After four more years of political instability accompanied by the worst impact of the corona epidemic and in the shadow of the threat of an acute economic crisis, the Italians are going to elect a new parliament. Maurizio Molinari, one of the most senior Italian journalists and for the past two years the editor-in-chief of the important daily "La Repubblica", which is affiliated with the center-left camp, believes that the current election campaign is one of the most important that Italy has known since the end of the Second World War.
"These are fateful elections," says Molinari, 56, in an interview with Israel Hayom, "since Italy has become a battleground for the two fateful struggles currently taking place in Europe: the first is between populists and the defenders of democracy, and the second is between Russia and the West. Both of these struggles are taking place in Italy And for both of them, the election result will be fateful."
La Republica, photo: none
Are you talking about populists on the left and right?
Definitely.
It can be said that Italy has become a laboratory of populism in Europe.
It started in 2018 with the surprising result of the previous general election, which gave the "Five Star" movement and the "League" the majority of votes and seats in the parliament.
Since then we have had several governments, the last of which was a government of technocrats led by Mario Draghi (former president of the European Central Bank), which is the opposite of populism.
Now we are back at the polls and the power of the populists according to the polls has strengthened.
If you add the support in the polls to the "Five Star" movement, which is now in the opposition, "Brothers of Italy" and Salvini's "League" they will receive more votes than four years ago.
This means that the populist front, from right to left, has expanded.
why did this happen?
I believe this is a result of the widening of inequality in Italian society.
The traditional parties have done too little to find an answer to the fact that the feeling of distress of the middle class, of the ordinary families, has become so strong.
If you pay attention to the language used by Giuseppe Conte (former Prime Minister on behalf of Five Star and head of the movement), Matteo Salvini (head of "League") and Giorgia Maloni (leader of "Brothers of Italy"), it is based on the message " The people are against the government." This message is getting more and more attention and voter votes. This means that the traditional democratic parties find themselves in a defensive position and after the elections we will have a big problem. Because what will those who win with such a message do? Will they continue to blame the government while they are in power? How Will they be able to govern if their legitimacy comes from opposition to the government? We saw what happened with the "Five Star" movement. This party collapsed. And now people are voting for them again. If we thought that populism was defeated in Europe, then we were wrong.
Georgia Maloney, leader of "Brothers of Italy",
Maybe we should, then, act to change the government?
I believe that not only should the government be changed, but that the government should find a new legitimacy.
For this purpose, the government must deal with inequality: with the lack of jobs, with the lack of money in the middle class.
Most Italian families do not have enough money to buy the basic medicines they need.
We are talking about basic products.
This situation is due to the corona epidemic, the economic crisis, technological innovation.
We have a divided, weakened, dissatisfied society.
She needs to be given answers and solutions.
If this is not done, the people will vote against the government.
Why is this not good?
Because Russia is trying to take advantage of this situation to distance Italy from the European Union and NATO.
Is there evidence that Russia is indeed involved in the Italian elections?
I have been a journalist since 1984, when I was 18 years old. I have never seen a foreign country interfere in an election campaign as much as Russia did this time.
Even the US did not behave this way in the 1950s.
I will give a few examples: Dmitry Medvedev, former Prime Minister under Putin and President, on several occasions asked the Italian voters to "make the right choice".
He said publicly from Moscow that they are asking the Italians to vote against those who supported the Draghi government, which supported the imposition of sanctions on Russia.
Such a thing never happened.
Moreover, the Russian ambassador in Rome is behaving in an unprecedented manner.
He gives speeches on politics and attacks newspapers, including "La Repubblica".
An ambassador who behaves like this?
In Rome?
During the election campaign?
unbelievable.
These are public messages.
The Russian Embassy posted on its Twitter account pictures of Putin shaking hands with all the leaders of the Italian parties.
This, to convey the message, everyone is our friend.
Whoever wins, Russia will win.
In July three Russian warships blockaded the Adriatic Sea.
They were placed there for a whole week.
This happened at the same time as the planned arrival of an American aircraft carrier in the Adriatic Sea.
Why did the Russians do this?
This was their way of saying: we rule.
We are here watching you.
I believe that they feel that the political disorder that will come over Italy will help them.
Maloney wants to change the balance of power within the EU, and is closer to Orban's Hungary than to Paris and Berlin.
Hungary is seen in Moscow as a friendly country.
Salvini is publicly opposed to sending weapons to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.
