A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI, #205 - DIFFERENTLY LIBERAL (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A man goes to the doctor. He tells him he's depressed, that life seems 
harsh and cruel. He tells him he feels alone in a threatening world. The 
doctor says, "The cure is simple. The great clown Vannacci is in town. 
Go see him. He should cheer you up." The man bursts into tears. "But, 
doctor, he says, 'I'm Vannacci.'"
(free paraphrase of the joke told by Rorschach in the pages of Watchmen, 
Alan Moore's comic book, and in the eponymous film based on the comic book)

The Italian right has gone through two important and decisive moments, 
one before the rise of fascism and one afterward. Until fascism, the 
right was a predominantly conservative and elitist force, within which 
we can easily include a good part of the liberal camp "that created 
Italy." A right that, after the First World War, was no longer capable, 
like the entire liberal state, of connecting with the Italian population.
Well, truth be told, this harmony had never existed, given that the 
nation-building process was entirely minority-based and even 
annexationist. But until the masses emerged, not only on the trade union 
scene but also in the electoral arena, the Italian state could afford to 
be both meritocratic and elitist.
Mussolini understood before anyone else that the masses could no longer 
be dispensed with; after all, he had been a compelling rabble-rouser and 
a capable journalist.
With the invention of fascism, he managed to bring together 
"popular-populist" and, at the same time, classist and reactionary 
demands. The previous Bonapartists had certainly been models, but 
fascism emerged as something absolutely new because it managed to 
construct, borrowing from the model of the Socialist Party, an 
unprecedented statist/liberal structure with a single party and based on 
the passive "consensus" of the masses.
This total confusion, which Mussolini created without a true underlying 
plan (here is one of the substantial differences from socialism: fascist 
ideology continually changes and adapts, even reversing its own 
demands), was not understood by the socialist and communist forces, and 
only a few realized that this hircocervus was a truly dangerous being.
The liberal right and the so-called "historical right" were completely 
flattened by this innovation, so much so that, after the Second World 
War, the only true right that reconstituted itself (leaving aside the 
insignificant liberal patrols, almost always in the literal pay of 
Atlanticism) was the fascist one, whose definition of "post" has been 
completely misunderstood. "Post" not because it was not and is not 
fascist, but simply because it was reborn after the end of the fascist 
regime.
But let's come to today and the current right-wing camp. The governing 
coalition comprises a triad composed of:
Forza Italia: a classic right-wing force that, under the guise of an 
unlikely "moderation," represents the most blatantly liberal wing. Its 
self-promotion as "liberal" (a term seemingly innocuous according to a 
now-dominant propaganda) manages to partially attract even those from 
the "liberal left" (an oxymoron in times gone by, but today, 
unfortunately, a dystopian reality).
Fratelli d'Italia: direct heirs of the MSI and the PNF, unlike the MSI, 
which claimed affiliation with the Salò Fascism, Meloni's fascists hark 
back to the twenty-year period. Within this political system, therefore, 
there are not the fascist "movement" that saw great internal conflicts 
in the 1960s, but the fascist regime itself. No longer "rebels" but 
hierarchs. Meloni navigates ordoliberal capitalism well. While, on the 
one hand, it follows, with the usual scruple of all Italian governments 
since Maastricht, the ordoliberal and Atlanticist diktats, on the other, 
it fills the void left by the impossibility of making meaningful choices 
with the arsenal of the staleest right: visceral anti-communism, 
internal enemies, repression, racism, etc.-in short, a right that, 
compared to previous decades, appears frankly reactionary, almost a DC 
in augmented reality.

The Northern League: The Northern League, born in the late 1970s from 
the rebellion of the lower and lower middle classes of northeastern 
Italy, to the right of the DC and then orphaned, composed of tax 
evaders, and all the corollaries of the average Italian of those years, 
has long since ceased to exist. Salvini's shift has transformed a party 
that used to "wipe its ass with the tricolor flag" into a far-right 
organization with a national focus and instrumental ties to the 
subversive right. The problem is that Salvini is as deceitful as 
Monopoly money; that is, he doesn't even believe in it himself, and it's 
clear to see. Furthermore, the League, which has long governed entire 
territories, doesn't seem to be very fond of him. As for the rest, the 
grassroots (assuming it still exists), folklore aside, have no use for 
"national" discourse.
Salvini, among other things, is the one who jettisoned a government with 
the Five Star Movement, where, as Interior Minister, he essentially 
acted as Prime Minister. We could call him a real and qualified idiot.
It's frankly difficult to understand how militants and members could 
have entrusted leadership to such an emeritus. But I believe it's part 
of the decades-long precipice of the global, or at least European, 
ruling classes.
So let's turn to the Vannacci case, who, for now, seems to have 
disappeared from the news. A nobody, a writer of trivialities passed off 
as right-wing thinking, interviewed and made famous by the bourgeoisie 
outraged by his lack of etiquette (the same bourgeoisie that ignores the 
18,000 children killed in Gaza), and who has risen to prominence. And 
what does Salvini do? Without even being a member of the League, he 
"appoints" him deputy secretary.
Vannacci looks around; he may be a peasant but not a fool, but he 
realizes this is an excellent springboard, and he founds a new party, 
free from the "Nordic" constraints of the League. It embraces the most 
extreme segment of the right, which is now feeling cramped both within 
the FdI (which has become Zionist, something literally unthinkable for a 
right-wing militant until recently, not because the ideology was 
different but because the Jewish/cosmopolitan/capitalist/Bolshevik 
approach always works) and within the League, which is unconvincing from 
a "social-national" perspective.
Now, if Sparta is mourning Athens, he shouldn't laugh. In other times, a 
Vannacci would have been at best a character from a coup plotting 
folklore. But in the current phase, the former soldier seems to be 
retaking, with much greater freedom of movement, some issues that the 
League had attempted to embrace (overcoming the Fornero law, saying no 
to weapons in Ukraine) but which are incompatible with any EU government.
But on the left, except for a few sporadic groups, the gap with the 
sentiments of the Italian population on war issues is very marked.
Vannacci fits into this wedge, replacing an increasingly awkward and 
sluggish Salvini, who must nevertheless remain within the government 
coalition.
The problem is that on Ukraine, the former soldier has more cards to 
play than the left. And, despite starting from an obviously reactionary 
ideology (women, blacks, immigration, admiration for Putin's machismo), 
like a stopped clock, he manages, in this chaos, at least twice a day, 
to utter banal truths.
Banal truths, but ones that within the "official" left, not only can 
they utter, but they can't even think. And between Picierno, Fiano, and 
company, and Vannacci, the latter no longer seems to be, or at least not 
the only, idiot of the bunch.
The left's ideological shift has taken on pathological characteristics 
since the Russo-Ukrainian war, so much so that it now seems irremediable 
(assuming there was anything left to remedy). The timidity-to be kind-on 
Gaza, an open genocide-due to an internalized pro-Zionism combined with 
the fear of being seen as anti-Semitic, and the inability to understand, 
or even study, the complexity of the international scene-have meant that 
the ball of peace has passed into the hands of a National Socialist who 
is not afraid to exploit it.

"There is great confusion under the sun," someone said. Vannacci 
currently seems to have disappeared from the scene, and it's not certain 
he'll truly gain a following on his avowedly radical and extremist path, 
but he could have much better chances and more flexibility than the 
pompous government coalition, which perhaps would ultimately have to 
support him to avoid losing voter turnout.

Andrea Bellucci

https://www.ucadi.org/2026/03/01/diversamente-liberali/
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