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read about how Italy’s prime minister is reshaping culture!

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is using laws and intimidation to change Italian culture, Barbie Latza Nadeau writes [[link removed]] for The Dial.

Nadeau writes that, since becoming prime minister in 2022, Meloni has used lawsuits and intimidation more generally “to reshape the country’s culture to match her ideals.” For example, author Roberto Saviano was fined 1000 euros for calling Meloni and her coalition partner “bastards” in a television interview after a migrant boat sank, resulting in several deaths.

As her critics point out, Meloni is not only punishing past critics, but discouraging anyone from speaking out against her. This is paired with a “firing spree, pushing for foreign museum directors to be replaced with Italians who belong to political parties in the ruling coalition.” She also campaigned on the promise to “transform Italy’s art sector,” and her government has introduced legislation to prevent journalists from “criticizing national symbols.” Her culture wars, predictably, thus also threaten freedom of the press.

Meloni is actually performing better in the polls than she was when she was elected. “Meanwhile,” Nadeau concludes, “the lawsuits have become a family business.” Meloni’s sister is suing a paper over a political cartoon.”

The Moreno Things Stay the Same

In The Nation, Tamara Pearson argues [[link removed]] that Mexico’s voters know better than to expect that the election of a new president also means new politics for the country.

Claudia Sheinbaum was elected president of Mexico on June 2. She is the country’s first woman presidenta , climate scientist, and the former mayor of Mexico City. She is also the successor to Andrés Manuel López Obrador, better known as AMLO, whose ruling Moreno party’s “policies of militarization, migrant deportation, and supporting transnational corporations at the expense of Indigenous rights, the environment, and workers have made it clear to social movements” that his, and Sheinbaum’s, side is also unlikely to provide justice to Mexicans.

Published two days before the election, Pearson’s piece notes how devoid of policy the election was: “While a few people in Morena are genuine activists, political parties largely serve as career platforms, and campaigning tends to be more about marketing strategy than actual policy.” Pearson concludes that many voters view candidates as vying to be the one to control the “big business called Mexico,” not protect people’s rights.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] Homecoming?

Naomi Larsson Piñeda writes [[link removed]] in Hyphen Online about UK-based Palestinians’ efforts to find a way for loved ones from Gaza to join them.

Gaza Families Reunited is a group of roughly 350 Palestinians in the UK. They are pushing for a family resettlement visa scheme, the kind that has been offered to Ukrainians, Afghans, and Hong Kong British nationals. At present, “It is almost impossible for Palestinians to seek asylum or be reunited with their relatives here. There is no legal way to enter the country to claim asylum, yet that claim can only be made while physically on UK soil.”

There are additional hurdles for Palestinians, too. Relatives of foreign nationals living in the UK could apply for a family visa, but the various requirements for document provisions don’t account for the chaos in Gaza. Further, people need to register their biometric data (though this was waived for Ukrainians and Afghans), and there is no functioning application center in Gaza. Gaza Families Reunited is pushing for these barriers to be lifted, and while there is some cross-party support, this has yet to translate into actual change to specific barriers to entry — and reunification.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE The Real Meaning of “Never Again”

In vowing to prevent mass atrocities with “never again,” what are we really saying? In using the phrase as a call to prevent harm, are we perhaps helping to enable it?

These are the questions before Adrian Gallagher, Richard Illingworth, Euan Raffle, and Ben Willis in their paper [[link removed]], “The permanency of mass atrocities: the fallacy of ‘never again’?,” recently published in The British Journal of Politics and International Relations.

The authors, believing that the term had been insufficiently studied in international relations, even though it’s an everyday term for relevant parties ranging from political elites to academic to NGO workers. The phrase itself has what the authors dub “expanding parameters,” which is to say that it means different things at different times when coming from different people: some take the phrase to mean no more genocides, while others mean no more mass killing or “mass atrocities.”

The authors thus decided to analyze five real-world problems: “1) the quantitative problem, 2) the nuclear problem, 3) the regime change problem, 4) the weak state problem, and 5) the P5 problem.” In looking at the quantitative problem, they consider an increase of mass atrocities in the world over time, and the reality that “even if we accept the claim that international human protection has become more common in the 21st century, the sheer number of mass atrocities outstrips our capacity to prevent them.”

The nuclear problem leads the authors to conclude that if a nuclear state perpetuates atrocities against their own people and is determined to do so, it is difficult to envision how stopping it from doing so is possible. They look at how regime change, if it is a consequence for perpetuating atrocities, can itself lead to negative consequences, which in turn has “catalyzed an unwillingness of states to use force in the name of atrocity prevention.”

The ability to fulfill the promise of “never again” is further complicated by by weak states and the fact that P5 countries have veto power (which is to say, the international community’s ability to prevent atrocities is limited to the extent to which these five powers all agree).

Ultimately, the authors “find the blanket call of ‘never again’ oversimplifies the complexity of mass atrocity prevention and creates an unrealistic goal.” Moving forward, they encourage those using the phrase to be specific about what they actually mean by invoking it. The authors do not, however, believe that the scope of “never again” should be reduced, even if such a thing were possible. In a move that may strike some as cynical, the authors end by asserting, “Rather than uphold the commitment of ‘never again’, we conclude that it would be better to acknowledge and adapt to the permanency of mass atrocities in IR.”

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Sofia Guerra and Carla Montilla argued [[link removed]] that the United States and China are putting the wider world at risk from both nuclear weapons and the climate crisis. They wrote that they believe the United States needs to turn to diplomacy to avert both disasters. “Rather than hurtling toward an arms race that could rapidly plunge the world into an even darker climate reality, these global challenges demand a paradigm shift,” they argued, adding that China, too, must hold itself accountable: “As China ascends to superpower status, it bears the responsibility of taking a lead in critical issues such as climate change and nuclear security.”

Daniel Ofman spoke [[link removed]] to a Ukrainian family living in Lviv — and missing their hometown of Kharkiv. The couple, Igor Krolevets and Tatiana Krolevets, are both dentists, and own a clinic in Kharkiv, which, they stressed to Ofman, will always be the city they are from. But Russian forces have recently captured some of the Kharkiv region and increased their bombardment of the city itself. They still maintain the clinic in Kharkiv, despite it being more dangerous than Lviv, though now Igor returns to visit with less frequency. His wife, for her part, said they would both return if the war were to end tomorrow.

Orla Barry wrote [[link removed]] about how some Dutch residents are turning to new, different methods to find homes during a housing shortage. The Netherlands is currently dealing with one of Europe’s worst housing crises. Housing prices in the country have doubled on average since 2013. The current governing coalition, led by the far-right Freedom Party, has promised construction, but many are skeptical as to whether it will be sufficient. Some — a group of 30 that has so far raised $10 million — are instead trying to build their own sustainable housing collective. Construction of the building is expected to to cost about $13 million in total. When it’s finished in 2025 or 2026 (provided construction goes according to plan), a third of the building will be set aside for social housing and housing for vulnerable groups.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL-PLAYED

Someone call Poland’s tourism board [[link removed]].

Post post-Soviet [[link removed]].

She thanked Jesus [[link removed]].

She’s a bee-liever [[link removed]].

Pi and lie [[link removed]].

He was evading taxes [[link removed]].

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Critical State is written by Emily Tamkin with Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX and GBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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