![]() A few days ago, I paid a visit to a Brothers of Italy rally in an anonymous concrete arena in the suburbs of Florence. Indeed, the most unsettling thing by far about this election is the near-total invisibility of Meloni’s supporters. Her party’s most dramatic intervention in the campaign so far has been a proposed boycott of the children’s cartoon Peppa Pig, on the basis that a new episode which features same-sex parents constitutes “gender indoctrination”.īut Peppa Pig doesn’t fill piazzas. It’s striking, too, that unlike allies such as Matteo Salvini, who is synonymous with his draconian security bill, or Silvio Berlusconi, who has been pushing for a pro-wealth flat tax for years, Meloni has no flagship policy. In Italy, by contrast, she has recently been posting cat videos and heavily airbrushed selfies to cultivate a bland, vacuous image designed to win over moderates. Earlier this summer, during a visit to Spain, she delivered a speech to supporters of the far-right Vox party in which she celebrated “patriots” and “the natural family” while attacking “the LGBT lobby” and “enemies of civilisation”. ![]() Meloni is adept at both courting and distancing herself from such extremists whenever it suits her. His gesture was purely performative, a tacit reminder to political sympathisers across the nation that if Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy wins this week’s election, as expected, people like him will soon have an opportunity to shape the policy agenda. ![]() He was surely aware, when he uploaded his clip, that there was no chance of voters in his left-leaning constituency shifting their support. You can see it from the smile on his face. Which was, of course, Di Giulio’s hope all along. Most Italians were appalled, and the video went viral. ![]() Stopping in his tracks, the candidate leans into the camera and implores his audience to “vote the League to never see her again”, a phrase he repeats three times for rhetorical effect. In the clip, Di Giulio strolls through the historic centre of the Tuscan capital when he comes across a woman who appears to be of Roma origin. E arlier this month, Alessio Di Giulio, a Florentine councillor with rightwing populist party the League, posted a 17-second video that, to my mind, marks the nadir of what has been one of the most grotesque Italian election campaigns in recent memory. ![]()
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