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

@Elessar I agree with every word.

@Elessar This is basically how Trump got in.

@bijouxbroussard I'm well aware. But she doesn't have anywhere as much power as a U.S. president in the role of prime minister here. Our system was designed specifically with this kind of people/situation in mind, everything needs to go through multiple courts prior being approved, which also is the reason why the country is politically unstable and slow. She can't appoint constitutional court judges, and judges were in fact Berlusconi's biggest problem at the time. The president (which isn't the PM) is an old school centrist, and his term will end well past the end of this election cycle. Constitutional changes require 2/3 of the votes of both houses to pass (which they don't have, alone), or a referendum (and abstention to those is how you stop them, not even right now the right coalition as a whole would have the % of voters required to pass anything polarizing). It'll be ugly, but we've survived 20+ years of Berlusconi who had a much greater approval, and much less problematic situations than the current energy crisis to handle.

(Hoping this comment won't age like milk)

@Elessar That’s good, then. I wanted to ask how much damage could be done, but it sounds like there are enough actual 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. 🤦‍♂️