Italy is facing regime change. The future will be repressive

Is Italy Europe’s new political laboratory – the country in which liberal democracy changes its hue and sinks below the horizon into populism? The question is legitimate, not only because historians have long established how, in his rise to power, Hitler took Mussolini as a model. And not only because Donald Trump was preceded on to the world stage by Silvio Berlusconi – another unscrupulous tycoon devoid of political experience, unfit for government, and with whom Trump shares more than a few personal traits. Above all the question is legitimate because, in Italy, not one but two populisms have won. Together they command more than half the votes in parliament and were until a few days ago on the verge of forming a government.

That talks have now collapsed hardly dissipates the danger. On the contrary, the very fact that these populisms have struck hard at the constitutional powers of the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, shows how determined they are to upend the country’s institutional setup. With new elections, probably in the autumn, the populists are likely to emerge even stronger. But for now Italy is set to be led by a transition government – with no majority.

Both populisms raked up support with Europhobic slogans and concepts of a revolt of “the people” against the “elites” – all in the name of an imaginary “direct democracy”. One is the Five Star movement, founded by the comedian Beppe Grillo alongside a prophet of web-based democracy, Roberto Casaleggio. The other is Matteo Salvini’s League – no longer a secessionist party of the north but a far-right party that expresses sympathy for the regimes in Russia and North Korea.

They predict an apocalyptic future for a public already frightened of globalisation and impoverished by European austerity policies. These are powerful, aggressive forces that have appeared throughout Europe – but are now, for the first time, ready to call the shots in a country that was a founding member of the European Union and has always been firmly anchored in multilateral and transatlantic alliances.

This Italian “double populism” will not renounce its programme, which aims to control the government through a sort of politburo known as the “conciliation committee”, placed wholly under the control of Five Star and the League. It aims to neutralise parliament by making it impossible for lawmakers to switch parties – whereas the freedom of MPs to do so is written into the constitution. Unpopular laws would be submitted to a sort of screening by referendum; the same would apply to international treaties, and therefore to all the steps that Italy has taken to be part of the EU and the eurozone – even though backtracking on treaties is forbidden by article 75 of the constitution.

It all brings to mind what the author Robert Musil called (in his 1943 book, Man Without Qualities) “parallel action”: a world where pseudo reality prevails and governance is useless. But what the populist platform contains is not just reform – it carries, ominously, elements of regime change. The already uncertain liberal profile of Italy’s democracy is set to be disfigured. We will move from a society that is traditionally open and welcoming, with a certain propensity for the good life, to the closed horizons of a country that resembles a corporate, statist and repressive autarchy.

The coalition “contract” that these populists want to implement includes not only massive public spending, which would break the budget and push Italy out of EU rules, but also the creation of specific crimes for immigrants and forced mass repatriations, as well as the closure of asylum centres and all Roma camps. The limits of legitimate self-defence are to be extended to include confronting burglars with weapons in hand.

This dark shadow stretching over Italy has been given substance because of the collapse of traditional parties in the March general election. The centre-left Democratic party – for long the pivot of the political system – lost half its electoral base, about 5m votes, a million and a half of which shifted to Five Star. Immediately after that defeat the Democratic party leader, former prime minister Matteo Renzi, announced that it should go straight into opposition, even though it had come second in the election (behind Five Star and ahead of the League).

On the other side of the political fence, Berlusconi is trying to get back on track as a statesman with European credentials, strutting around meetings of the mainstream right European People’s party. Yet he’s the one who gave his on-off ally Salvini the go-ahead to enter a coalition with the Five Star movement.

The contortions of both parties paved the way for populism. The Democratic party proved unable to move on from Renzi’s leadership, despite a long series of defeats – not least a crushing one in the 2016 referendum on wide-ranging constitutional reform. Forza Italia and the moderate centre-right are tied to the ailing but still hegemonic figure of Berlusconi. On top of that, both mainstream parties did nothing during the campaign but imitate the themes, proposals and styles of the populists, instead of pushing back against them.

The crisis threatens Italy with international isolation, and will almost certainly prevent it being part of the lead group in a future two-speed Europe. But the EU will find itself with fewer friends in confronting the selfishness and closed horizons of other xenophobic nationalisms, from central Europe to Austria.

The darkness that is falling on Rome will be a test of real democracy. Just as with the obscurantism and fortress mentality of Trump’s America, it will be up to civil society and citizens to oppose the vision and policies of populists and nationalists. And to do so with the ambition of sending a warning – rather than an example – to the rest of the west.

Original Article
Source: theguardian.com
Author: Antonella Rampino