Berlusconi stated on TV this week that he does not understand why everyone is against Putin, since he only wanted to change the government in Kiev and appoint good people instead of Zelensky.
I guess, in Moscow they believe that if the right wins, they will have better friends in Rome than the outgoing Prime Minister, Draghi.
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett with the outgoing Prime Minister of Italy Mario Draghi, photo: Photo: Haim Tzach / L.A.M.
Does the center-right coalition led by Maloney have a chance to establish a stable government for five years, as they promise?
It will be very difficult for them.
First, you have to wait and see the results of the vote.
The polls have been wrong before.
If Maloney is given the task of building a coalition, we'll have to see how she works with her allies.
She knows that Salvini is too close to Moscow, and that Berlusconi is an 85-year-old man and has his limitations.
The first question is, will the president of the country task her to form a government at all, and in that case what will she do with her partners?
Will she add them to the government, or ask them to stay aside and appoint other ministers in their place?
The problems she will face are too big for her.
She doesn't have much experience.
She comes from the extreme right, which is a very isolated political world, and she will face the huge problem of recession, which is hovering over the whole of Europe.
Coping with a recession is a difficult task for any government.
Hard decisions have to be made.
It will not be easy to come to power after an election campaign that was based on the idea of the people against the government.
To fight the recession we will need to reach a broad agreement with the European Commission in Brussels and with the European Central Bank, which means we will have to work with them.
Maloney's terminology is: Let us reclaim our sovereignty from the hands of Europe.
The talk of Italy being more sovereign and more disconnected from the European Union will make it difficult to work together with the Union against the recession.
Thus, if Maloney is asked to form a government, she will face many difficulties.
If she comes to power, won't she want to channel the fight against the government towards the European Union, in order to blame it for the difficulties?
This is what I fear the most.
We live in very dangerous times.
Two hours flight from Rome, a terrible war is going on.
A type of war that Europe has not seen since the end of WWII.
What is happening in Europe now is beyond imagination.
Putin's strategic goal is to dismantle the EU from within.
He knows he can't beat the West.
The only way for him to win is to break up the West.
Therefore, he wants to drag out the war for so long that the West can no longer maintain its unity.
To realize this, his bargaining chip is fear.
Therefore, he talks more and more about nuclear weapons.
In this dynamic, it is very dangerous to have political leaders in Sweden or Italy who talk about national pride against the idea of European unity.
What Putin wants is a return to the division of different countries in Europe, which will give him more cards to play.
Returning to nationalism in a continent like Europe, which has a memory of terrible wars, is very dangerous.
Zelensky calls in the newspaper "La Repubblica" not to vote for "Putin's friends", photo: no
Another matter emphasized in the election campaign of the center-right coalition is the need to change the legal system. Two party leaders in this coalition, Berlusconi and Salvini, have had problems with the judiciary and claim political persecution. Do you see a future change in this area?
When they use this issue in the campaign they paint themselves as the heirs of the first Berlusconi era.
When Berlusconi came to power in 1994 he fought against the judges.
His idea was that the judges were a tool of the left camp to govern the country.
The idea that the judges are part of an old government system that wants to prevent the people from implementing their will democratically was a trump card, which helped him a lot: in the center-right coalition they know that this message worked very well and they repeat it to urge people to vote against the judges.
Why is this language dangerous in Italy?
Since this is a country where financial crime is very common, the number of people who pay taxes is very low, and there are other areas that are outside the rule of law.
Thus, a strict legal system is needed.
How else can these three big problems be dealt with?
It is dangerous to use these messages, but they work electorally.
Will Salvini be able to be appointed as a minister despite the ongoing trial against him?
Salvini wants to be interior minister.
I am sure it will be possible.
His support for Russia is public.
He gave a speech in September against the sanctions on Russia.
Can someone so close to Russia be interior minister in a NATO member state?
I do not think so.
"League" supports him without a doubt.
But, Meloni says she is closer to the US than to Europe.
The USA today has one red line - Russia.
If it wants to form a pro-American government, it will not be able to include Salvini in its ranks.
Salvini will be her first big problem in forming a government.
She will have to find a deal with Salvini.
He has gone so far in his positions regarding Russia, that he will not be able to retract them.
The elections in Italy are a battleground for Europe and NATO and that makes everything more complicated.
It is the first time since the beginning of the Cold War in 1948 that foreign policy plays such a significant and fateful role in Italian elections.
