Future Timeline

Italian parliamentarians will begin casting their votes for a new president on Monday after the scandal-plagued Silvio Berlusconi abandoned his dream of becoming the next head of state.

More than 1,000 lawmakers and regional delegates will participate in the complex secret ballot, described as being akin to the appointment of a new pope, that could go through several rounds before a successor to Sergio Mattarella, who is due to step down on 3 February, is elected.

The winner of the seven-year mandate requires a two-thirds majority within the first three rounds of voting; from the fourth, an absolute majority is sufficient. Only on three occasions in the history of the election has a new president emerged in the first round.

Berlusconi, who served Italy four times as prime minister, failed to garner enough support for his bid and in a heartfelt letter wrote that in the spirit of “national responsibility” he asked his backers to “give up” identifying him as a contender.

04 May 2022

All 20 members of the Senate foreign affairs committee quit Wednesday in a bid to force out the chair, 5-Star Movement (M5S) Senator Vito Petrocelli, who is sticking to his post despite a political storm over his positions regarding the conflict in Ukraine.
Petrocelli said ahead of the mass resignation "I am not stepping down because I feel that I represent the Constitution, the will of Italians who don't have any more parties representing them in Parliament".

"I will honor the pledges for peace and international dialogue that I took with voters in 2018", said Petrocelli, who has opposed the government's package of aid, including military aid, for Ukraine after Russia invaded the country.

Thu 14 Jul 2022 15.40 BST

Italy’s coalition government is teetering on the brink of collapse after the Five Star Movement refused to participate in a confidence vote, raising the spectre of a snap general election.

Five Star, headed by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, is a formerly anti-establishment party that has plummeted in the polls and lost parliamentarians since joining the government, hurt by policy U-turns and internal divisions.

The decision to sit out the vote – which political experts say is a tactical attempt to win back grassroots support – could push Mario Draghi’s already fractured coalition to collapse, and even force early national elections later in the year.

“We are not taking part in the vote on this measure today … but this position of ours is not about confidence in the government,” said Mariolina Castellone, the leader of Five Star in the senate.

The government survived the confidence vote, but Draghi had previously said on multiple occasions that he would not carry on as premier without Five Star’s support.

ROME, July 14 (Reuters) - Mario Draghi said he would resign as Italian prime minister on Thursday, after a party in his ruling coalition did not participate in a confidence vote.

"I will tender my resignation to the president of the republic this evening," Draghi told the cabinet, according to a statement released by his office.

"The national unity coalition that backed this government no longer exists," he added.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi resigned Thursday after his ruling coalition fell apart, dealing a destabilizing blow to the country and Europe at a time of severe economic uncertainty brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Mr. Draghi tendered his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella during a morning meeting at the Quirinale Palace. Mr. Mattarella, who rejected a similar resignation offer from the premier last week, “took note” of the new one and asked Mr. Draghi’s government to remain on in a caretaker capacity, the president’s office said. While the president could see if a new parliamentary majority was possible, his office indicated that he would dissolve the body and call early elections.

The turmoil couldn’t have come at a worse time for the eurozone’s third-largest economy. Like many countries, Italy is facing soaring prices for everything from food to household utilities as a result of Moscow’s invasion. On top of that, it is also suffering through a prolonged drought that is threatening crops and struggling to implement its EU-financed pandemic recovery program. Any instability in Italy could ripple out to the rest of Europe, also facing economic trouble, and deprive the EU of a respected statesman as it seeks to keep up a united front against Russia.

Mr. Draghi, who is not a politician but a former central banker, was brought in 17 months ago to navigate the economic downturn caused by COVID-19. But his government of national unity imploded Wednesday after members of his uneasy coalition of right, left, and populists rebuffed his appeal to band back together to finish the Italian Parliament’s natural term.

Sun 24 Jul 2022 16.00 BST

When the far right took power in Ladispoli, a beach town near Rome, in 2017, ending 20 years of leftwing administration, among its priorities was naming a square after Giorgio Almirante, a minister in Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship and founder of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).

Protests from anti-fascist groups failed to thwart the plan, and in 2019 the nameplate was unveiled during a ceremony that included a blessing from the priest of the church on the same square. Almirante was described by mayor Alessandro Grando, who won a second term in June, as “the father of Italian rightwing socialism and point of reference for many Italians”.

Now many voters in Ladispoli and across Italy are looking towards Giorgia Meloni, founder of Brothers of Italy, a descendant of MSI, as their point of reference as the country gears up for snap elections on 25 September.

