Institute for a Greater EuropePopulist Performance in Office Against Foreigners: The Case of Italy
Editors: Leire Lopez de Goicoechea & Jannis Gesemann
Introduction
Karl Marx once quoted in his inspiring book, the Communist Manifesto, “A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of Communism” (Marx, 1996). However, unlike in the 20th century, in the 21st century, the specter haunting Europe is no longer communism, but populism (Algan et al., 2017: 309; Dubiel, 1986: 79). Being on the rise worldwide, the increased presence of populism and populist parties has especially become noticeable in Europe. While some of them increasingly expand their influence in the opposition, others have already taken part in governments (Judis John B, 2016: 1; Mudde, 2004: 562). With their rise, those parties have become more popular not only in scholarly debates but also in the polemical space involving politicians, journalists and media intellectuals (Mudde, 2004: 541; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012: 147; Taguieff, 1995: 9; Noury & Roland, 2020: 422; Peters & Pierre, 2020: 1). Although a vast amount of research on populism and populist parties already exists, there are still many questions unresolved about their behaviors and the levels of populism in governments. Amid this new political turnover, it is fruitful and relevant to focus on these questions (Noury & Roland, 2020: 435). One of the most striking examples of having a populist party in office is Italy, where Giorgia Meloni and her party Fratelli d’Italia came to power in 2022. Due to the various subjects that populists target, it is challenging to focus on all aspects. Therefore, this paper will only focus on the most relevant one to Italy, which is foreigners, which include migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, to which Meloni often refers to. This paper aims to research the populist discourse, and see if it is softened once those parties are in office. This will be examined by looking at the case of Italy and specifically at Meloni’s discourse towards foreigners. To do so, first, a definition of populism will be given. Second, what populist parties do when they are in power will be presented, before finally, the current Italian government will be analyzed and it will be revealed what they have done in office so far.
Populism
Although hundreds of thousands of books and articles have been published following the rise of populism, there has been no consensus among scholars on the definition of populism. It is challenging to define this concept due to its normative considerations (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012, 149). Having said that, this paper will use the definition developed by Cas Mudde (2004). He defines populism as “a thin-centred ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite”, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people” (Mudde, 2004, 543). Populists create “our people” in a united form and distinguish them from “others” who do not belong to it. In doing so, they appeal to those whose grievances and demands are rejected or cannot be met by the government and mainstream political parties (Canovan, 1999, 2-5). Policymakers employing a populist rhetoric do not refer to specific social groups (Heinisch, 2003, 92). “The people”, furthermore, are not something that has already existed, but are “imagined” just like nations, as being argued in Benedict Anderson’s book, “Imagined Communities” (Anderson, 2016; Mudde, 2004, 546; Panizza, 2005, 48).
Populism does not have a certain shape. It might have different forms in different regions and times depending on the current dominant ideas, the values of the society, and the elites holding the power (Abromeit, 2017, 178; Çamurcuoğlu, 2019, 285; Canovan, 1999, 4; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012, 168). Yet, populist rhetoric usually targets elites, politicians and bureaucrats by accusing them of being arrogant and corrupt (Canovan, 1984, 326). They are not considered as people with different values and interests, but as evils damaging the purity of moral people (Mudde, 2004, 544). Populists try to mobilize “the people” against “the elites” by claiming that elites ignore the interests of pure people and increase their own welfare. The idea that the elites silence the voice of the people is one of the most common claims made by populists (Mudde, 2013, 7). Thereby, they present themselves as protectors of the interests of silent people by speaking in the name of the people (Canovan, 1999, 5). Additionally, they aim to appeal to those silent people by recognising their oppression even though in practice, they barely are in favor of changing their life or values (Mudde, 2004, 546).
Populism weaponizes the gap between promise and performance of established governments in liberal democracies. Populist parties are known to arise in times of crisis. However, this does not mean populism only emerges with crisis. The reason is that they defend some general claims that do not only apply in crises such as economy-related issues like jobs, old age pensions, health care, low taxes and owner-occupied houses (Canovan, 1984, 327). Nonetheless, it is hard to say that they set specific policies to deal with them. Instead, since populist parties often do not have a systematic program, they rather mostly tend to accuse others instead of producing effective solutions. It, nevertheless, would be scarcely correct to consider them as unprincipled or confused. This makes them flexible for reacting to different structures of power in different countries and times (Canovan, 1999, 4). Consequently, they blame either the elites or foreigners like migrants, refugees, or other minorities, such as for the severe economic landscape. More specifically, their discourse against foreigners consists of accusing them of unemployment, the crime rate, and high costs of living in the country. According to populists, foreigners are the scapegoats – the reason for all bad things either economically, socially or politically.
