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      in World Politics

      The Italian Far Right’s Long-Term Investment

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      When the government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was unable to find eleven lawmakers willing to join its ranks in the house of representatives in order to keep his ruling majority, President Sergio Mattarella decided to offer the former president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, the possibility to try to form a new governo tecnico. Italy’s last technical government was led by Mario Monti between 2011 and 2012. A third Conte cabinet did not materialize because of the opposition by Matteo Renzi, the leader of Italia Viva, a party currently polling at 2%.

      The Italian Job: Can Mario Draghi Master It?

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      All political parties in the Italian parliament supported Draghi’s appointment except one: Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy). Even the Euroskeptic and anti-immigration populist-radical Lega (League) agreed to support Draghi, with its leader Matteo Salvini affirming, “I rather prefer to play the game and manage 209 billions of euros than not,” referring to the Italian share of the Next Generation EU plan agreed in July last year.

      Next Generation EU

      Next Generation EU, a €750-billion ($904-billlion) stimulus package designed to boost post-pandemic recovery, will be the largest ever financed by the European Union. Taken together with the EU’s long-term budget, overall recovery funding stands at a total of €1.8 trillion, aimed at rebuilding, “a greener, more digital and more resilient Europe.”

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      The complex intergovernmental dynamics that have led to the agreement behind Next Generation EU are well known. What began with the initial opposition by the so-called “Frugal Four”  — Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden — to the French-German initiative in May 2020 ended in an impasse provoked in late November by Hungary and Poland’s veto of the EU budget. Warsaw and Budapest were concerned about the Rule of Law Mechanism attached to the stimulus that would make it easier for Brussels to sanction violations of democratic principles by withdrawing aid.

      Of the €750 billion, about two-thirds would be non-repayable grants financed by joint borrowing, and one-third will consist in loans. With the aim to help less wealthy countries, Italy and Spain will get the biggest chunk, €209 billion and €140 billion respectively, with France “only” allocated €40 billion. Next Generation EU has been hailed by many as the “new Marshall Plan” that helped lift Europe out of the ruin of the Second World War. However, its practical implementation is revealing to be more complicated than earlier expected.

      For instance, the Spanish government led by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has already officially declared it will not seek €70 billion in loans, in a move similar to the one announced by Portugal’s Prime Minister Antonio Costa. In Italy, the recent political crisis erupted when Matteo Renzi quit the government over an objection to Conte’s plans for how to spend EU recovery money. In particular, Renzi, once an enfant prodige of Italian and European politics, was critical of the highly technocratic governance that the Conte cabinet was originally seeking to adopt vis-à-vis the stimulus package, including a task force composed of more than 300 experts. Conte, whose popularity has increased over the course of the pandemic, in order to avoid possible vetoes, had previously defended the move by highlighting that it was required by the EU.

      Grand Strategy

      With the Italian government desperately trying to avoid a return to the ballot box during a pandemic, which has already killed nearly 100,000 Italians so far, and an executive struggling to produce a consistent dossier on how to allocate the money from the EU recovery plan, the move by Giorgia Meloni to not lend support to the new government might appear pointless. In fact, Meloni was the only Italian political leader who called for new elections. According to polls, an election now would give to the Italian populist radical-right parties a landslide victory, with Salvini’s League and Meloni’s Brothers of Italy potentially garnering 40% of the votes.

      However, the Brothers of Italy, which in the last year has moved from 10,7% to the current 17%-18%, could vastly benefit from this “isolating abstention.” By simply waiting for the end of the honeymoon between Draghi’s technocratic executive and Italian political parties, the Brothers of Italy could easily build narratives based around blaming the incapacity of the current executive to efficiently utilize the EU funds; denouncing a technocratic agenda dictated by the European “bureaucrats” in Brussels or by “foreign” policymakers in Berlin and Paris; and by criticizing the opportunistic and inconsistent attitudes of other Italian parties, including the League.

