letter from Italy
The victory of a nationalist coalition headed by Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female Prime Minister, chimes with concerns also visible elsewhere in Europe, such as Hungary, Poland and Sweden.
The global crisis, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, increased energy prices and migrations arouse anxieties that the right seem better able to interpret.
Meloni’s coalition opposed previous governments so she could present herself as a critical and alternative voice during the recent campaign. But now, despite being legitimised by the popular vote, she has had to embark on the complex and difficult process of government. Will her coalition be able to execute a programme that goes beyond mere rhetoric?
Much recent discussion has centred on whether Meloni’s party is fascist. There is no doubt that the instincts of parts of the right-wing electorate are inspired by a totalitarian culture that despises minorities, foreigners and dissidents in the name of a national ‘identity’ characterised, among other things, by a cultural Catholicism – which is not to be confused with Biblical Christianity. A few shared references to ‘family’ or ‘life’ do not obscure the total lack of focus on religious freedom and respect for minorities. Sadly, this gap was also evident in the manifestos of the other parties, showing that Italian politics shares a lack of interest in institutional and religious pluralism. This deficient political culture requires that the evangelical minority not only prays for the government (as the Bible requires), but also works to keep alive the key imperatives of religious freedom, plural institutions and wider social responsibility.
The experience of the recently-fallen Draghi government had again underlined the political crisis. Faced with the umpteenth impasse in the Italian political situation, it was necessary to resort to a ‘reserve’ idea of the Italian Republic: an unelected figure like Draghi, presented as a super partes (impartial) figure, with the task of carrying out a substitute job with respect to politics – filling the gap left by elected, squabbling politicians, though with sufficient support from enough of them in Parliament to govern even though he himself was not elected. Now, with the victory of the centre-right, which is a coalition that has presented itself to govern (and not to oppose), the ball passes back to the field of genuine representative politics, fruit of the popular vote. Having criticised the ‘technocratic’ government, the political system now needs to rise to the steep challenge Draghi’s departure brings. The return of elected politics is however part of the physiology of the democratic system which must be greeted positively.
