Matteo Salvini. Italy, Europe and the New Right by Alessandro Franzi & Alessandro Madron

Author:Alessandro Franzi & Alessandro Madron [Franzi, Alessandro & Madron, Alessandro]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Political Parties, Political Science, Political Process, Political
ISBN: 9788833631905
Google: FYuRDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07QH61TZ5
Goodreads: 45176695
Publisher: goWare
Published: 2019-04-09T00:00:00+00:00

Nationalist

All of this serves to describe the real, more profound change that Salvini brought about in his party: with him, the Lega became both a national and a nationalist party, the opposite of what it had been during the previous thirty years.

By abandoning the color green and hyper-personalizing the party’s brand, Salvini sought a political proposal for all of Italy, not just for the North. He has also been capable of representing a new type of Italianism, which is always against something or someone. Against globalization, against immigration, against Islam, against the European Union.

Certainly not new themes for the Lega, which was always conservative and radical in its opposition to the foreigner and the politically correct. What changed with Salvini was that these topics became an obsession, central to the message, thus substituting the anti-national theme to which they had previously been only corollary.

Salvini began referring to Italy, and national pride; talking about Italians and presenting himself as their champion. He started holding rallies in the South, and spent most of his time living in Rome. He worked to be pardoned for all his insults in the past: the slogan Italians First had substituted all the others from a quarter-century of political activism.

An instrument for the expansion in the South was a political movement, a satellite of the Lega Nord built on the image of its leader: “Noi con Salvini” (We’re with Salvini), founded in 2015 with a structure parallel to that of the main party, but converging with it at every election.

A subtle operation, brazen and unscrupulous, renamed sovreignism. But justified by the awareness that it was what the people who had elected him wanted, on the tail end of the long financial and economic crisis that had started in 2008: protection of natural, cultural and social borders.

Salvini reached his goal in three years, but in stages. Having established over time what appeared to be the Lega’s holy covenant against the liberal elite helped him to consolidate his image as a national leader, while he was part of the opposition to the center-left government during the five year period from 2013-2018.

The leader of the Lega found the balance in this alliance, not in Washington or Moscow, but in Europe.

“The euro’s days are numbered,” Salvini declared the day after the European Parliament elections in May of 2014, which gave him a third term as mep.

His Lega got 6.1%, having run for the first time in all of the districts in Italy, with the unequivocal message of opposing the European Union and favoring withdrawal from the euro.

It wasn’t an impressive result in itself, but it was useful in inverting the negative trend of a party which had been destined, after all the scandals and poor results in government, to have only a marginal role.

In the European elections of 2014, the Eurosceptic movements had broken all the records: the National Front became the first party in France, as did Nigel Farage’s ukip in Great Britain, foreshadowing the wind of change in favor of Brexit which would come two years later.

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