Solidarity with Italy's workers and oppressed

Fratelli d'Italia leader Giorgia Meloni

Italy’s 25 September general election was won by a “post-fascist” far-right party whose leader – almost certainly the next prime minister – still talks sympathetically about Mussolini’s regime. Italy is not about to become a fascist dictatorship; but this will be the most right-wing Italian government since Mussolini’s fall. It is a boost to the far right across the world and a brutal setback for Italy’s labour movement and oppressed people, who will need the greatest possible solidarity.

Fratelli d’Italia (Fd’I, Brothers of Italy) is part of a so-called “centre-right” coalition that won 43.8% of the vote, up from 37% in 2018. The centre-left coalition rose from 22.9% to 26.1%, while the populist Five Star Movement fell from 32.7% to 15.4%. Within the right-wing bloc, however, there was a huge shift. In 2018, Fd’I won 4.3% and 32 members of parliament; this time they got 26% and 119 seats, out of 400. They did even better than the polls had predicted.

As in a number of countries, right-wing votes have shifted even further right. Fd’I’s partners, the far-right populist League led by Matteo Salvini and the conservative Forza Italia of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, both lost about half their votes.

Overall the right-wing bloc has 237 seats, a solid majority, though they could struggle to get to the two thirds needed to change the constitution. Fd’I wants an executive presidency, to help shift towards a more authoritarian system.

Its leader Giorgia Meloni, on the verge of becoming Italy’s first female prime minister – she is certainly no feminist – has been active in various conservative political organisations and was a minister under Silvio Berlusconi (in 2008-11). But she began her political activism and formed her ideas in the youth wing of the fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) – not in the distant past but in the 1990s. She and the bulk of Fd’I’s leadership – along with its tricolour flame symbol – come from the post-MSI organisation National Action.

Meloni claims she is not a fascist, but in 2020 she praised the MSI’s founder, a minister in Mussolini’s government. She shouted the traditional fascist slogan "Dio, Patria e Familgia" at a rally of the far-right Vox party in Spain last year. She says her approach is similar to that of Hungary’s far-right, authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán. She has pushed the idea of a "great replacement"-type conspiracy to marginalise "Italians" in favour of migrants.

The Fd’I election campaign attacked gay and trans rights, proposed to stop any migrants landing in Italy and argued to make getting an abortion even harder. It also attacked vaguely progressive welfare reforms introduced recently.

Meloni’s party has flirted with Russia but is actually less pro-Putin than its two main coalition partners (particularly Salvini and the League).

The election resulted from the fall of the “national unity” government led by technocrat Mario Draghi, supported by virtually every significant party except Fd’I. Draghi’s government followed two Five Star Movement-led coalitions, one supported by the right-wing League and the other by the centre-left Democratic Party. Remaining independent, Fd’I has been able to present itself as an opposition to a series of neoliberal governments that have increased inequality and insecurity – although Fd’I is perhaps even more neoliberal.

In the context of constantly shifting political alliances and governments, but a consistent tide of attacks on the working class, distrust in official politics has bloomed. Until recently Italy’s election turnouts were well over 80%; this time abstention rose to 37%, up nine points since 2018. That political distrust has generally been channelled in a right-wing direction – with the help, direct and indirect, of parties across the spectrum.

The Democratic Party was central to pioneering neo-liberal economic policies in Italy; and the briefly dominant Five Star Movement, whose demands and support include leftish elements, played a role in shifting Italy’s political life in a right-wing, nationalist direction.

The new government will be vicious towards working-class struggles and organisations, and very likely embolden fascist street groups. Italy has already seen a rise in violent attacks against migrants and labour movement activists.

Despite the absence of a substantial working-class political voice, and a leadership that works to prevent the generalisation of working-class struggles, elements of the Italian labour movement have continued to fight heroic battles. And when the fascist Forza Nuova took the opportunity of an anti-vax demonstration last year to trash the offices of the main Italian union confederation, CGIL, 200,000 workers demonstrated at a week’s notice.

The British labour movement and left must find ways to support comrades in Italy.