From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject In Italy, a Setback for a More Equal Future
Date October 1, 2022 12:40 AM
  Links have been removed from this email. Learn more in the FAQ.
  Links have been removed from this email. Learn more in the FAQ.
[A let-the-rich-be government has opened the doors to the smiling
heirs of Italy’s neofascist factions. ]
[[link removed]]

IN ITALY, A SETBACK FOR A MORE EQUAL FUTURE  
[[link removed]]


 

Sam Pizzigati
September 29, 2022
Inequality.org
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ A let-the-rich-be government has opened the doors to the smiling
heirs of Italy’s neofascist factions. _

,

 

In any unequal society becoming substantially _more_ unequal,
democratic forces better directly address that growing inequality. Or
else get prepared to face the consequences.

In Italy, established democratic parties have spent years leaving that
inequality unaddressed. Now they’re facing those consequences. This
past Sunday, just a few weeks shy of the 100th anniversary of our
modern world’s first fascist putsch, Italian voters gave a smashing
triumph to a party with deep roots in the neofascist movements that
emerged after the fall of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s first fascist
head of state.

Italy’s soon-to-be-named new leader, Giorgia Meloni, in no way
stylistically resembles Mussolini. She comes across as smiley and
perky, a far cry from the dour Mussolini we see in all those old
grainy newsreels. No goose-steps with Meloni. But she’s promoting
the essential heart of the core neofascist political playbook.
Her _Fratelli d’Italia_ party — ”Brothers of Italy” — has
been steadfastly ignoring the growing economic divides that poison
Italy’s future and scapegoating the country’s most vulnerable
instead.

The media-magnet Meloni has been taking a grinning victory lap this
week to celebrate her electoral triumph, and a sweeping triumph she
has certainly scored. In the new Italian parliament, _Fratelli
d’Italia _and its two smaller partner parties may end up
with about triple
[[link removed]] the
legislators connected to its center-left opposition.

But a closer look at the elections shows no massive public roar of
approval for a neofascist-leaning Italian future. What the elections
do show: A massive popular frustration with a center-left government
unwilling to challenge Italy’s increasingly concentrated
distribution of income and wealth and unable, as a result, to
meaningfully address the needs of average working people.

The clearest sign of that public frustration: Sunday’s meager
election turnout. Only 64 percent of Italians voted, notes
[[link removed]] Italian
political historian David Broder, “easily the lowest” turnout in
the republic’s entire history. More of those
who _did_ vote, observes
[[link removed]] activist
philosopher Lorenzo Marsili, cast ballots for parties in the
“liberal-left camp.” But the right-wing parties ran as partners
while their democratic opposition remained “fractured.”

Giorgia Meloni and her fellow Brothers of Italy candidates ran as
outsiders to the existing “national unity” government led by
Italy’s center-left Democratic Party and topped by Mario Draghi, an
Italian economist whose work at Goldman Sachs and the Bank of Italy
had previously prepped him for the presidency of the European Central
Bank. Draghi’s government, note analysts at Italy’s Forum on
Inequality and Diversity, has done essentially nothing significant to
confront the nation’s swelling maldistribution of income and wealth.

Italy, as _Forbes_ reported this past spring, now
[[link removed]] sports
more billionaires (52) than either France (43) or the UK (49).
Italy’s top 1 percent overall, add analysts Paolo Acciari, Facundo
Alvaredo and Salvatore Morelli, upped their share of the nation’s
wealth from 16 to 22 percent in the two decades after 1995, at the
same time the nation’s poorest 50 percent was watching its national
wealth share plummet from 11.7 to 3.5 percent.

Draghi’s center-left government, points out Morelli, a leader within
Italy’s Forum on Inequality and Diversity, did initially advance a
tepid inheritance tax proposal, but then quickly left the initiative
“_de facto_ abandoned.” And the center-left Democratic Party,
Morelli adds, never challenged Draghi’s core perspective that the
government, at tax time, should dare not put its “hands in the
pockets” of even the richest of Italian households.

That same Democratic Party made no real effort to oppose the
widespread right-wing political and media assault on Italy’s most
substantial anti-poverty effort, the minimum “citizenship income,”
the _reddito di cittadinanza_. Nor did the party speak to the needs
of young people facing youth unemployment rates that had left nearly
30 percent of Italy’s 25-29 age group without either jobs or student
status, a level almost twice the European Union average.

Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right Brothers of Italy party, meanwhile,
campaigned with no answers for the growing economic squeeze on average
Italian families. Her winning center-right coalition in Sunday’s
elections spent the bulk of its campaign effort attacking the lazy
“undeserving” poor and promising not to raise taxes on anyone.

Italy’s richest can now look forward to _lower_ taxes if
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy and its allies make good another of their
campaign promises: to replace Italy’s progressive income tax with a
“flat tax” that subjects rich and poor alike to the same modest
tax rates.

The political tragedy in all this? At the activist grassroots
level, notes
[[link removed]] Italy’s
progressive Forum on Inequality and Diversity, the nation is teeming
with a “wealth of ideas and innovations that have been developing
within the country’s social ferment.”

Some of these ideas even made onto the platforms of the center-left
parties contesting for votes on Sunday. But these parties “rarely
discussed the proposals contained in their own programs or engaged
with social and labor entities, with citizens” on the campaign
trail, the Forum on Inequality and Diversity points out. They never
communicated “passion and hope.” They relied instead “on
worn-out symbolism and images.” They opened the door to a neofascist
triumph.

What next for Italian activists? Many are planning for a November 5
nationwide protest that’s evoking the spirit of the worldwide
Women’s March on the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration. These
activists will be demonstrating against inequality and for ecological
transformation, for decent social services and against violations of
fundamental labor and women’s rights. Hundreds of local, regional,
and national groups have already endorsed
[[link removed]] the
day’s agenda.

In the wake of Sunday’s electoral debacle, many of these same
insurgent social forces are also hoping to start building what the
Forum on Inequality and Diversity calls a “party of social and
environmental justice,” a party that can offer Italy’s “social
ferment” a “democratic space for power-sharing on visions,
content, and leadership,” a party “capable and brave enough to
bring radical proposals for change to European and international
negotiating tables.”

That vision seems a tall order at the same moment Giorgia Meloni’s
Brothers of Italy stands poised to remake Italy into a dependable
partner for ruling ultra-right-wing European autocrats like
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. But Meloni’s party, we ought to
remember, only polled
[[link removed]] 4
percent just four years ago, in Italy’s 2018 elections. If Italy’s
grassroots activists blow hard enough together, the political winds
can change in ways that no one now expects.

_SAM PIZZIGATI CO-EDITS INEQUALITY.ORG. HIS LATEST BOOKS INCLUDE THE
CASE FOR A MAXIMUM WAGE
[[link removed]] AND THE
RICH DON’T ALWAYS WIN: THE FORGOTTEN TRIUMPH OVER PLUTOCRACY THAT
CREATED THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS, 1900-1970
[[link removed]].
TWITTER: @TOO_MUCH_ONLINE._

* Giorgia Meloni
[[link removed]]
* Italy
[[link removed]]
* economic inequality
[[link removed]]
* Fascism
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]
Screenshot of the email generated on import

Message Analysis

  • Sender: Portside
  • Political Party: n/a
  • Country: United States
  • State/Locality: n/a
  • Office: n/a
  • Email Providers:
    • L-Soft LISTSERV