<nettime> italian fascism in '22

[Alex Foti <alex.foti@gmail.com>]

Dear Felix and everybody,

i shall try to keep it brief and simple. you know the facts. meloni
won the elections and will head the first neofascist government since
mussolini was left hanging in loreto square in the spring of '45. this
is a political disaster for the whole of europe, not just
spaghettiland.

like in 1994 (berlusconi) and 2018 (salvini), neoliberal technocratic
governments put rightwing governments in power (berlusconi and
salvini). similarly, you can't explain the rise to power of fratellis
from less than 5% four years ago without the draghi government, much
admired abroad but unloved in italy for its antisocial agenda (no
minimum wage, high youth unemployment, fossil transition). meloni
stayed in the opposition during the covid pandemic and this has
brought her squadraccia all the votes of the novax nomaskers, reopen
the economy and old people dying be damned.

meloni is to bannon and trump, what salvini is to putin and lepen. she
is atlanticist and supports the war in ukraine. so she won't have
problems from washington. her problems might come from brussels (von
der leyen has already warned her not to go the way of hungary - not
that it did much good at the polls). however she is a naziliberista,
combining a conservative economic agenda with an identitarian social
agenda, so she is trying not to fuck up on the fiscal front. somebody
from the bank of italy or similar financial figure will get the
treasure to keep the italian bourgeoisie on board and keep the
commission happy. in fact, in a spectacular betrayal of democracy,
industrial and banking elites endorsed meloni in their annual
gathering at cernobbio on the como lake in august: some international
investors were shocked. her noises about renegotiating the recovery
and resilience plan will probably come to nothing. she wants to
project respectability (much like early mussolini who stuck to gold
and wore the top hat).

so how fascist is she and her gang of camerati? a lot. she embraces
the unholy trinity of dio, patria, famiglia as she has repeated in
public a zillion times, most famously at congress of vox, the
francoist political formation. she became popular thanks to a meme (io
sono giorgia, sono una madre, sono cristiana, sono italiana) and her
bestselling memoir. she is a neomedieval communitarian who loves
tolkien and atreju of the never ending story (we ll never stop paying
for the sins of the 80s). her avowed enemy is gender ideology and
lgbtq people. she is a christian fascist who wants to attack abortion,
similarly to what fundamentalist supreme court has done in the states.
her inner circle is composed of three roman sections who were the
right faction of alleanza nazionale, the earlier right-wing
postfascist party with the same fascist flame in the symbol. her
righhand man, crosetto, used to lead fascist raids in the 70s. another
sponsor of hers, milanese fascist larussa had to reign in his brother
(another politician) because he did the fascist salute in a funeral
last week.

will there be resistance to fratellismo? milano held and is pretty
much the only place with where the centerleft still has a majority
(the city spawned then crushed fascism - milano will stay antifa not
matter what). high school have stared occupying in protest against the
new government. the 5star movement is now a southern league thanks for
its leftist welfare program (42% in naples). the rest of italy is
meloni's monopoly (salvini is dethroned, berlusconi did good but is
going to the grave). the red-green alliance underperformed at 3.5%
nationally, but scored 6-7% in milano, torino, bologna, firenze. an
afro-italian unionist and ilaria cucchi (who managed to put
carabinieri under trial when they killed her brother) will enter
parliament - slivers of hope in darkness.

however the tendency is for liberals but also to the radical left to
underestimate what's going on, with many saying she'll last only
months and that italian democracy is not in danger. women, blacks,
muslims and queers have a lot of reasons to worry and union and
climate activists too. she ll try to repeal citizenship income,
restrict right to strike and go fossil and nuclear. her party will
control police, defence and the ministry of the interior. expect more
people dying in custody and random racist killings like the horrible
one in civitanova marche where Alika Ogorchukwu was strangled by a
white man under the eyes (and cellphones) of passersby who did nothing
to stop the homicide (more than ten minutes and nobody lifted a finger
to save him).

she is a rabid nationalist who s a threat to modern italian society.
dont leave us alone with her.

baci,

alex
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: