March 29, 2024

This week’s inconclusive election results have confirmed once again that Italy’s democratic dysfunction runs deep. In the short term, it may well prove ungovernable . . . . Christian Democracy, Fascism, Eurocommunism (“communism with a human face”) and a Trump-anticipating rule by a randy property-and-media mogul, Silvio Berlusconi, were all wholly or largely developed in Italy. The two forces now vying for the country’s leadership, the Five Star Movement and the Lega (“League”) are, in turn, the first party formed and run on the internet with a comedian-turned political blogger in charge of its ideology; and a party which created a non-existent region—Padania—in the north of Italy as a base to first argue for separating from the impoverished south, before taking its message of an anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic illiberalism to the entire country.

Source: The Impossibility of Italian Politics – The American Interest