Italy: Vannacci quits Lega party
Italian MEP and former general Roberto Vannacci has announced he is withdrawing from the right-wing populist Lega and launching a new far-right party called Futuro Nazionale. Vannacci was deputy leader of Lega, which is led by Matteo Salvini and forms part of Italy's coalition government together with Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia and Forza Italia. What is his goal?
As right-wing as right-wing can be
Someone is trying to clear the field on the right, La Repubblica observes:
“Both Lega and Fratelli d'Italia have been united by their obsession with having no enemies on the right in recent years. But this has backfired. Former general Roberto Vannacci, author of the bestseller 'Il mondo al contrario' (The World Upside Down), propagator of racist and xenophobic ideas and homophobic insults, convinced that children should be taught about 'the heroes of the Decima MAS [a specialised Italian naval unit in the Second World War] in schools' and that repatriation is 'a human right', has decided to go into business for himself. ... In Europe, he is prepared to sit down at a table with the neo-Nazis of the AfD.”
Putin's advocate
Corriere della Sera examines the relations with Russia:
“Moscow will have a more effective propagandist and advocate in Vannacci than it did in Salvini. And it will give him its full support. We should not forget that the break occurred over the government's decision to provide military aid to Ukraine, which Lega was unable to block. The general's departure therefore appears to be a kind of reverse break: while [Enrico] Berlinguer once distanced the Italian Communist Party from the Kremlin, Vannacci is now bringing the right closer to Putin.”