Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Otherwise, if these results hold, Italy could truly turn into the next Hungary.

I don't think I agree with this. Remember that Fidesz regularly gets about half of the vote in Hungary, with another 10-20% going to Almost-Literal Arrow Cross. Lega getting a third of the vote in Italy is absolutely horrifying (especially since it's overperforming in places like Umbria) and we definitely shouldn't understate how appalling it is that a party like Lega and an overgrown CoDbro like Salvini are in the driver's seat in a G7 country, but I don't think we should compare what's happening here to a country in which "national conservatives " and outright fascists get literally two-thirds of the vote between them.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Otherwise, if these results hold, Italy could truly turn into the next Hungary.

I don't think I agree with this. Remember that Fidesz regularly gets about half of the vote in Hungary, with another 10-20% going to Almost-Literal Arrow Cross. Lega getting a third of the vote in Italy is absolutely horrifying (especially since it's overperforming in places like Umbria) and we definitely shouldn't understate how appalling it is that a party like Lega and an overgrown CoDbro like Salvini are in the driver's seat in a G7 country, but I don't think we should compare what's happening to a country in which "national conservatives " and unapologetic fascists get literally two-thirds of the vote between them.

What does that mean?

A CoDbro (from Call of Duty and bro) is the word I use for the sort of person who spends his (or her, but usually his) leisure time calling Twitch streamers racial slurs. I have no idea if this is the sort of thing Salvini actually does with his time but it's more an aesthetic and a state of mind than an actual interest in video games specifically.

Otherwise, if these results hold, Italy could truly turn into the next Hungary.

I don't think I agree with this. Remember that Fidesz regularly gets about half of the vote in Hungary, with another 10-20% going to Almost-Literal Arrow Cross.

small side-note: Jobbik were badly obliterated this election.

Thank God for small blessings.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I guess that's still not quite Hungary levels of reactionary dominance, but it's about where Poland is right now.

And I'd much much rather live in Poland than in Hungary.

I'm not trying to dismiss your fears here; I share them, for the most part, possibly even more so since I'm also personally worried about elements of the Catholic Church possibly falling in step with this zeitgeist in Italy. But you and I both know how resilient Italian culture-as-such is ("upstream from politics", as the reactionaries would say). One of the worst lasting legacies of the Eastern Bloc is the fact that society in countries like Poland and Hungary doesn't have that resilience.

ETA: Also, if we're going to discuss with maps, I'd be remiss not to mention that, Umbria's sprint away from its traditions notwithstanding, the center-left is shaping up to have a much firmer "geographic floor" in ER and Tuscany, so to speak, than the Hungarian left/liberals have. MSZP won a total of one constituency outside Budapest last year. That's no small matter for people who live in the relevant parts of these countries and experience mostly their local cultures.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As a (very much conditional) apologist in long standing for Southern Italy's economic interests and culture, the prospect of Po Valley anti-"terrone" racists holding undiluted sway over Italy's political and state institutions is almost as terrifying to me as the prospect of an overtly migrant-bashing alt-Catholic Prime Minister of a founding EU state.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

My experience of actually talking to Italian people in Italy about their own politics isn't that extensive, but the general impression that I got when I was there last year was that there actually is a "muh economic anxiety" aspect to the Lega phenomenon of the kind that a lot of people like to exaggerate with the Trump phenomenon. I didn't meet one person who was fixated on the flat tax or whatever, or even who seemed all that personally racist. So at least nine or ten months ago it seemed like the immigrant scapegoating actually was scapegoating in Italy's case, rather than tapping into racism-for-the-sake-of-racism.

I have it on good authority that the toxicity of this scapegoating has much more to do with the fact that the migrant wave of three to six years ago was genuinely very socially disruptive in Italy than it does with any inherent economic "burdensomeness" on the part of the migrants. The assumption that the only or main reason an economy like Italy's (or sub-Saharan Africa's!) might be floundering is lack of productivity on the part of labor is a far-right idea if there ever was one, much more so than generic skepticism of immigration is.

