explaining the reasons why you think that other decisions made at other times by other people were bad decisions does nothing to justify Vladimir’s decision in February of this year to send Russian troops into Ukraine.

@42
‘since your argument is that it is indefensible because it is indefensible, you must be right’.

For ure he is – right – as his argument actually wasn’t ‘that it is indefensible because it is indefensible –
BUT that there are people HERE – who take the position that if European countries had given formal recognition to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, and pressured the Ukrainian government to do the same, then Vladimir Putin would not have taken the decision to send the Russian army into Ukraine, and, further (and indefensibly), that it is therefore the leadership of those European countries, rather than Vladimir himself, who bear the primary responsibility for his decision.

And let me repeat that in other words:
It’s ALL the War Criminals fault – and we just have to tell that the confused people over and over again – as giving up to any blackmail by the Monster NEVER will be an option.
And as even Italian Fascists seem to understand that…
truth –
why don’t we –
ALL?

This piece might be a good place to start:

https://socialeurope.eu/the-life-and-death-of-italian-centrism

I read that with interest and I am certainly not sufficiently well informed to challenge what it says. However, if I understood it correctly, the structure of the case being made is: the pattern of Italian politics has been largely determined by the fact that a great many leading political figures have thought in , while few or none have thought in . If this is true, the fact that it has been this way in the past is not much of a basis for concluding that it will be so in the future.

I have learned that I should be able find some books by Paul Ginsborg about Italy in a library, so I will probably take a look at them.

However, if I understood it correctly, the structure of the case being made is: the pattern of Italian politics has been largely determined by the fact that a great many leading political figures have thought in , while few or none have thought in .

Whoops! What I meant was ‘However, if I understood it correctly, the structure of the case being made is: the pattern of Italian politics has been largely determined by the fact that a great many leading political figures have thought in [this way], while few or none have thought in [that way]. ‘

John Ganz (https://johnganz.substack.com/p/some-thoughts-on-italy) has observed what he calls “a surprising casualness and indifference to Italy’s Fascist past”: “One man I spoke to, about my age, who grew up in traditionally red Tuscany, heart of the anti-fascist resistance, spoke of gradual decay. The culprit for him was the Berlusconi years, both its “normalization” of the far-right parties that formed a part of his ruling coalition but also its unrelenting, almost carnivalesque atmosphere of irresponsibility and cynicism. With Berlusconi it became impossible to take seriously the past, and almost anything else: corruption, lies, criminality.”

This seems an important issue. I remember that about 20 years ago, Berlusconi publicly made remarks to the effect that Mussolini wasn’t really a dictator and he didn’t really do bad things:

”That was a much more benign dictatorship,” Mr. Berlusconi was quoted as saying. ”Mussolini did not murder anyone. Mussolini sent people on holiday to internal exile.”

Berlusconi suffered no repercussions, neither domestically nor internationally, for this incredibly trivialization of Italian fascism and Mussolini’s crimes (which include poison gas warfare and other atrocities in Africa, already then illegal under international law).

If a German politician were engaged in such flatant Verharmlosung if not outright denial of Nazi crimes, there is no question that their political career would be over, or otherwise they would become international pariahs. Not so with Italy and Berlusconi. Of course there was some criticism, but mostly from the left, nothing from conservatives. But worse: Berlusconi was awarded an honor from none other than the Anti Defamation Leage shortly after having insulted Mussolini’s victims, in recognition of his fighting against antisemitism – I kid you not.

Again it is impossible to imagine anything like this if Berlusconi had been German. One really has to wonder how Italian fascism got this reputaion of somehow not really being fascism, how it became acceptable in polite company to turn Mussolini into some kind of nice if somewhat paternalistic uncle – and how it became acceptable to vote for a “postfascist” party that openly celebrates Mussolini as its spiritual forebear.

MrMister – not to single him out in any sense – provides a summary “of the results, distinguishing the vote percentages from the seats because the first past the post system had a big impact”. The summary has on the left, the vote percentage, and on the right, the seat count. This is pretty much the conventional way of showing results. But does it actually help show the impact of the electoral system? Can ordinary people actually sum up the various seat numbers and calculate seat percentages in their head, to see whether 237 seats is close or far from 43% of seats? Does the actual number of seats matter in election results at all – surely the thing that is interesting is who has has more than 50% of seats, not whether they have 67 or 356 seats.

So why is not conventional to compare apples and apples – vote percentages and seat percentages?

(I think if we did that, we might get offended more frequently at thresholds too, which basically arbitrarily decide not to count some people’s votes and can deliver wrong-side majorities, which should not be less offensive because of why they were delivered..)

FdI is traditionally pro-nato because it is an old party, which was strongly anti-USSR during the cold war.

According to the Wikipedia account, FdI was founded in 2012.

Because the Communists had a hand in it the italian costitution grants a lot of rights that are quite progressive (e.g. the italian health service cannot discriminate against illegal immigrants because the constitution speaks of people residing in Italy, not of citiziens, in the relevant articles).

Which articles are those? I can only find Article 32, saying this:

The Republic safeguards health as a fundamental right of the individual and as a collective interest, and guarantees free medical care to the indigent.

No one may be obliged to undergo any health treatment except under the provisions of the law. The law may not under any circumstances violate the limits imposed by respect for the human person.

It’s true that doesn’t mention citizenship, but it’s not as unambiguous as, for example, ‘Health services shall be available to all people residing in Italy.’

It also had a lot of check and balance to avoid the premier to get too much powers,

I can only find four articles (89, 92, 93, and 96) which explicitly mention the President of the Council of Ministers, and they don’t seem to do much to limit the position’s powers; on the other hand, they don’t seem to grant many powers to the position in the first place. I suspect both of these things are true of a good many constitutions–I don’t notice anything special about the Italian provisions either way.

“a surprising casualness and indifference to Italy’s Fascist past”: I think it is true if you compare Italy to Germany, but then perhaps it is Germany that is the outlier

Even in Germany, candour about the past is not as uniform as might be hoped: consider the experience of Anna Rosmus, who ended up emigrating because people harassed her for her historical research:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Rosmus

This makes M. an enormous shitman, but he wasn’t as unhinged as H. was, so when you compare the two he was less bad.

‘Not as bad as the Nazis’: not as dry as the Atacama Desert, not as deep as the Marianas Trench.