dear friends,
since the macerata attempted carnage just before the fateful march general elections, racist aggressions have been steadily on the rise in italy. The appointment of Salvini as interior minister, avowed racist, fascist sympathizer, drowner of refugees, torture enabler etc has opened the italian can of worms, and black laborers, asian workers, roma children, arab immigrants are bearing the brunt of the shift to the extreme right in italian politics that has been the consequence of the formation of the 5star-lega government in may (it feels quite long time, though). Not a day goes without an anti-immigrant pogrom, and co-shareholder in government Di Maio is now saying that accusations of racism are made "to weaken my ally salvini".
such a statement is one of the many signs that the minority shareholder, salvini (17%), has managed to be hegemonic in government in spite of the 5star movement having won more than 30% of votes and seats. the puppet prime minister, a provincial academic baron named Conte is today at Trump's court to proclaim that the Peninsula is America's most faithful ally, thus putting the United States above the European Union in diplomatic terms, while Salvini (who personally went to Trump Tower) is Putin's ally and admirer. Basically, today Italy is friend of the wolves that want to devour Europe.
How did the league manage to outmaneuver the "pentastellati"? they had previous experience in government, secured the treasury and the flat tax priority, and were successful in becoming a national party (salvini was elected senator in calabria - prompting writer Saviano saying that he's in cahoots with the region's organized crime - in lombardy, the league has repeatedly protected ndrangheta's prosperous waste management business). crucially, the liberal bourgeoisie and family capitalism have come to see the lega as guarantor of the right to manage and low wages against the economic populism of the 5star movement (which has yet to introduce minimum income for the unemployed - it has made it harder for employers to resort to short-time contracts and will bring about a national contract for riders - not exactly the egalitarian revolution that made the spaghetti precariat vote for them), also his narrative of a country invaded by refugees on their rickety boats struck a chord with the italian urban proletariat, impoverished by the crisis and envious of immigrant communities who have a kind of solidarity that no longer exists among italians. So when salvini shut down the ports and portrayed NGOs as people's smugglers on italian soil, his popularity went up like a northkorean rocket.
di maio is a pinocchio-like figure that lacks salvini's carisma (the former dresses like a sales rep in suit and tie, the latter wears hoodies and no ties like somebody of the working class), but it's the conquest of power that is weakening the 5stars, blunting their rebel edge; now they have no caste to rail against, they're morphing into a petty bourgeois party plagued by incoherence and incompetence, while for the league the narration has just started - they are reclaiming italy back from evil brussels and the hordes of migrants it let come through. they act like the warriors fighting for ordinary italians and they are succeeding, in spite of having stolen 49 million euros in public money, as the high court of appeals has recently confirmed, blocking the league's (many) national and international accounts.
nazi-populism is winning in italy (as in austria, visegrad, scandinavia) because there is no meaningful left opposition. only president mattarella, a center-left catholic, has been trying to block the rise of the racists to power, while the formerly ruling PD (democratic party) is in chaos as it is trying to find a new identity after its colossal defeat (less than 20%) that put an end to the age of Renzi, an ante litteram Macron that ended up like Valls. left of the pd the situation is even worse. the left side which split from the party did bad at the polls since it was rightly seen as a bunch of parlamentarians seeking to save their jobs. Power to the People, a fledgling marxist-leninist formation, got a bit less than 2% thanks to it's anticapitalist and antiracist stance, but the vast majority of antiglobalization and 2011 generations just didn't vote. As in the 1920s and 1930s, fascism can only win when lefties are disunited and demotivated.
The only meaningful mobilizations have been to defend refugees, support NGOs, open ports and end drownings. After demos and sitins in major cities, the movement staged a successful mass protest in ventimiglia. However, it was the maglietta rossa (red t-shirt) protest on social media that have unnverved the captain (as greenshirted brownies refer to their leader). People had to post a selfie wearing a red shirt to protest against "the hemorrage of humanity" inflicted by salvini, expressing unconditional solidarity to refugees. It was huge on social media, showing that there is a dispersed people of the left willing to fight back if only there were organizations ready to support mobilizations.
the upcoming EU elections in 2018 will be a duel between macron's neoliberalism and salvini's nationalpopulism (he wants to do a league of leagues nazipop group in the european parliament) - what's left of the spaghetti left is rallying with varoufakis (and i with them - in spite of sinistra italiana and rifondazione comunista being there for opportunistic reasons - they need to ally and a new image to elect somebody - there is some innovation in the form of naples, padua and bologna's muncipalist experiments). in the meantime, let's hope generation Z will fight the racist and homophobic regime once school starts and universities re-open. They are the only hope to prevent that the Italian republic, born when Pertini had Mussolini executed in april 1945, conjures the fascist nightmare it was founded to prevent.
ciao,
lx