Radical Right Populism
Since populism is a thin-centered ideology, it is hardly complicated to be combined with other ideologies (Mudde, 2004, 544). Unlike in the past, in contemporary Europe, populism emerges mostly within the radical right (Mudde, 2004, 549). For this reason, it is beneficial to look at what ideologies populism can be combined with within the radical right. Being one of the core ideas of this political strand, populism is combined with authoritarianism and nativism (Mudde, 2007, 22). Most times, nativism being used by radical right populists might reach xenophobia. In fact, their solutions to economic or political crises often include xenophobia and discrimination (Yildirim, 2017, 57).
As populists seek to create unity, seeing people as the whole nation, they are hostile to globalization outside and to foreigners inside (Canovan, 1984, 324). Since in a heterogeneous environment it is tough to create the people on whose behalf they can speak of, they use their hostile rhetoric against foreigners. Their purpose for pointing foreigners out as scapegoats is to mobilize the people against them to earn the support of the masses.
The politicization of migration in Europe has risen drastically, and it is considered to be one of the reasons for the shift towards the populist radical right (Castles et al., 2014, 1). Populist radical right-wing parties, which are not willing to accept the fact that European countries and the European Union (EU) have become a center for migration, diversity, heterogeneity, and multiculturality, claim themselves as defenders of national identity. They claim to protect the “real citizens” from globalization and other alleged threats, for instance migration (Wodak 2015, 186). This xenophobia is reflected in their discourse that entails slogans like “Germany for Germans; Greece for Greeks; Italy for Italians” (Mudde, 2007, 139).
Populists in Office
In recent populism literature, the debate concerning populists’ attitude in power is still controversial. Some debates focus on when populists once come into office, whether they soften their rhetoric or not, while others try to detect if populism is only successful in opposition or not (Abromeit, 2017, 183; Jan-Werner, 2016, 2).
Once populist parties come into office, their target changes structurally but the subject usually remains the same. Populists are no longer able to aim for the government because now they have become the government. As one cannot be against oneself, they thus tend to remove their protest once they get to power (Jan-Werner, 2016, 3). It, however, does not mean that populists in power are not against anyone. Due to their unsuccessful solutions, they must keep accusing someone or something to consolidate their power. Furthermore, they claim that they cannot solve problems because they are being blocked by the elites, which are in collaboration with foreign powers and minorities which are accused of corrupting the purity of the nation and of stealing resources of the people.
When populists come to power, it leads us into a paradox. They get into office by weaponizing the gap between promises and performance of established governments. In their campaigns, they claim that they are the only representative of the silent people and promise to solve their problems by saving them from corrupt elites, minorities, and foreigners. As they do not have systematic principles and a solid program, and since they only propose simple solutions that mostly result in failure, they must keep the enemy alive in their discourse in order to sustain the support of the masses (Jan-Werner, 2016, 29). When their performance cannot meet the promises, a gap becomes available for the current opposition, which is mostly a mainstream party. In order to cope with populists, these mainstream parties tend to use populist rhetoric as well (Abromeit, 2017, 178).
Although populism differs depending either on the region, country, time, or on their position in politics, some features stay the same. Some of their main concepts are the pure people, the corrupt elite and the general will (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2012, 151). Based on this information, the paper now analyzes the case of Meloni’s government in Italy and more specifically her performance against foreigners.
The Case of Italy
After the 2022 General Italian Election on September 25th, Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia became the ruling party in the country. Being the first woman Prime Minister of Italy, Meloni formed a coalition government composed of her own party, Matteo Salvini’s far-right party called Lega, and Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right party Forza Italia. When Meloni won the election, alarm bells started ringing in Europe, some even describing her as “the most dangerous woman in Europe” (Squires, 2023).
