There are betrayals that take years to come to fruition and others, just a probe. Matteo Salvini asked Roberto Vannaccitook him to the podium, sent him MEP to Brussels as its great asset on the hard right; The general returned the favor by leaving in February to mount his own party, Futuro Nazionale. This week, that same party caught up with the League in the polls. What is becoming not only a headache for Salvini, but also for the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
The reason: since leaving the League, Vannacci – a guy who believes that women should stay at home, that homosexuals are not “normal” and that blacks do not represent Italianness – has dedicated himself to eat the electorate of his old formation and, when possible, also a bite to eat Brothers of Italy, because he has decided that both Salvini and Meloni are lukewarm. The result is that Meloni’s real problem is no longer Salvini and his outbursts—the minister who insults a judge one day and poses with a stuffed animal at a rally the next—but needs the League to governand the League falls apart in his hands.
The numbers explain the urgency of the situation. According to a SWG survey for the television channel Tg La7, carried out between June 10 and 15, Futuro Nazionale would already be at a 5,3%in exactly the same place as the League. In parallel, Brothers of Italy would have retreated to 27% (-0.4 points), while the Democratic Party (22%), the 5 Star Movement (13%) and Forza Italia (7%) would have risen slightly. With this, it is the first time that the general’s party catches up with Salvini’ssomething unthinkable until a few months ago.
The hillbilly vote
So much so that even Meloni, after months of indifference, has finally decided to break his silence and respond to the general. He has done it twice in public in just over a week, revealing both calculation and nervousness. The first, on June 11 in the House, when he reminded Vannacci’s parliamentarians (a dozen already) that They had voted six times against confidence in the Government together with the opposition. “The true right is never functional for the left,” the head of the Executive said then.
However, on the weekend of June 13 to 14, Vannacci convened in Rome, in the Auditorium of Conciliation, the constituent assembly of his party: 1,700 delegates, entry prohibited to the press generalist and a general in shirt sleeves who, openly, made it clear who he appeals to to gain a foothold in the politics of the Italian boot: as Donald Trump himself did at the time, to that anti-system vote who feels that the system has marginalized him and considers him a palurdo. “We represent the scum [de la sociedad] and we are proud of it,” Vannacci said.
It didn’t take long for the general to respond to Meloni. “We have been told that we are helping the left. But should I now ally myself with this center-right coalition that continues with the Draghi agenda, the green deal? Or with us, Futuro Nazionale, guardians of sovereigntyor with Von der Leyen, Draghi, the multinationals and the globalism”he stated. Also on the Italian left there are already those who do not hide some guilty joy. The activist and journalist Alessandro Sahebi summarized it without half measures in his Substack. “Every vote that the general spiders is a vote that Meloni loses, and that is enough for us, in a low voice, to encourage the man we say we despise,” he stated.
Contain the damage
Not everyone believes that Vannacci’s ceiling is in reaching the League. Francesco Cancellatodirector of Fanpage, maintains that the general’s journey is just beginning: in other European countries, formations born from identical splits in the extreme right have not stopped when pairing with their party of origin, but have ended directly threatening those who disdained them. Vannacci, in his reading, fits that pattern. “Don’t look at the overtaking to the League: Vannacci, sooner or later, will threaten Meloni,” Cancellato said.
Ugo Magri, in the Italian HuffPost, puts it in even starker terms: the general is “a disgrace” for the prime ministerwho will do everything possible to contain it, discredit it and, if possible, liquidate it politicallyaccording to him. Still, according to Magri, the day he has no other alternative, Meloni will end swallowing it with pleasure.
The battle is already moving on different fronts and terrain, some of which are very delicate. Like feminicide, which, according to Vannacci, does not exist. “With regard to feminicide“I think I have already demonstrated what I think with a law that this Government approved to introduce the crime of feminicide,” claimed the leader. “Because the issue of classifying feminicide as a crime lies in the motivation, the not accept the freedom of a woman”he said.
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