      What is certain is that a highly deteriorated and inflamed post-pandemic landscape could provide a perfect context for the Brothers of Italy to gain support by reverting to social policies that à la Orban or à la Kaczyński, focusing on the pillar of “traditional” family. The Brothers of Italy was formed in late 2012 following the open disagreement with the center-right People of Freedom party launched by Silvio Berlusconi, and since then, Miloni has been clearly outlining social and family policies she wants to adopt in Italy. Those policies are based on the principles of conservativism and nationalism, and on intelligent, soft Euroskepticism in the name of sovereignty.

      The policies are the focus of a grand strategy to increase birth rates and protect the traditional family, with generous incentives for both parents and children alongside investment in social housing. It is important to note here that, differently from the League’s economic policies, based on a syncretic and opportunistic mix of both neoliberal and autarchic worldviews protecting small and medium enterprises, the Brothers of Italy has a clear and organic economic vision. As Mitchell Orenstein, among others, has brilliantly demonstrated in the case of Hungary and Poland, these types of policies can be particularly effective in buying many voters into the nationalist right’s vision of a social state. Could this be the case in post-pandemic Italy?

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Calls to can Goya Foods grow after CEO repeats Trump's election lies

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      Calls for a boycott of Goya beans, chickpeas and other foodstuffs have grown louder after chief executive Robert Unanue made a series of false claims about the presidential election in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in Florida on Sunday.Unanue has previously courted controversy with praise for Donald Trump, which last year prompted Ivanka Trump to pose, infamously, with a can of Goya beans.Onstage in Orlando, Unanue called Donald Trump “the real, legitimate and still actual president of the United States”.He also falsely claimed the presidential election that Trump lost conclusively to Joe Biden and the state contest in Georgia, which Biden won narrowly, were “not legitimate”, and claimed mail-in ballots were fraudulent.“We still have faith,” Unanue said, “that the majority of the people of the United States voted for the president … I think a great majority of the people in the United States voted for President Trump, and even a few Democrats.”Biden won more than 81m votes, or 51.3% of the total cast, to more than 74m for Trump. The Democrat won the electoral college 306-232, a margin Trump called a landslide when it was in his favour over Hillary Clinton.Trump has continued to lie about the election, in January inciting supporters to attack the US Capitol in a bid to stop the ratification of results. That led to his second impeachment, which ended with his second acquittal. The former president repeated his lies about the election in his own speech at CPAC, on Sunday night.Unanue has previously been censured by his company for speaking in support of Trump. In January, owner Andy Unanue told the New York Post: “Bob does not speak for Goya Foods when he speaks on TV. The family has diverse views on politics, but politics is not part of our business. Our political point of views are irrelevant.”Robert Unanue said then: “I don’t believe I should speak politically or in a faith-based manner on behalf of the company. But I leave open the possibility of speaking on behalf of myself.”After his remarks at CPAC on Sunday, the journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted: “Folks at Goya should be embarrassed.”The speech also prompted renewed calls for a boycott of Goya products.“No more chickpeas from Goya for me,” tweeted one famous consumer, Joy Behar, a cohost of The View on ABC. More

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      in Elections

      Donald Trump hints at run for president in 2024 – video

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      Former US president Donald Trump has hinted at a possible run for president again in 2024 during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] in Florida. Trump attacked president Joe Biden and repeated his fraudulent claims that he won the 2020 election in his first major appearance since leaving the White House nearly six weeks ago. ‘Who knows, who knows, I may even decide to beat them for a third time,’ he said.
      CPAC: pent-up Trump denounces Biden at rightwing summit More