His support for Russia is public, Matteo Salvini, photo: Reuters
Meloni is presented by some of the European media as "the most dangerous woman in Europe". Is she really that dangerous?
This is said because of two different facts.
First, it is avowedly opposed to the idea of European sovereignty.
European sovereignty is the next stage of pan-European integration.
On the way to building an integrated Europe, we reached the point where France and Draghi together supported the abolition of the principle of unanimous decision-making in the European Union in favor of majority decision-making.
This is the principle of European sovereignty.
Maloney opposes this.
I believe that in 2023 there will be a struggle for Europe between those who will say that we need to move forward towards greater integration and those who will oppose it.
The result could be a split in Europe, between those who press the pedal and those who press the brakes.
Why is it dangerous?
Since the beginning of the European Union process in 1957, Italy has always been a member of the group that led the European project forward.
If Italy breaks away from Germany, France and Spain it could be dangerous for Europe.
Second, its ideological roots which are truly post-fascist.
She came from a party that was the successor of the Italian Social Republic, established by Mussolini in northern Italy under the auspices of the Nazis in 1943.
At the end of the war, all those who fought with Mussolini formed a political party called the "Italian Social Movement", whose leader was Giorgio Almirante.
The symbol of this party was the perpetual flame on Mussolini's grave.
This is how they made it clear that they were his successors.
This party disappeared in the early 1990s.
Its successor was the National Alliance, which at the beginning of its journey kept the flame as a symbol.
But, when its leader, Gianfranco Fini, came to Israel, visited Yad Vashem and spoke against fascism, the party removed the flame from its symbol.
Maloney's party, "Brothers of Italy", has come to use this flame and does not want to remove it.
There was a discussion in the party about this symbol.
Her position is: "I supported Finny when he canceled the flame, so I no longer need to justify what we did in the past, and there is no reason now to give up the flame."
Those who fought with Mussolini formed a political party called the Italian Social Movement, Mussolini,
But in a country like Italy, where there are still people who define themselves as fascists, the meaning of keeping this symbol is to tell those people that the flame continues to burn and Mussolini remains a source of inspiration.
It is very dangerous, because it is a link to the past.
In my opinion, one of Italy's weaknesses is that there are Italians who still define themselves as fascists and communists.
These two separate movements were enemies of democracy, defeated in the last century.
The fact that there are more people here who identify themselves with defeated ideologies weakens the democratic system.
These are people who live frozen in the past.
A prime minister with such a background could be a prime minister whose identity was frozen in the past.
Would it be correct to say that the populists took the place of the fascists and communists in the fight against democracy?
Mussolini took power on October 28, 1922, 100 years ago.
If you look at his writings in those days, their main message was "the people against the government".
More precisely, "the people against the elite".
He presented himself as the representative of the people.
The elite control the parliament.
That is why the people should take over the parliament.
This is the soul of fascism: "We are against the institutions."
It is hard not to see the similarities to the idea that sovereignty should be in the hands of the people and not in the hands of the institutions.
That's why I say that populism weakens democracy from within.
We live in very dangerous times.
The verbal violence against the institutions causes the delegitimization of the democratic system, and as soon as the legitimacy is taken away from it, we are lost.
The rule of law is based on institutions, not just on the free will of the people.
Most Italian and European Jews are connected to Israel, a synagogue in Rome, photo: AP
"And the Jews in all this?
I ask Molinari, a Jew who speaks fluent Hebrew, who was a reporter in Israel for a daily competitor to his current newspaper, "La Stampa".
"Most Italian and European Jews are connected to Israel in a way that did not exist in my youth," he replies.
"They went to Israel, studied there, lived there and came back here.
Thus, the relationship is much stronger than 20 years ago.
There are also family and professional connections.
Those who are connected to Israel feel safer.
Israel gives them by its very existence a kind of psychological protection umbrella.
This is a new phenomenon.
They know they have another option than Europe.
Among those who are still very connected to the society in their homeland and still participate in the political life there, there are two trends: the first is to mobilize against the populists and defend democracy for the simple reason that Jews know that they can live freely only in a democratic society.
They feel the danger.
The second trend is to support populists, since among the extreme right in Europe there is support for the State of Israel.
In Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Italy.
The more extreme the right, the stronger its support for the state of Israel.
For various reasons: the feeling of isolation, the need to be strong against everyone else, the hatred of Muslims that they mistakenly associate with the State of Israel, and since they need legitimacy because they come from the extreme right.
This behavior shows how complex and dangerous life in the diaspora is.'
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