When a serving Italian general published a far-right tract in 2023 entitled The World Turned Upside Down, a disciplinary inquiry swiftly followed. Roberto Vannacci’s text was a sustained exercise in bile and bigotry, attacking among other things the “normalisation” of homosexuality, and questioning whether a high-profile black volleyball star could really be considered Italian. The controversy sent the book into the bestseller charts, and its author was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute.
A year out from Italy’s next general election, Mr Vannacci is a problem not for the military but for the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Now a member of the European parliament, in February he exploited his notoriety to found National Future, a political party which argues that Ms Meloni’s coalition government has sold out its far-right supporters through not being extreme enough. The “true right”, according to the former paratrooper – who once served as a military attache in Moscow – should be pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine, anti-EU, and committed to restoring the “cultural homogeneity” of Italy through the expulsion of immigrants and their descendants.
Shockingly, polls are now placing National Future just behind Forza Italia, the second-biggest party in Ms Meloni’s hard-right coalition, and ahead of its third main component, Matteo Salvini’s League. For Ms Meloni, Mr Vannacci’s rapid rise now threatens to become a major dilemma. To beat the combined forces of the left next year she may require the support of a party that does not disguise its sympathy with Italy’s fascist past. But to seek it would give the lie to efforts to present her own Brothers of Italy party (which retains a neo-fascist political symbol in its logo) as part of the mainstream conservative tradition.
The rest of Europe should sit up and take notice of Mr Vannacci’s rise. At a time when Russian influence on the far right is already a cause for concern, he has declared himself open to the idea of funding from Moscow and also Beijing. More broadly, the emergence of National Future confirms that as well as dragging mainstream politics towards more extreme positions on immigration, the continent’s far right is itself radicalising.
Here, the equivalent can be found in Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, which has been exerting a rightwards gravitational pull on Reform UK. Poland’s nationalist and Eurosceptic Law and Justice party has embarked on a similar trajectory, in order to compete with two newish and growing far-right parties. In Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) stands on the brink of a historic breakthrough in state elections in eastern Germany, and leads in national polls.
The ominous political consequences were on display last week in the panicked overreaction of leaders to the crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. With one eye over her right shoulder, Ms Meloni was at the forefront of divisive early calls for action to be taken against Spain following an incursion by irregular migrants. For his part, Mr Vannacci used the incident to amplify his calls for a Europe-wide “remigration” strategy.
Mr Vannacci’s repugnant politics are beyond the pale. In Germany, the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, continues to rule out any form of national alliance with the AfD. Were Ms Meloni to countenance any form of accommodation with Italy’s rogue general, it would demolish her fragile claims to mainstream respectability.
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