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      in US Politics

      Trump grasps for relevance in first post-presidential speech at CPAC

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      An embittered Donald Trump has used his first post-presidential speech to propagate the lie of a “rigged” election in 2020 and hint that he might try to beat Democrats “for a third time” in 2024.Grasping for continued relevance, Trump returned to his political comfort zone by fearmongering about immigrants and unleashing angry tirades against Joe Biden, his Republican critics and the media.The twice-impeached former president, greeted by wild cheers at the biggest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives in Orlando, Florida, falsely asserted: “Illegal aliens and dead people are voting, and many other horrible things are happening that are too voluminous to even mention, but people know.“I mean, it’s being studied and the level of dishonesty is not to be believed. We have a very sick and corrupt electoral process that must be fixed immediately. This election was rigged and the supreme court and other courts didn’t want to do anything about it.”The crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where the “big lie” took root and flourished over the past four days, chanted: “You won! You won!”Trump replied bluntly: “We did.”The 45th president spent two months falsely claiming that last November’s election was stolen, culminating in a deadly insurrection by his supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January.In fact Biden won by a margin of 7m votes and state officials, courts and Trump’s own attorney general found no significant irregularities.Trump criticised judges for not having “the guts” to intervene. And earlier, in an apparent ad lib, he made clear that he still does not accept the legitimacy of Biden’s victory.“Actually, as you know they just lost the White House,” he said of Democrats before hinting that he could seek revenge. “But who knows, who knows? I may even decide to beat them for a third time.” It was typical Trump showmanship and the room erupted in cheers and applause.He went on to call for sweeping electoral reforms including the abolition of early voting and tougher voter rules, widely seen as measures that would have a disproportionate impact on people of colour.Trump, who launched his first campaign for president in June 2015 with racist statements about Mexican immigrants and the need for a border wall, defaulted to that issue as he fiercely denounced Biden.“We all knew that the Biden administration was going to be bad – but none of us imagined just how bad they would be, and how far left they would go … Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history.He continued: “In just one short month we have gone from ‘America first’ to ‘America last’,” citing a “new and horrible crisis on our southern border … Biden’s radical immigration policies aren’t just illegal – they are immoral, they are heartless, and they are a betrayal of our nation’s core values”.He also demanded the that his successor open schools despite the coronavirus pandemic. Trump said: “The Biden administration is actually bragging about the education they are providing to migrant children on the border, while at the same, time millions of American children are having their futures destroyed by Joe Biden’s anti-science school closures.”Wearing blue suit, white shirt and red tie, Trump walked on stage just before 5pm to a standing ovation from hundreds of supporters bunched together indoors with few face masks at what looked dangerously like a coronavirus super-spreader event.Trump began: “Hello, CPAC. Do you miss me yet?” He pledged: “I want you to know that I am going to continue to fight right by your side,” but made clear he would do so as the standard bearer of the Republican party. “It’s going to unite and be stronger than ever before. I am not starting a new party. That was fake news.”He went on to call for a purge of the Republican critics who voted for his impeachment after the US Capitol mob violence, including “warmonger” Liz Cheney, the No 3 Republican in the House of Representatives. He insisted: “The Republican party is united. The only division is between a handful of Washington DC establishment political hacks and everybody else all over the country.” Trump said he would support “smart, tough” Republican leaders.In a comeback speech that lasted an hour and a half there were many familiar lines from old speeches, including tirades against the the Iran nuclear deal, “forever wars”, renewable energy, big tech companies and the Washington establishment. But he also found some new prejudices to flaunt, with misinformed transphobia.After using his arms to imitate a weightlifter, he said: “Young girls and women are incensed that they are now being forced to compete against those who are biological males. It’s not good for women, it’s not good for women’s sports which worked so long and so hard to get to where they are.”Trump rounded off with another tease about his future ambitions, telling the crowd: “With your help we will take back the House, we will win the Senate and then a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House. And I wonder who that will be. I wonder who that will be. Who, who, who will that be? I wonder.”Earlier on Sunday, the Republican congressman Jim Jordan said of him: “The leader of the conservative movement, the leader of the ‘American first’ movement, the leader of the Republican party and, I hope, on January 20, 2025, he is once again the leader of our great country.”But the annual CPAC straw poll found that only 55% of attendees want Trump to be the Republican nominee in 2024, ahead of Florida governor Ron DeSantis at 21% (the conference is taking place in Florida), South Dakota governor Kristi Noem at 4% and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley at 3%.Evan McMullin, executive director of Stand Up Republic and a former presidential candidate, tweeted in response: “It’s still ‘his party,’ but there’s a growing number ready for something new.” More

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      in US Politics

      Republicans push 'blue-collar comeback' – but is the party a true friend of the worker?