“Italians want a radical, epochal change, and we need it to come through a democratic process,” said Carlo Morelli, a former leftwing voter whose allegiance now lies with Brothers of Italy. “I think Meloni is the right person to bring about that change.”

Meloni, 45, could be about to fulfil her aspiration of becoming Italy’s first female prime minister. Her political party has gone from barely scraping 4% of the vote in the 2018 general elections to being the most popular in Italy, edging further up in surveys published on Friday after the collapse of Mario Draghi’s government.

(Mother Jones) Early polls out of Italy following its Sunday election suggest that Giorgia Meloni, an ultra-conservative leader known for her opposition to gay rights and immigration, will become its first female prime minister—and the most extreme right-winger to run the place since, you guessed it, Benito Mussolini.

Meloni’s victory makes her party, Brothers of Italy, the most successful of the new radical-right movements thriving on Europe’s economic struggles and migration crisis. Its predecessor was a neo-fascist party formed by Mussolini supporters after World War II, although Meloni claims that she’s gotten rid of the Brothers of Italy’s outright fascists. Her fixation on the Great Replacement Theory and her vendetta against George Soros are nothing to worry about, I’m sure.

Meloni is also completely obsessed with J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, regarding the series—which has been venerated by Italian fascists for decades—as an almost Biblical text. In her early twenties, Meloni haunted the web as “Khy-ri, the dragon of the Undernet.” Tolkien, she told the [/i]New York Times[/i], explains “better than we can what conservatives believe in.” Her take on Mussolini? “Everything he did, he did for Italy.”

Meloni insists that she isn’t a fascist herself, even if her party’s flag includes the symbol of the old pro-Fascist party whose youth wing she belonged to. She praised Il Duce at the time, decades before her small, splinter party leaped to the top of the polls. Italians aren’t necessarily turning far-right themselves, one analyst told NBC—but after decades of gridlock and stagnation, they’re desperate for something “new and disruptive.”

Disaffected Italians turned out to vote in record low numbers, seemingly bearing that out. But early exit polls show the country’s far-right coalition winning about 45 percent of the vote, much more than any other parties. That puts Meloni on track to be the country’s first ultra-right prime minister since World War II, a prospect that worries everyone from gay couples to women seeking more social and economic power.

(Common Dreams) Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the fascist Brothers of Italy party, is set to become the country's prime minister after her far-right coalition emerged victorious in Sunday's snap election, defeating a fragmented center-left and setting the stage for a viciously xenophobic and anti-democratic Italian government.

The alliance of Meloni's party, Matteo Salvini's The League, and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia won roughly 43% of the vote in early tallies, with Brothers of Italy winning around 25% in the low-turnout contest. Results counted thus far indicate that the right-wing coalition failed to garner enough support to amend Italy's constitution.

Italy's centrist Democratic Party is poised to lead the opposition.

"This is a sad day for the country," Debora Serracchiani, a Democratic Party leader, said of Meloni's win.

(Al Jazeera) (In Germany) Jurgen Hardt, a lawmaker and foreign policy expert for the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – currently in opposition – said he was troubled by the “openly post-fascist statements” of Meloni and the “hair-raising positions” of her fellow Brothers of Italy party members.
…
The Kremlin said Moscow was open to developing “constructive” ties with Rome.

“We are ready to welcome any political forces that are able to go beyond the established mainstream, which is filled with hate for our country … and show willingness to be constructive in relations with our country,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, when asked about Meloni’s victory.
…
“The EU right is growing stronger … We will defeat the communists, leftism and the LGBT lobby – everyone who is ruining our civilisation,” Deputy Agriculture Minister Janusz Kowalski (of Poland) said on Twitter.
…
“These are uncertain times and at times like this, populist movements always grow, but it always ends in the same way – in catastrophe because they offer simple short-term answers to problems which are very complex,” he (Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares) told reporters at a briefing.

(Common Dreams) 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 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.

(Mother Jones) When a coalition led by Mussolini fangirl Giorgia Meloni won the Italian election a few days ago and placed her on the path to becoming that nation’s first fascist-esque prime minister since Il Duce, I, like many other journalists, quickly engaged in tutorials on her rise to power. One especially frightening data point was a speech she had given outlining her conspiratorial view of the world. It’s worth quoting at length:

• Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening? There is a single answer to all these questions. Because it defines us. Because it defines our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy. For those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves. And so they attack national identity. They attack religious identity. They attack gender identity. They attack family identity. I can’t define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother. No, I must be citizen X, gender X, parent 1, parent 2. I must be a number. Because when I am only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators. The perfect consumer. That’s the reason why, that’s why we inspire so much fear… We will defend God, country, and family. This thing that disgusts people so much. We will do it to defend our freedom. Because we will never be slaves and simple consumers at the mercy of financial speculators.
  That is our mission.

