July 30, 2021 - 3:29pm
The Brothers of Italy, the national-conservative party led by Giorgia Meloni, has surpassed Matteo Salvini’s League for the first time. They now lead the polls by a small margin, with 20.4 per cent of potential votes.
In this head-to-head competition between the two main parties of the Italian right, there is an important question to consider. The League started out as a regionalist and independentist party and was then re-fashioned into a national party by Matteo Salvini. Brothers of Italy, on the other hand, was created in 2012 following a split of The People of Freedom, Silvio Berlusconi’s party, in opposition to the latter’s support for Mario Monti’s government, and has been a staunchly national party from day one.
How did this big shift happen? Quite simply, the Brothers of Italy have increasingly gained credibility over the course of the past two years. Now, the choice of many right-wing voters — particularly in the south of the country — is Giorgia Meloni’s party.
This isn’t the only reason for Brothers of Italy’s rise. To better understand this phenomenon, consider the last national election of March 2018. Then the Brothers of Italy gained 4.4 per cent of the vote, and entered parliament with a handful of MPs. Giorgia Meloni faced an uphill struggle: at the start of the first Conte government — comprised of the League and the populist Five Star Movement — polls showed Brothers of Italy in decline.
The party appeared destined to play a marginal role for years to come. Matteo Salvini dominated the Right-wing stage, skilfully managing to sway many voters from the ranks of the Five Star Movement towards the League. The result? The League was Italy’s leading party, with almost 40 per cent of the votes, following the European elections of May 26th, 2019.
But it all went wrong for Salvini when he decided to pull the plug on the Conte I government — a move that caused the League to lose the political centre stage and kickstarted a slow but steady shift in votes towards Brothers of Italy. This trend continued throughout the entire duration of the Conte II government, supported by the Five Star Movement and the parties of the centre-Left, most notably the Democratic Party.
On February 13, 2021, the new government led by technocrat Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), took office. It enjoys the support of practically every party in parliament, including the League, with the exception of Brothers of Italy. Being the only opposition party has allowed Giorgia Meloni to capture the attention of Italians who are sceptical of Draghi.
It’s been suggested that Meloni’s cautious approach to Covid-19 vaccines contributed massively to the party’s rise. I’m less convinced. Especially given that the portion of the electorate most sceptical of vaccines supported the League and Brothers of Italy to start with.
Ultimately, the position of the Brothers of Italy on the vaccine is far from clear-cut. Many leading exponents of the party have spoken out in favour of the vaccination campaign (Giorgia Meloni was vaccinated), but are against compulsory vaccination and the introduction of a Green Pass that will require people to be vaccinated in order to enter restaurants and other public spaces.
This ambiguity has allowed Meloni to fend off criticism of encouraging anti-vaxxers without squandering the support of the sceptical crowd. Ultimately, however, Meloni’s success should largely be seen as a consequence of the latest plot twist in Italian politics, which landed her in an enviable position: being the only viable opposition to Mario Draghi.
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SubscribeI used to know Italy very well, back decades ago, what a wonderful country. But then a pathology set in and they stopped having children, and then began letting migrants in instead. This issue is not just a Western pathology, Japan and Korea, and now China too (although with its once child laws) and to me means people are just not taught of the duty to family and country. It is sad. My Generation, Boomers, got it in our heads that life was for one’s self. That chasing our interests was the primary importance. We have become old artists with pets now, as a generation.
The disconnect between being part of society fully was lost. In old fashioned morality it was seen as the duty of good people to leave something in the world when they passed, and leaving good children behind to keep the society working was seen as the primary one. As we age it is utterly selfish to get our pensions, live off society with out producing for it – this was the function of children. The circle. Society raised you, you then worked at producing goods, and then your children produce and you can be idle for your old age, as their child will when they finish their working life, and so society works, a circle, and is healthy.
Yes ten thousand times to this. As someone sympathetic to the claims of right wing Liberalism – capital L, free market, patriotic – it has taken me some time to realise the superior wisdom of the Conservatives, but it is coming home to me with increasing force. Life lived purely for individual fulfilment too easily becomes, through the unwisdom of the isolated ego, a quest for immediate gratification which sacrifices society, and with society the really profound and durable joys of being human. This delusion survived partly because we let the socialist idiots define “society” as the bossy, hostile state when in fact it is the living culture of the ethnic community, to which we more willingly contribute and for which we are prepared to lay down our lives. The self is nothing without a context and the real context is ethno-cultural. “Class” is not the division but the articulation of society and the left’s moronic attempt to make it the lodestar of identity was just the first step into the abyss of petty resentment which is now engulfing us.
More and more people becoming “citizens of nowhere” is a tragedy.
The wealthy can afford some compensations, but must surely “rot from the inside” also.
The real problem is money – we have monetised everything, and the family and the bedrock of society, have become a) unaffordable and b) by comparison with all the other things I could be doing – holidays, stuff, entertainment – less immediately attractive. That’s not socialism, or capitalism, it’s just making money a substitute for everything truly worth living for. We know the price of everything, and the value of nothing
Draghi is the ruler imposed by the imperial EU on its colony Italy. Opposition to Draghi is opposition to the imperial power and a cry for freedom.