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      Amid the resurrection of “the big lie” about an election stolen from Donald Trump, another deceptive theme has emerged at this weekend’s rightwing gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference: Republicans as the true party of the blue-collar worker.
      It was a concept promoted variously over CPAC’s first two days by, among others, a multimillionaire former governor who made a fortune in healthcare; the son of Donald Trump, who lives in his own exclusive Florida club; and two firebrand US senators with law degrees from Ivy League universities who oppose a universal hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
      One of them, the Texas senator Ted Cruz, earlier this month flew his family to a sunshine vacation at a five-star resort in Mexico to escape the deadly winter blast back in his home state. At CPAC he asserted his alignment with America’s working men and women.
      “The Republican party is not the party just of the country clubs; the Republican party is the party of steel workers and construction workers, and pipeline workers and taxi cab drivers, and cops and firefighters, and waiters and waitresses, and the men and women with calluses on their hands who are working for this country,” Cruz told the nation’s biggest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives, just days after cutting short his Cancun holiday when the scandal came to light.
      “That is our party, and these deplorables are here to stay.”
      The CPAC positioning to try to represent the Republican party as a champion of the working class comes as Democratic president Joe Biden’s effort to raise the minimum wage faces significant congressional roadblocks, including opposition from many senior Republican figures.
      Cruz, a Harvard-educated lawyer and the beneficiary of substantial corporate campaign donations, at least until many halted contributions in the wake of the 6 January Capitol riots, is a long-time opponent of what he has called the “bad policy” concept of a minimum wage, and has said legislation to enforce it would “kill American jobs”.
      Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator who last month joined his fellow Trump loyalist Cruz in attempting to block the certification of Biden’s victory, was another prominent CPAC speaker espousing working-class roots while opposing the new president’s wage proposals.
      “Where I come from in Missouri, I grew up in rural Missouri, [a] small town right in the middle of Missouri, it’s a working-class town full of good folks, working hard to make it every day,” said Hawley, a Yale law school graduate.
      “And I can just tell you, where I grew up, we believe in citizenship because we’re proud of it. We’re proud to be Americans,” he added in an address condemning “powerful corporations” and “oligarchs” he accused of imposing a “radical left agenda” on the United States.
      Hawley, considered a possible candidate in the race for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination if Trump does not run again, has also suffered corporate backlash for his support of the former president’s election lies. He proposed legislation this month that would exempt small businesses from paying their employees a “burdensome” minimum wage.
      On Saturday at CPAC, the fealty continued to Trump, who was honored at the conference venue this week by the installation of a large, gaudy statue that sparked the Twitter hashtag #goldencalf.
      “The blue-collar comeback was the theme of our administration,” the Republican Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty said in a panel discussion on industry during which he praised “President Trump’s leadership” for job growth.
      KT McFarland, a conservative commentator who was briefly Trump’s deputy national security adviser at the start of his administration, said she had a telephone call with the former president on Friday night in which he allegedly outlined the theme of his scheduled CPAC speech on Sunday.
      “I think that Donald Trump is not finished with this revolution,” she said, describing how she called his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach and claiming Trump himself picked up the phone.
      “He said: ‘I’m going to talk about the future. I’m going to talk about how we win in 2022, how we take the White House back in 2024.’”
      Trump’s son, Donald Jr, told CPAC attendees earlier in the gathering that Biden’s relaxation of Trump-era immigration measures and reopening of camps for migrant youth would affect the very blue-collar workers Republicans are attempting to covet.
      “Where is the outrage about an asinine immigration policy that is encouraging people to bring children unaccompanied and otherwise into a country?” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      Golden Trump statue turning heads at CPAC was made in … Mexico