The idea that people not being able to move out until they're forty in this economy is a sign that Italian culture qua Italian culture "isn't worth preserving" is pretty awful as well. If that's a mindset that is common or is plausibly thought to be common among PD grandees and ultras then I honestly can't blame the average Italian for seeking answers to Italy's problems elsewhere.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Why it can't be an ACCURATE belief that more people means more people you're in resource competition with, I will never know. It seems to me that that is the reason.

Okay, yes. There are countries and economic systems in which immigration has this effect, and while I really don't think it's the main thing that's currently going on in Italy, I wouldn't be completely shocked if I were proven wrong on that. I've conceded as much in the past, just not in conversation with you, since I try to avoid talking to you.

I stand by the other observation that you remark on, especially (but not only) since you're reducing to the absurd in responding to it.

Anyway, I'm not going to pursue this conversation further because I have better things to be doing with my time and other posters have better things to be doing with this thread.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So what's the deal with the fascists in Lazio and those Roman suburbs? I know rge reputation of the football clubs ultras,, but still.

I can’t speak for the Roman suburbs, but southern Lazio has a lot of descendants of fascist true believers from Friuli and Veneto who moved there to settle a planned city (today’s Latina) that Mussolini built in the early 30s.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Those of us who are axiomatically incapable of conceding that it's possible for Mussulman and Hindoo immigrants ever to integrate in European countries aside, does anyone know how Italian citizens of African or Asian origin do vote? (I almost said "non-white Italian citizens" but Italian racial politics regarding North and South is...more complicated than that.) I assume mostly center-left these days, but did Berlusconi have any appeal to them back when LN and AN were mostly subordinate to liberal conservatism with Italian characteristics?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Lega: 38,5%
FDI: 11,0%
Forza Italia: 5,8%
Civiche Tesei: 6,7%
PD: 19,0%
M5S: 8,6%
Civica Bianconi: 2,4%
Sinistra: 1,4%
Verdi: 1,4%

So, the center-left forces are performing at about their national polling averages (itself profoundly saddening given that it's Umbria), but M5S is bombing harder than the Allies at Monte Cassino?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Nonetheless, the defeat for the "structural alliance between PD and M5S" faction is quite bitter.

Yeah, the biggest loser here (other than the people of Umbria) is M5S, not only because of the utter wipeout in the election itself but because it's led by a nitwit who'll probably take this as evidence that his party is Better Off Going It Alone.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Nonetheless, the defeat for the "structural alliance between PD and M5S" faction is quite bitter.

Yeah, the biggest loser here (other than the people of Umbria) is M5S, not only because of the utter wipeout in the election itself but because it's led by a nitwit who'll probably take this as evidence that his party is Better Off Going It Alone.

"Il patto civico per l'Umbria lo abbiamo sempre considerato un laboratorio, ma l'esperimento non ha funzionato. Il Movimento nella sua storia non aveva mai provato una strada simile. E questa esperienza testimonia che potremo davvero rappresentare la terza via solo guardando oltre i due poli contrapposti"lo scrive il M5S in un post sulla propria pagina di Facebook.

"We always thought of the "Civic pact for Umbria" as a laboratory, but the experiment didn't worked. The Movement in its history hadn't try before a similar approach. And this experienxe shows that we can really be the Third Way only looking outside the two opposite political poles", writes M5S in a note on its official Facebook page.

Sorry for possibile bad translating, but roughly this is basically what it says. They were pretty fast to realize your prediction.

You know, maybe they're right about this. I hope they're not because that'll made threading the needle for the anti-leghista forces even harder going forward, but maybe they really did suffer from being seen as an appendage of muh liberal establishment.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Whatever lingering doubts there were remaining about the Governments migration policy, today the Deal between Italy and the Libyan Coast Guard was extended for another three Years, despite the pleas of Human Rights Organisations and rescuers to stop it.
The number of people trying to come and the number drowning has reduced dramatically since the deal was signed, but its a deal with the devil. The Libyan Coast Guard are pretty terrible people, criminals and militia members among them, and routinely accused of doing horrible abuses (UN report) to migrants. They have also shot at rescue ships.

Typical Europe. Preach Human Rights and Democracy, but pay Libya/Morocco/Turkey to do the dirty work where there are no pesky independent courts for people to turn to and no free press to cover it.
Literally way worse than Trump, but claim the moral high ground as the bastion of the enlightened free world or something.