Being the third biggest economy in the eurozone, Italy has been struggling with migration and refugees since the 1990s. With the impacts of the Arab Spring, not only in Italy but across Europe as well, European countries have been facing a serious so-called refugee crisis. Moreover, the Russian-Ukrainian war has further increased the number of refugees reaching Italy. As a consequence of this influx, Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia increasingly embraced anti-migrant and xenophobic rhetoric. More specifically, before the elections, Meloni raised a campaign against migration, offering to avoid migrants coming to Italy by sea (Giuffrida, 2022). After coming into office, she even hardened her discourse and policies against foreigners. In fact, Italy’s new government enacted a code to prevent Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) from saving and bringing to land migrants in distress in the Mediterranean effectively (The Maritime Executive, 2023). This code is said to result in deaths in the Mediterranean because it requires NGOs’ search and rescue ships to go back to the port after every rescue operation, being considered as a waste of time and costs (MacGregor, 2022). The code, furthermore, forces NGOs not to transfer survivors to bigger vessels, and no matter how close they are to a port, they must disembark at “safe ports”, which might be too distant from the shipwreck zone (Liborerio, 2023). The violation of this code is subject to administrative sanctions, fines, and even seizure of their vessels (Pascale, 2022). The last and most striking fatal shipwreck happened near coasts of Calabria, claiming 86 lives in February 2023 (AFP, 2023). The Italian government was criticized for its new migration code and reacting slowly to help migrants in distress.
Meloni’s government has been securitizing the issue of foreigners during its ruling period. While talking about the new code, she claimed that Italy has finally started to protect its own interests (Pascale, 2022). Populist rhetoric can be seen in this statement, as by that she accuses foreigners of damaging the interests of Italy. Additionally, she also blames the elites for favoring foreigners over Italy’s national interests. Populists are known to propose simple solutions which mostly result in failure. In this case, Meloni is in favor of measures limiting humanitarian NGOs and preventing migrant flows to Italy over going into the actual sources of the problem. The new code can be considered as a punishment for NGOs, which for her corrupt the homogeneity of the Italian people. Instead of her measures, she could have made deals with the countries from which most migrants come or introduced measures to better integrate migrants into the society in order for Italy to benefit from them as labor force or taxpayers. For Italy, it would be very fruitful to better integrate migrants since it has the oldest population in Europe (Statista, 2022) and will need workforce sooner rather than later. Yet, Meloni’s failed simple solution led her to even further leveling up her rhetoric by blaming both NGOs more brutally as well as continuing to state other excuses.
It is known that populists in office keep polarizing society because their simple solutions are not capable of solving complex problems. Therefore, they need to keep polarizing and accusing. In the case of Italy, the government argued that the Russian mercenary group Wagner was the cause of the rise of migrant flows since Russia wants to weaken the countries supporting Ukraine (Reuters, 2023). Not only did Meloni blame Wagner but she also highlighted that ideological activities of some NGOs help traffickers. Blaming others in this case has two dimensions. First, to ensure legitimacy of the code, and second, to mobilize people around a common enemy and issue.
Conclusion
Although populism is not a new phenomenon in Europe, it shifted from left-wing to right-wing over time. Being a thin-centered ideology, meaning that it is easy to combine it with other ideologies, populism divides the society into two groups, “the corrupt elites” and “the pure people”, and claims that they speak in the name of moral people. In contemporary Europe, populism emerges mostly within radical right-wing parties. The core ideologies of populist radical right parties are authoritarianism, xenophobia, and populism. In this context, this paper has focused on populism jointly with other core ideologies of populist radical right parties.
Since blaming foreigners is always attractive for populists, especially in Italy, which continuously sees a large migration influx, Meloni’s populist radical right party, Fratelli d’Italia, weaponized discourses against foreigners not only during her campaign but also after getting elected. In fact, she even reinforced her position against migration by ruling a new code limiting humanitarian charities in saving people in distress. During her ruling period, Meloni seems to securitize migration problems to sustain the support of the masses. One of the significant reasons why Meloni did not ease her rhetoric against foreigners can be explained with her coalition with the right-wing. It has been shown that populists parties being in coalition with right-wing parties that are already against migration, are able to keep their discourse about migrants without having to soften them. That is why, in the case of Italy, the Fratelli d’Italia, in a coalition with the Lega and Forza Italia as two parties that oppose migration, does not need to soften its rhetoric and policies against migrants (Schwörer, 2022, 472).
However, this attitude of populists against migration raises a vital paradox. Because of the failure of simple solutions populists produce, even in office, they must keep blaming others, the most fruitful of which are foreigners such as migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. The paradox starts just here: If populists really manage to establish a homogeneous society, they will no longer be able to use foreigners in their discourse to gain support. Of course, they will have other options like targeting the elites or other minorities, but it would be scarcely wrong to claim that they will lose their most useful subject. That is why they need to keep their policies and discourse against foreigners in balance in order to not end up weakening themselves.
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