It is the right-wing movements internationally that have used hate speech as a political weapon, inciting political hatred as a form of fuel to create consensus. But that strategy can backfire, as the attack on Trump showed.
Tag: salvini
After far-right politician Giorgia Meloni emerged as the top vote-getter in Italy’s election, the question on everyone’s lips is what will her relationship be with the European Union. The risk of her pushing for an Italian exit from the EU is slim.
Italian populist party leader Matteo Salvini’s disappointing results in regional elections is being blamed on his erratic handling of the health crisis in one of the worst-hit countries.
Few outside his native Italy had heard of Matteo Salvini before he emerged in 2018 as the new global star of far-right populism. Catapulted by the election success of his League party, the scruffy and sardonic northerner had grown into Italy’s most talked-about and incendiary politician, solidifying power in his role as interior minister in […]
The far-right League party in Italy, rising in popularity, now faces the prospect of being marginalized by its extremist rhetoric after this summer’s gamble by its populist leader backfired.
It would be a mistake to assume that Italy has seen the last of the controversial ‘Captain,’ who will have a different kind of influence at the helm of the opposition.
A traditional party and a populist movement may join forces to get Italy out of its political crisis and avoid yet another election.
Once upon a time, Italy embraced its own politically incorrect billionaire-turned-politico. And yet the real shift toward Trump-style nationalism came after Berlusconi’s departure.
-Analysis- PARIS — And then, Brazil. The list of countries that are switching to so-called “strongman” regimes keeps growing. Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, Narendra Modi’s India, Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. The “people” leave it up to a candidate who has promised the end of corruption and economic recovery. In […]
‘Italy is our starting point, and Salvini the model,’ says this Belgian politician bringing the populists of Europe under one roof with the help of Donald Trump’s former right-hand man.
The French president is the populist Italian Interior Minister’s favorite target. But is Salvini attacking Macron to mask his own failure to unite Europe’s nationalists?
-OpEd- This must have been the moment he was waiting for: an energetic handshake with Donald Trump, with a smile and a deep look into his eyes to top it off. The two men seemed to be sealing a fresh pact. Cameras flashed, capturing the important moment for newspapers and history books — the five […]
Finger pointing isn’t going to help Italy solve its migration problems. What it needs is help, and for the EU to stop dilly-dallying. A view from Berlin.
-Analysis- BRUSSELS — It was a colleague from Agence France-Presse who set us thinking a few days ago, by retweeting an interview that Jean-Claude Juncker, the President of the European Commission, gave to Le Monde two years ago. “No debate or dialogue is possible with the far right,” the former prime minister of Luxembourg explained […]
-Analysis- BERLIN — While Brussels is palavering over a plastic tax that will never materialize, dark clouds are gathering over Europe. Right now, in plain view, the European Union is sliding straight into the next (and potentially deeper) euro crisis. The chaos in Italy — which holds the world’s third-largest public debt, totaling 2.3 trillion […]
The very notion of “political instability” is baked into democratic life. If you want something predictable and unchanging you can have a 17th-century French monarchy or 21st-century Chinese autocracy. Still, a look around European parliamentary democracies these days shows a particularly bumpy road ahead, as ideologies and party machinations are being side-swiped by an accelerating […]
-Analysis- There is no set recipe for democracy. Still, we can agree that the ingredients must include basic guarantees of free speech and free elections: If you don’t have the right to speak out against those in charge — and eventually vote them out of power — you are living under some form of rule […]