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In recent years, there have been several violent clashes between rightwing extremists and antifascists on the streets of Italy.
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- Author: Norberto Paredes
- Scroll, BBC News World
3 hours ago
“Italians are having fewer children, they are being replaced by other people,” Francesco Lollobrigida, Italy’s Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, said in a speech in April.
“We need to support more births, not ethnic replacement,” added Lollobrigida, a close ally and brotherinlaw of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The speech caused controversy and was considered racist and xenophobic.
Some have compared it to the rhetoric of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
“They take us back to the 1930s. Those are words that smack of white supremacy,” said Elly Schlein, leader of the centerleft opposition Democratic Party, who called the comments “disgusting.”
However, the “more Italian babies and fewer migrants” discourse has many adherents in Italy and is becoming increasingly common in the country’s political world, particularly in Meloni’s party circles, the Brothers of Italy (or Fratelli d’Italia FdI).
Founded in 2012, the Brothers of Italy have their political roots in the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which arose from the ashes of Mussolini’s fascism.
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The Brothers of Italy maintain the tricolor flame, the logo used by farright parties in the postwar period and believed to be the fire that burns on Mussolini’s tomb.
Racism, xenophobia and antiimmigration
While Meloni firmly rejects any connection of his party to fascism, critics argue that some of his government’s actions reflect neofascist tendencies.
John Foot, professor of modern Italian history at Bristol University, says it’s silly to think fascism has returned to Italy, but concedes the party has authoritarian tendencies.
“It’s a party that embraces racism, xenophobia, and antiimmigrant discourse, but that also came to power democratically and has always been within the democratic and constitutional system,” says the author of Blood and Power: The Ascension and Case”. of Italian Fascism (title in direct translation).
“You cannot say that he is a fascist, because he has no intention of abolishing democracy, nor will he take to the streets and kill people to achieve ends.”
The Brothers of Italy are one of the few parties to retain the logo of the postwar farright parties: the tricolor flame, often described as the fire burning on Mussolini’s grave.
But both Meloni’s party and its predecessors have softened their rhetoric since the 1990s. This has enabled them to become an established political force driving social change in the European Union’s (EU) third largest economy.
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Meloni wants to give the head of state more power and introduce a presidential system
“First they abandoned criticism of the free market, the European Union and NATO. Now they even support affiliation with the two institutions,” David Broder, a historian of the Italian extreme right and a professor at the University of Syracuse in Florence, told BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s Spanishlanguage service.
The author of Mussolini’s Grandson: Fascism in Contemporary Italy (title in direct translation) explains that another element in understanding the party’s rise to power is that it was the only opposition party for a year and a half prior to the last election.
Former Prime Minister Mario Draghi led a grand coalition government that included the centreleft Democratic Party, the antiestablishment Five Stars movement and the rightwing League, among others.
“The brothers in Italy had the opportunity to say, ‘We are the only opposition.’ “If you want to vote for a really rightwing alternative, we’re your only option,” says Broder.
It paid off to be one of the few parties to leave Draghi’s governing coalition.
The Brothers of Italy went from just 4.3% of the vote in the 2018 election to a 26% victory in the September 2022 election.
antiimmigration policy
Broder describes Italy as a country with great “political volatility”. So it’s predictable, he says, that the only real opposition to the Draghi government would get the most votes.
Since coming to power, the Brethren of Italy have pursued policies that have provoked controversy.
Before becoming prime minister, Meloni promised to block migrant boats crossing from North Africa to Italy.
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The key campaign promise that brought Giorgia Meloni to power was to prevent migrant boats from using Italy as a gateway to Europe.
Antiimmigration discourse has intensified since the government’s first months, although the aging of Italy’s population and the country’s low birth rate indicate a growing need for foreign workers.
To crack down on irregular immigration, Italy’s parliament in May passed the controversial Cutro decree, relating to the southern city of Calabria, where more than 90 people died in a shipwreck in February.
The new law restricts the special protection status that the Italian authorities can grant to immigrants who are not entitled to asylum and excludes access to language courses and legal advice in reception centres.
In February, lifeboats were prevented from carrying out several operations by NGOs.
The antiimmigration discourse in Italy is not limited to the extreme right.
Other parties, such as the Democrats, who were last in power in 2017, or the 5 Star Movement, which was in power in 2018, have also shown repressive attitudes towards migrants.
But Italy’s brothers have been the party that pushed through the most restrictive changes to the immigration system in recent years.
According to historian David Broder, Italian public opinion has a negative attitude towards immigration, which has increased in recent years because Italy has failed to successfully integrate ethnic minorities into society.
Surrogacy: “Worse Than Pedophilia”
Alongside migrants, the Italian LGBT community has become another focus of the Meloni government.
The Prime Minister has openly stated that she does not support adoption by samesex couples, claiming that a child “deserves the best”: “having a father and a mother”.
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Lesbian mothers protest in front of the Vatican against the annulment of their children’s birth certificates.
Although Italy is one of the few countries in Western Europe where samesex marriage is not yet regulated, according to various polls, the majority of Italians seem to be in favor of passing a law that would make it possible.
But marriage equality seems unlikely as long as Italy’s brothers are in power.
“Italy’s brothers started a culture war against sexual minorities and brought the issue of LGBT rights into the surrogacy debate,” explains historian David Broder.
“They’re trying to associate LGBT parenting with a much less popular idea: paying for a surrogate,” he says.
Members of Meloni’s party called surrogacy a crime “worse than pedophilia”.
In return, Meloni ordered municipalities to stop issuing birth certificates to samesex couples who use surrogacy.
The party also has a proposal, drafted by Meloni himself, to make the search for surrogate mothers abroad by Italians illegal, punishable by three months to two years in prison and a fine of between 600,000 and 1 million euros.
Plans to change the constitution
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Meloni was Italy’s youth minister in the fourth cabinet of the late Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Italy’s brothers also want to change the constitution.
Meloni presented plans in May to give the prime minister more powers and floated the idea of introducing a presidential system.
But the centreleft opposition opposes such reforms, fearing too much power will be concentrated in the hands of one individual.
After the fall of Benito Mussolini, the founding fathers of modern Italy wanted to avoid a concentration of power when establishing the current political system.
Another recent and controversial government measure was the abolition of unemployment benefits.
An estimated 169,000 families in Italy received a text message in late July telling them that the benefits they had enjoyed for the past four years would be abruptly discontinued the following month.
“Certainly, some of the measures taken by the Meloni government were controversial, but they weren’t that drastic either,” says Broder.
“Her success lies in the fact that she has become a widely recognized leader on the international stage.”
In an article in The New York Times, David Broder also mentioned Meloni’s efforts to weaken antitorture legislation and the fact that he had political allies on RAI (the country’s public radio and television station).
Despite the return of the far right to power in the country and the provocative title of his book on fascism in Italy today, David Broder does not believe the movement will return in the same way as before.
“There will be neither a regime nor a dictatorship, but we are witnessing something new in Italy and Europe: the convergence of historical parties that emerged from fascism, like the Brethren of Italy, with traditional conservative parties,” he says.
The historian guarantees that both groups are difficult to distinguish due to the formation of alliances and because they share “ideas based on ethnicity and conspiracy theories”.
“Many parties with extreme tendencies, such as Vox in Spain, Le Pen’s National Regrouping in France and the Brethren in Italy, are no longer marginalized parties and are now considered normal parties that win elections.”