Meloni was saying that “financial speculators” were in league with woke activists to turn god-fearing Christian Italians into “consumer slaves.” Historian Michael Beschloss noted that “Mussolini enjoyed publicly referring to Jewish people as ‘financial speculators’ who needed to be controlled.” What makes this odious reference even more alarming is Meloni’s comment in another setting: “After our victory, you can raise your heads and finally verbalize what you always thought/believe in.” In her antisemitism-tainted speech, she was blending culture wars over identity with paranoia-driven, elites-bashing populism. This is nasty and dangerous stuff, especially given her party’s fascist roots and her explicit past enthusiasm for Mussolini.

ROME (AP via Courthouse News) — Italy's presumed next premier, Giorgia Meloni, issued a stark warning to Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday that he risked losing influence in any new government over his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as she asserted a strong pro-NATO, pro-European position about Russia's war in Ukraine.

“Italy will never be the weak link of the West with us in government,” Meloni said in a statement late Wednesday.

She was responding to private comments by Berlusconi to his Forza Italia lawmakers this week in which the three-time premier boasted of having reestablished contact with Putin and exchanged gifts of vodka and wine over his recent 86th birthday, while justifying Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

“I have reconnected with President Putin — a little, a lot,” Berlusconi was heard saying in comments that were recorded and released by the LaPresse news agency. “He sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a really sweet letter for my birthday. I responded with 20 bottles of Lambrusco (a sparkling Italian red wine) and a similarly sweet letter.”

Berlusconi's comments added to the political upheaval in Italy as Meloni, whose far-right Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in the Sept. 25 election, tries to put together a Cabinet. She is expected to get a mandate to form Italy's next government as early as this week.

Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who was sworn in as Italy’s first female prime minister on Saturday, won the election on a campaign built around a promise to block migrant ships and support for traditional “family values” and anti-LGBTQ themes.

Meloni was sworn in by the Italian President Sergio Mattarella in a ceremony taking at the Quirinale Palace in Rome.

She heads an alliance of far-right and center-right parties, her own Brothers of Italy chief among them, and is set to form the most right-wing government Italy has seen in decades.

Meloni’s win in parliamentary elections last month suggests the allure of nationalism remains undimmed in Italy – but her vow to take the country on a hard-right turn still leaves many uncertain what will happen next.

weatheriscool wrote: ↑Sat Oct 22, 2022 5:09 pm Giorgia Meloni sworn in as Italy’s prime minister. Some fear the hard-right turn she’s promised to take

Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who was sworn in as Italy’s first female prime minister on Saturday, won the election on a campaign built around a promise to block migrant ships and support for traditional “family values” and anti-LGBTQ themes.

Meloni was sworn in by the Italian President Sergio Mattarella in a ceremony taking at the Quirinale Palace in Rome.

She heads an alliance of far-right and center-right parties, her own Brothers of Italy chief among them, and is set to form the most right-wing government Italy has seen in decades.

Meloni’s win in parliamentary elections last month suggests the allure of nationalism remains undimmed in Italy – but her vow to take the country on a hard-right turn still leaves many uncertain what will happen next.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/europe/g ... index.html

Time_Traveller wrote: ↑Sat Oct 22, 2022 5:27 pm

weatheriscool wrote: ↑Sat Oct 22, 2022 5:09 pm Giorgia Meloni sworn in as Italy’s prime minister. Some fear the hard-right turn she’s promised to take

Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader who was sworn in as Italy’s first female prime minister on Saturday, won the election on a campaign built around a promise to block migrant ships and support for traditional “family values” and anti-LGBTQ themes.

Meloni was sworn in by the Italian President Sergio Mattarella in a ceremony taking at the Quirinale Palace in Rome.

She heads an alliance of far-right and center-right parties, her own Brothers of Italy chief among them, and is set to form the most right-wing government Italy has seen in decades.

Meloni’s win in parliamentary elections last month suggests the allure of nationalism remains undimmed in Italy – but her vow to take the country on a hard-right turn still leaves many uncertain what will happen next.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/22/europe/g ... index.html

So, whats the difference between this far-right government and Mussolini's in the 40s.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outraged Meloni’s supporters last week by hinting the European Union could somehow intervene if Italy were to go in a “difficult direction” and deviate from democratic norms.

Speaking at Princeton University in New Jersey, she said: “We’ll see. If things go in a difficult direction — and I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland — we have the tools.”

The E.U. is in long-standing legal battles with Hungary and Poland over both countries' antidemocratic reforms.