A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #35-25 - "The war continues." Institutional crisis: July 25th by Giorgia Meloni (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The situation Giorgia Meloni finds herself in today is similar to that 
of Benito Mussolini in the winter of 1942/43. Then, the responsibility 
for the lost war was placed on the Prime Minister, the Fascist leader, 
by the head of state, King Victor Emmanuel III, and Pope Pius XII, 
through a palace conspiracy to prevent the proletarian revolution from 
sweeping away those responsible for the tragedy the country was engulfing.
Even today, the ruling class has led Italy into a war that was already 
lost. While it has not caused any casualties among the Italian 
population, it has nevertheless cost the Zelensky regime almost 30 
billion euros, along with a steep rise in prices and a crisis that has 
overwhelmed the Italian economy along with the major European economies.

It's certainly no coincidence that the current institutional crisis 
erupted in the aftermath of the Supreme Defense Council meeting and 
involved its secretary; nor is it a coincidence that all this occurred 
on the eve of important elections: the characteristics of what happened 
are indicative of the progress of the war in Ukraine and the consensus 
of the current prime minister.

The war continues with its ups and downs. While the European Commission 
is requesting an additional EUR140 billion by the end of the year to 
meet the Zelensky government's financial needs, the US administration is 
working for a peace that will prevent Kiev from definitive defeat and 
oust Zelensky from the halls of power. The prospect of peace would be 
catastrophic, however, because Ukraine will be unable to repay the loans 
received from its allies. These loans total nearly thirty billion for 
Italy, thrown by Italian institutions into the abyss of war and which 
sooner or later will have to be booked as "bad debts" on the balance 
sheet. Meloni risks being left holding the bag due to her support for a 
war championed by Mario Draghi and Sergio Mattarella.

The fall 2025 elections saw a veritable collapse of the party with the 
largest relative majority. Brothers of Italy lost more than a million 
votes compared to the 2022 general elections: in the elections for the 
Chamber of Deputies, the party with the largest relative majority 
obtained more than 2.4 million votes in the six regions that went to the 
polls this fall; in the regional elections, however, adding together the 
votes from each region, it obtained less than 1.4 million votes. This 
absolute figure is reflected in the percentages: Giorgia Meloni's party 
had obtained 24.01% in the 2024 European elections, and it obtained 
17.68% in the last regional elections: a drop of more than six 
percentage points.

These results certainly must not have gone unnoticed on Via della 
Scrofa, and they have set off alarm bells. If the 2022 success was 
primarily due to the opposition's disunity over the Russian-Ukrainian 
war, a unification with the numbers they achieved then would prevent the 
right and Meloni's party from winning. Add to this the decline in 
support seen in the regional elections, and the future looks even 
bleaker. And the bogus polls periodically circulated by the media, which 
celebrate the honeymoon between the prime minister and the Italian 
people, aren't enough. According to the latest such poll, published in a 
newspaper on Sunday, November 30, and compiled by the guru of Italian 
pollsters, Brothers of Italy had 28.8% of valid declarations regarding 
voting intentions in 2024, while in the latest survey on November 27, it 
still had 28%. These polls, whether due to an intrinsic flaw or 
someone's will, are unable to capture the collapse in support 
demonstrated by actual votes.

The government's strategy is torn between irreconcilable contradictions: 
its prominence in the social and economic spheres ends up concentrating 
all the country's scattered opposition forces on itself, the growing 
criminalization of protests transforms the most peaceful protests into 
acts of insurrection, and ultimately the government proves powerless to 
confront social opposition.

The government's tactics also face difficult-to-resolve dilemmas: faced 
with declining support, is it better to call early elections, before the 
decline worsens and before the financial consequences of the war in 
Ukraine become apparent, or to allow the legislature to continue its 
natural course so that a new electoral law more advantageous to the 
government can be approved? Furthermore, in the face of social unrest, 
what measures should be taken? The events at the former ILVA plant in 
recent weeks demonstrate the difficulty of confronting this opposition. 
And yet, faced with US attempts to achieve peace in Ukraine, what course 
of action should we take? Follow Trump's efforts, throwing away three 
years of rhetoric that have caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, or 
side with the European Commission and continue the war with Russia, 
throwing billions more into the bottomless pit and risking open war in 
the East?

This is why exceptional measures are being considered: the 
reintroduction of conscription is one such means, both as a means of 
disciplining the younger generations and as a means of increasing the 
numerical strength of the repressive forces. The war the government is 
preparing for is not a war with Russia, it is a war against the 
exploited classes and social opposition.

The mobilizations in support of the Global Sumud Flotilla have had the 
same effect as the strikes of March 1943. Once again, the working class 
is once again a protagonist on the social scene, once again a 
protagonist in an internationalist mobilization against the war, and 
above all, it wants to decide what and how to produce and transport, 
starting with the refusal of weapons. The distrust of institutions, 
evidenced by the growth of abstentionism, is finding its forms of 
expression: self-organization and direct action.

Continuing the war is the only way for the privileged classes and the 
institutions that defend them to delay the day of reckoning, hiding the 
truth about the costs of war, increasing the militarization of society, 
and reviving the lie of national unity. And if continuing the war 
requires getting rid of Meloni and Salvini, the head of state will 
certainly be worthy of his predecessor. And the slogan of the new 
government will always be Pietro Badoglio's: the war continues.

Tiziano Antonelli

https://umanitanova.org/la-guerra-continua-crisi-istituzionale-il-25-luglio-di-giorgia-meloni/
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