The election results
On 25 September 2022, the centre-right coalition won the Italian general election, marked by a historic low turnout of only 64%. The right-wing Brothers of Italy was the most successful party with 26% of the votes, making its leader Giorgia Meloni the first woman PM in Italian history. Brothers of Italy’s coalition parties, which were necessary to win a stable majority in the current electoral system, include the formerly secessionist, now nationalist and racist Northern League and the more moderate Forward Italy – still the personal domain of Silvio Berlusconi. With a modest 20%, the Democratic Party was the undeniable loser of this election, although it managed to avoid the annihilation faced by other social-democratic parties in Europe. The populist 5-Star Movement, the most voted-for party in 2018, halved its preferences, but held on mainly in the high-unemployment cities of the South. Although the three winning parties did not increase the number of total votes they received in 2018, this time simply agreeing to form a coalition guaranteed them victory. Within the coalition, the consensus for Brothers of Italy grew enormously (22 percentage points) entirely to the detriment of its partners. They were guilty of having supported the last national unity government, a coalition with the Democratic Party and the 5-Star Movement led by European Central Bank (ECB) banker Mario Draghi, and formed to manage the substantial £166bn allocated to Italy from the EU Covid-19 recovery fund. This was not the first such occasion.
A decade of grand coalitions
In recent history, a national unity government was first seen in 2011, when Mario Monti, another ECB banker, was rashly called in to guarantee Italy’s commitment to austerity in front of more aggressive national and international financial speculation. Throughout the 2010s, coalition governments became the norm in a political context in which parties had to reach compromise in the name of a higher national interest – ie that of the powerful Italian Employers’ Federation. The Democratic Party, which was in government for 10 of the last 11 years, was the main supporter of this set-up: it enjoyed solid consensus by advocating, in words, for more progressive social measures, but in deeds, it constantly employed this consensus to push through shameful laws against the working class. Particularly notorious examples include the 2014 Jobs Act, which cancelled crucial protections for workers and further spread precarious and poor employment, and the 2017 Minniti Decree, which condemned thousands of migrant workers and families to illegality – with the exploitation and oppression this entails. However, as it was structurally and consistently engaged in worsening the living conditions of its supposed electoral base, the Democratic Party had to conceive alternative ways to present itself as a progressive party. Having nothing in practice to offer the working class, the solution was found in denouncing ‘the unprecedented right-wing menace’ of its opponents. In 2013 Berlusconi’s Forward Italy and in 2018 the Northern League were presented as the obnoxious enemies that put democracy and liberalism into danger; on both occasions, the Democratic Party ended up forming a coalition government with them, authoring laws at least as right-wing as those they had previously warned against. This time, in 2022, they could not resist the temptation to raise the bar and declare that their competitor would ‘bring Italy back to fascism’. So, while idolising and arming real fascist organisations in Ukraine, the opportunist Italian left, closely followed by its international counterparts, started raising the threat of fascist government in the heart of Europe.
Fascist sympathies
It is without question that in Italy the legacy of fascism and the figure of Mussolini still have a strong appeal, as they materialise a nostalgia towards an imperial past, which is vastly felt by many sections of a ruling class frustrated by its second-tier position in the European context. This is why none even hide their sympathy for Mussolini: in 2013 Berlusconi defended and praised Mussolini; in 2018 Northern League’s leader quoted him, while as far back as in the 1990s even a Democratic Party leader started calling into question the nature of fascism, as he invited his audience to understand ‘the reasons of the defeated ones’. The Brothers of Italy are entirely part of this ambiguity: on one side, they are the direct heirs of the post-war neo-fascist party, which openly advocated for fascism; on the other, in 1995 they rejected this legacy, with the aim of creating a more modern and democratic right-wing force better at ease in an international context in which capitalism seemed to have ultimately prevailed. Thus, while Giorgia Meloni and her party do not bother to deny their sympathy for fascism, this does not find any particular expression in their politics or socio-economic base. Nor is that sympathy unique to Brothers of Italy alone.
A government of continuity
There is no fundamental difference between Italy’s new government and all those that have preceded it. To argue that the next government will be the most right-wing in post-war Italian history flies in the face of reality. Not only have all this coalition’s parties and leaders already repeatedly served in similar right-wing governments in the 2000s and 2010s; most importantly, Meloni has already pledged to continue the work of the previous governments. Before the elections, she gave several interviews to appease the international ruling classes, in which she made a number of commitments about maintaining the country’s current financial and political orientation, including:
- continuing to deploy the Covid-19 recovery fund according to the will of the ruling classes;
- sustaining attacks against workers and migrants;
- adhering to both adhesion Brussels’ political and Frankfurt’s financial dictates;
- offering unconditional support for the US, NATO and the war effort in Ukraine.
It is likely that the new government will mark a new low, employing more brutality and austerity against the most deprived people, further reducing the space for protest and dissent. Nevertheless, in spite of all the opposition made ahead of the election, Brothers of Italy will entirely govern in the manner of the previous Democratic Party-led coalitions. In fact, it is the opportunist politics of the Democratic Party that are entirely responsible for driving the right-wing turn that brought Italians to this current pass. More than focusing on fascism, the lessons from this election should then be understanding the total continuity and interchangeability between the current parliamentary forces and, consequently, the necessity of creating a socialist movement that has burnt all bridges with the different representatives of this parasitic ruling class.
Any future for communists?
Over the last 15 years and four general elections, leftist movements and parties created a cartel to participate in the elections and ‘unite the left’. Every time they did that, they watered down their manifestos, banning any references to socialism while chasing more populist and centrist positions. Each time they polled worse – this time achieving a meagre 1.4%, which resulted in no elected MPs. However, outside the electoral process, something seems to be moving on the Italian left. Above all, new, class struggle trade unions such as Si Cobas and USB are conducting a series of radical campaigns among logistics workers such as those employed by Amazon and other big commercial corporations, and in the agricultural sector, where some of the most impoverished sections of the working class are employed. Furthermore, they are also engaged in key strikes against the current war, with workers at different harbours and airports blocking arms directed to Ukraine. Against these actions, the judiciary played its role in defence of ruling class interests by jailing union leaders without any evidence of wrongdoing. Our hope must be that the Italian authorities are right to be fearful and that from this movement a more structured and widespread socialist organisation will be born.
Alexander Trome
