Another chance for Europe's far right
A far-right party and its allies could form Italy's next government.
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And it’s lights out and away we go:
That the government of Italy has collapsed, and new elections called for September 25, isn’t really surprising. That country holds elections more frequently than I floss my teeth.
What’s different this time around? A far-right party has been leading in the polls for some time, and there’s a good chance its leader could be Italy’s next Prime Minister:
Meloni has reason to celebrate. Brothers of Italy have gone from barely scraping 4% of the vote in the 2018 general election to becoming the biggest party in opinion polls. The rise has been consistent, and now the party leads a group including Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia that usually run together in elections.
A study of recent polls showed that in the event of an early ballot, the far-right-led alliance could easily win a majority.
The populist Five Star Movement (M5S) set the crisis in motion after boycotting a confidence vote last week on a €26bn cost of living package. However, it was the League and Forza Italia that ultimately sealed Draghi’s fate by rejecting his pleas to help see his administration through to what would have been its natural end in the spring next year. M5S then followed suit.
“This was the last window of opportunity left for those who wanted to go to elections,” said Riccardo Magi, the president of the small leftwing party More Europe. “M5S triggered the bomb, the other two added the final bomb. There is no doubt they were influenced by Meloni; she now dominates the coalition and they did what she wanted them to do.”
With a name like “Brothers of Italy,” you’d expect the party leader to be a hypermasculine type who perhaps tries a bit too hard to assure you he’s all man. Well, not quite:
After Marine Le Pen won over 40% of the vote in the French Presidential election (and then oversaw her party greatly increasing its seat count in the legislature) Giorgia Meloni is the second female far-right leader this year who’s at least come within sniffing distance of power in a major European state.
And, frankly, her chances are much better than Le Pen’s. She won’t win 40% of the vote, but she likely won’t have to:
In Italy’s legendarily fractured political system, it’s pretty much impossible to win an outright majority, so you have to tape together a coalition of political parties and hope for the best. Add up the total vote for the Brothers of Italy, the far-right Lega, proto-Trump Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the fledgling Italexit, and you’re just shy of 50% support.
A coalition of left-leaning parties could keep the far right out of power, but that would involve the relatively mainstream social democratic and liberal parties to find common cause with the far left and the “5 Star Movement,” often described as “populist” and sometimes left-leaning, but whose ideology is all over the place.
Of course, anything can happen between now and September 25. That’s especially true for Italian politics. And even if Meloni and her partners get to form a government, there’s no guarantee it will last any longer than its predecessors.
But, 77 years after V-E Day, a European taboo will have been broken. It wouldn’t be the first time a far-right party has been part of a governing coalition - Austria’s FPÖ has done it twice - but this wouldn’t be an uneasy marriage between the center-right and far-right but a government with the extremists firmly in control.
Almost every European country has a firmly established far-right or populist party with a solid base of support but which usually gets relegated to the opposition benches. If they can win in Italy can they win elsewhere?
Eh, probably not. But it would be improbable, not implausible.
Shot:
#SaveMasaferYatta @m7mdkurd
Morning. I talked to @TheNation about starting a Palestine Department—something all US outlets should do—and boom, I'm now The Nation's Palestine Correspondent 🥳
Julius Streicher’s note on this one would have read, “Du könntest es ein wenig abmildern.”
On the other hand, in an age where Britain’s Anne Frank Trust finds itself hiring rabid antisemites, maybe I should cut The Nation some slack? That taboo seems to be fading away, too.
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