So migrants should stay at home.

Are you familiar with the expression "between the devil and the deep blue sea"?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Who did M5S voters vote for before 2013? The left or Berlusconi?

Yes.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Silvio Berlusconi left his 34 year old girlfriend to start dating a 30 year old

Under quarantine?!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It'd be a huge kick in the teeth to lose another red region (although I'm actually not as emotionally attached to Tuscany as I am to Umbria), but I'm really happy that De Luca will probably survive. The international left needs a stable of entertaining, transgressive bomb-throwers just as much as the international right does!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

It'd be a huge kick in the teeth to lose another red region (although I'm actually not as emotionally attached to Tuscany as I am to Umbria), but I'm really happy that De Luca will probably survive. The international left needs a stable of entertaining, transgressive bomb-throwers just as much as the international right does!

Are you emotionally attached to Umbria because of St. Francis of Assisi?

And because I've been there and had a wonderful time, whereas I don't have any personal connection or attachment to Tuscany (yet). But, yes, Umbria the cattocomunista land of saints and Peppones (Pepponi?) is part of it too.

By the way, Umbria (sadly for you) is gone as a red region. Tuscany is not - independently of who wins next week.

I know, I saw your above post. I'm still grieving places like Northern New York being gone for the Democrats and most of far northern Honshu being gone for the Japanese center-left, so I'll probably be salty about Umbria for a while as well.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Looks like Lega is behind in Tuscany in exit polls.  Oh well, I was hoping they could filip this one

"Scratch a libertarian..."

Relieving to see Tuscany leaning towards keeping in its leftist traditions. Fingers crossed for Puglia.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

So the regional pattern for the referendum seems to track M5S support pretty closely--over 70% in most of the South (plus TAA for some reason), under 60% in FVG, 60-70% everywhere else. It's actually breaking 80% in Molise.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Looks like Lega is behind in Tuscany in exit polls.  Oh well, I was hoping they could filip this one

"Scratch a libertarian..."

Relieving to see Tuscany leaning towards keeping in its leftist traditions. Fingers crossed for Puglia.

"...and find a tradcath"

(yesterday a friend of mine sent me an article according to which Ceccardi hosted a wake by an anti-gay tradcath group and was accused of not registering civil unions during her term as mayor)

Fingers crossed!!!

...who the hell has an ideology-specific wake

Never mind, I digress. First results trickling in from Veneto and it looks like a real ZAIASLIDE.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

is there a regional election link?

Tuscany

Everywhere else

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Looks like Lega is behind in Tuscany in exit polls.  Oh well, I was hoping they could filip this one

"Scratch a libertarian..."

Relieving to see Tuscany leaning towards keeping in its leftist traditions. Fingers crossed for Puglia.

"...and find a tradcath"

(yesterday a friend of mine sent me an article according to which Ceccardi hosted a wake by an anti-gay tradcath group and was accused of not registering civil unions during her term as mayor)

Fingers crossed!!!

...who the hell has an ideology-specific wake

Never mind, I digress. First results trickling in from Veneto and it looks like a real ZAIASLIDE.

Tradcats do. They refuse the Vatican II reforms and so, it's still all said in Latin.

It's not the idea of an FSSP or ICKSP or whatever wake that's baffling to me, it's the idea of a wake that manages to be expressly anti-gay.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

YOUR REVOLUTION IS OVER, CECCARDI! CONDOLENCES! THE FASH LOST! THE FASH WILL ALWAYS LOSE!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

YOUR REVOLUTION IS OVER, CECCARDI! CONDOLENCES! THE FASH LOST! THE FASH WILL ALWAYS LOSE!

If it wasn't too long, I would change my display name to "In the privacy of the polling booth, God sees you - Salvini doesn't".

Great minds think alike!

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

The man, the myth, the legend, the one and only VINCENZO DE LUCA speaking now.

MR. VINCENT DE LUCA 😎

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Quick and dirty map of the left-right topline in the provinces:



You really get a sense of De Luca, Zaia, and Toti's landslides vs. Acquaroli, Emiliano, and Giani's somewhat more modest victories, plus Tuscany's seemingly greater degree of political diversity (and self-sorting--sad!) than the other regions that voted this weekend.