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      A golden statue of Donald Trump that has caused a stir at the annual US gathering of conservatives was made in Mexico – a country the former president frequently demonized.The statue is larger than life, with a golden head and Trump’s trademark suit jacket with white shirt and red tie. Video and pictures of the tribute being wheeled through the halls of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, went viral on Friday.The conference is seen as a vital gathering of the Republican right, and this year has become a symbol of Trump’s continued grip on the party, despite being cast out of office after two impeachments, seemingly endless parades of scandals and a botched response to the coronavirus pandemic that has cost half a million lives in the US.Now the artist behind the huge statue of Trump – Tommy Zegan – has revealed that the object was made in Mexico; a country that has been the target of much Trump racist abuse over his political career, and somewhere he has literally sought to build a wall against.“It was made in Mexico,” Zegan told Politico’s Playbook newsletter. Zegan, who lives in Mexico on a permanent resident visa, described the transport of the monument to CPAC in full to Playbook.Politico reported: “Zegan spent over six months crafting the 200lb fiberglass statue with the help of three men in Rosarito. He transported it to Tampa, Florida, where it was painted in chrome, then hauled it from there to CPAC.” More

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      in US Politics

      US House passes historic public lands bill pledging to protect nearly 3m acres

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      The US House of Representatives has passed a historic public lands preservation bill that pledges to protect nearly 3m acres of federal lands in Colorado, California, Washington and Arizona.
      The act combines various bills that languished without Senate approval during the Trump administration. Key provisions include permanently banning new uranium mining on land surrounding the Grand Canyon, giving wilderness designation to 1.5m acres of federal land, and preserving 1,000 river miles by adding them to the Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
      “This is one of the largest public lands protection bills to ever go before Congress,” said Kristen Brengel, senior vice-president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Wilderness designation is the strongest protection there is to ensure the lands will never be developed. And it can’t be undone with the stroke of pen.”
      The bill, called the Protecting America’s Wilderness and Public Lands Act, has strong support from the Biden administration, in part because it will help the president achieve his goal of protecting at least 30% of US land from development by 2030 in order to combat climate change.
      Still, the bill must first pass a divided Senate. Given partisan opposition to the measure from some Republican senators, approval could come down to Vice-President Kamala Harris casting a tie-breaking vote.
      Sponsored by the Colorado representative Diana DeGette, the bill passed the House in a 227 to 200 vote, generally along party lines. During debate on Thursday, Republican congressional representatives opposing the act argued that it would, among other things, inhibit firefighting abilities in areas close to or surrounded by wilderness in California and Colorado, and create additional burdens for land managers.
      “This bill won’t help the environment but will instead kill jobs and imperil our national security and American energy dependence,” said the Arkansas congressman Bruce Westerman, the highest-ranking Republican member on the House natural resources committee.
      The package of eight individually sponsored bills incorporated into the Act include:
      Arizona
      The Grand Canyon Protection Act would provide a victory in the decades-long battle fought by the Havasupai tribe, who live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, to protect their drinking water from uranium mining contamination. The bill permanently withdraws more than 1m federally owned acres north and south of Grand Canyon from eligibility for new mining claims.
      “Grand Canyon is the homeland of indigenous peoples, a primary driver of Arizona’s outdoor recreation and tourism-fueled economy, and a worldwide wonder,” said Amber Reimondo, energy director for the Grand Canyon Trust. “The risks of uranium extraction are not worth it now and never will be. We look forward to the Grand Canyon Protection Act becoming law.”
      California
      Four different bills significantly enhance public lands recreation opportunities in the Golden state. A new 400-mile trail along the central coast would connect northern and southern wilderness areas in the Los Padres national Forest. In north-west California, a total of 306,500 acres would be protected through wilderness designation. In southern California, popular recreation areas in the Santa Monica mountains and San Gabriel mountains would be significantly expanded and protected from development.
      Colorado
      Initially introduced by DeGette more than a decade ago, a Colorado measure will add 660,000 acres of public land to the National Wilderness Preservation System. While many of Colorado’s towering mountain peaks are already designated wilderness, the new bill specifically protects lower-elevation areas that are popular for recreation and critical wildlife habitat. Like all lands in the wilderness system, the areas will be off limits to motorized vehicles and resource extraction. An additional measure provides protection to 400,000 acres of federal land through wilderness designation and limiting oil and gas development.
      Washington
      This bill seeks to expand designated wilderness on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula and adds 460 river miles to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. More