Italy now has the most right-wing government in Europe...

@SW-User Marmee.............thinks. That cracked me up🤣🤣🤣

@Elessar That’s good, then. I wanted to ask how much damage could be done, but it sounds like there are enough [b]actual[/b] checks and balances in the system itself.

@bijouxbroussard Well, there's no definitive and certain answer, hence the final line. But they need a lot of things to align perfectly before they can do anything seriously damaging (= at the constitutional level), some of which seem already far off alignment; also the party alone can't do much, and the coalition she's governing with is composed by two parties that also have their own ambition to topple each other (and especially the leading one), so there's no guarantees they'll vote compactly on everything, especially on the matters that would boost another at the expense of their own. In any case they can still pass enough (forgive me for the word) sh*t with the majority they have both in the house and the senate, but what is safeguarded by the constitution should be safe. We'll see 😶

@Elessar I was in Rome in May 2016 and covered a demo by the fascist group, CasaPound.

https://similarworlds.com/9408790-I-Am-Flabbergasted/635542-I-dont-know-whats-going-on-in-the-world-Ive-spent

Two days later, I had dinner with the family that has invited me over for Christmas. The father (a really great guy) told me not to be too concerned about them (ie CasaPound) because they were not a formal political party and would soon vanish. In a way, he was right because CasaPound has never achieved anything like a presence in Italian elections and, in 2019, they ceased their efforts at being a political party. They now classify themselves as a "social movement".

However, my concern was not about their classification. It was about the sheer number of people that attended the demo and their average ages. Most of the attendees were YOUNG!

I grew up in an era where young people demonstrated for left-wing ideals. For social equality and acceptance.

As I said in the post that I've linked............I don't know what's going on in the world. 🤦‍♂️

@CountScrofula time to boycott grappa and Chianti ...

@CountScrofula It's surprisingly easy. Promise to cut taxes and raise retirement incomes, control the media consumed by the 50+, scream louder than other political forces and paint yourself as the antisystem party that will defend our sovereignty against the [i]tyranny[/i] of the EU. Orbàn just like Meloni is the "good guy who's constantly thrown under the bus by the corrupt leftist media for standing against the EU and defending his country's sovereignty" 🥴

It's no different than U.S. conservatism, the target audience doesn't care about reality, they only want to be told what they want to hear. And it works. I know virtually zero people IRL who'd admit voting for Meloni, Salvini or Berlusconi and yet here we are, nearly one every two people who went to the polls voted for either of these parties.

@Elessar Oh yeah like, it's the same movement that's hitting nations all over the world. It's just quite a thing to look at Hungary and go "I can do better" in terms of batshit right wing maniacs.

@SW-User Yes and no. Putin is probably celebrating because this outcome is destabilizing, and so is Orbàn. But the other populist right-wing party with ties to the Kremlin flopped, and considering how quickly the GdF traced all the Russian assets (including the ones covered with another country's flag) during the first round of sanctions/seizing I'm positive we'd know by now if they received suspicious "donations" from Moscow. Her party was also historically aligned with NATO/U.S since forever, and the coalition stressed they won't change the stance on foreign politics, in particular regarding Ukraine.

@ididntknow Especially by lazy journalists and headline writers. Left and right are understandable shorthands I suppose, but best as far as possible to avoid them and describe what governments actually do and what specific things parties advocate. Then people can judge for themselves.

@deadgerbil Same thing as Trump 2016; low turnout (many people like "AlL SiDeS aRe JuSt As BaD1!!111! 😭😭 I WON'T VOTE THIS TIME, THAT'LL SHOW 'EM!", FdI supporters instead were of course hellbent into voting and in queue at 6am lmao, and now 25% of the voting population chose the winning party). Now, I'm sure Meloni is not even sleeping at night because these people didn't feel represented enough to be bothered to spend 10 minutes of their Sunday time to walk to the polling station and draw a cross on a ballot paper, just like I'm sure Republicans over there can't even sleep well at night because of these [i]far-center[/i] abstentionist lmao. We also had a super-coalition with essentially FdI being the only significant opposition party, and in Italy opposition parties gain traction only to deflate as soon as they govern (as you can see comparing League and Five Stars numbers with the numbers they got in 2018; FdI will go through the same process, most likely, especially considering the energy crisis and probable recession they'll soon have to face).

[quote]Her allies have both had close ties with Russia. Mr Berlusconi, 85, claimed last week that Vladimir Putin was pushed into invading Ukraine while Mr Salvini has called into question Western sanctions on Moscow.[/quote]
Berlusconi (also historically) always come up with controversial lines like that. He's the "there's no such thing as good advertisement or bad advertisement, only advertisement" kind of guy; he's been into power for over 20+ years often reaching the end of the term in a system where everyone else barely survives maybe one year, rest assured these aren't "blunders" but most likely calculated moves. and imo, he was trying (looking at the result and comparing it to the pre-election polls, perhaps successfully) to steal votes from Salvini's base. In practice, his party has never shown ambiguities when it comes to sanctioning Russia, as far as I know. Salvini is the guy who went around with Putin shirts, said that sanctions are hitting us worse than Russia, investigated for illicit funding from Russia - and he flopped hard, his party is seeking to replace him with a new figure and they're not even too quiet about it anymore. Meloni as far as I know is clean in that regards (she's in her current form - because she's been in politics for quite a bit - a [i]child [/i]of Bannon, not of Putin - assuming the two things are different ofc) - it's not foreign politics what concerns me too much about FdI (see e.g. [u]https://reddit.com/r/europe/comments/xpjgej/meloni_said_some_good_things_about_europe_and/[/u]), it's literally all the rest 😅

@deadgerbil Italy and Italians in general are much less enthusiastic about siding with Ukraine than most western European countries are. Italy has, of course, a strong post-war communist tradition.

@MartinII There's no communism here. Italy's overton window isn't really different than America's, after 20+ years of Berlusconi the word "leftist" (let alone "communist") is almost perceived as an insult.

Many won't care about helping Ukraine essentially for two reasons:

1) secondhand Russian propaganda, disseminated by some parties that coincidentally happened to receive money from Moscow and we're pretty big in term of % until the past election cycle

2) general egoism and feeling distant from the conflict ("why do I have to side with Ukraine and by doing so ending up paying more for energy / lose my job / shutdown my business?"). Ignoring completely that, no matter the Italian alignment, the price of gas here wouldn't improve in any way – wait until these people figure out that gas pipes necessarily have to pass through other countries..

@BohemianBoo Nah, only 25% voted for that stuff. The problems are:
1) 36% didn't vote and
2) the rest of those that voted were spread among multiple parties/coalitions

Now, 1/3 of the seats are given with a FPTP system so she won a lot of seats. Had it been fully proportional, it would be the typical Italian government made with an orgy of incompatible parties - none of which with a very solid majority - and that would've ended in a government crisis within a timespan between 10 minutes and 2 months.

@ididntknow Please.

Far right means fascist lineage. Ultra nationalist, racist dog whistles etc.

Btw, I didn't use far right in my post.

Far left would be Trotskyists or anarchists.

@ididntknow not moderate. not willing to compromise on anything. always paints the opposition in the worst possible terms, even when not based in reality.
Those are a good starting point as to what extremism is.

@MartinII His party is now only the third most rightwing in the govt.

@Burnley123 Well, people seem to be judging the Prime Minister on her party’s past. Let’s see what she actually does.

@MarmeeMarch I would bet you're one of those who think Hitler was a leftist because national[b]socialism[/b] right?

@Elessar Yep. And by his logic this is an Equine because of the word horse.