Roberto Vannacci
This scandal general wants to overtake Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni on the right
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Roberto Vannacci is an author who rails against homosexuals and feminists in Italy. Now he is founding his own party – and is putting Prime Minister Georgia Meloni in trouble.
It will probably be the first party in history to be named after a book title. For its founder Roberto Vannacci, this doesn’t seem unreasonable. Firstly, the 56-year-old is the author himself. And secondly, his bestseller “The Upside Down World” (Il mondo contrario) made the army general suddenly famous in the fall of 2023.
The pamphlet is saturated with conspiracy theories and attacks against everyone who does not fit into the worldview of the highly decorated military: feminists (“modern witches”), homosexuals (“abnormals”), environmentalists and migrants who ruined Italy. The author denies that Italy’s volleyball star Paola Egonu, whose parents come from Nigeria, can embody Italianness – “l’italianità”.
Outcry in Italy: A book cost Roberto Vannacci his job
The publication caused an outcry in Italy. She also cost Vannacci his job. The general was suspended from duty for eleven months and his salary was halved. Vannacci also negotiated a defamation lawsuit against Egonu, which he recently won. Nothing, it seems, can stop the high-ranking military in his culture war. Vannacci propagates an identitarian conservatism and ultra-nationalism. And his movement is constantly gaining popularity.
In the spring, his fan clubs scattered across the country still had a few hundred members; he only had 3,000 followers on social media. Then Italy’s deputy prime minister and head of the Lega party Matteo Salvini sent him into the race in the European elections in June. The independent Vannacci immediately received the most preferential votes in this election with 530,000. With his sharp polemics he also reached insecure people from the middle of society – for example when he said that he claimed the right to publicly express his hatred and contempt.
However, Vannacci, who now sits in the European Parliament, positions himself so far to the right that his appointment as vice-president of the “Patriots for Europe” faction, which also includes the French Rassemblement National, the Austrian FPÖ and the Hungarian Fidesz party, was approved by the members of the group was withdrawn again.
Now Vannacci wants to found his own party in Italy. It is said that 8,000 people have already wanted to become members, and the number is rising. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has pursued a moderate course in foreign policy with her commitment to the EU and Ukraine since taking office two years ago, now has to fear that hardliners and those nostalgic for fascism at the base of her right-wing populist party “Brothers of Italy” will defect to the general . But it is primarily her coalition partner, the right-wing national Lega under Matteo Salvini, who has to fear competition.
And the foster father Salvini? Will be booed
The Lega is under heavy pressure after poor electoral results in the regional elections in Emilia Romagna and Umbria. A battle for dominance rages within the party. Salvini needs Vannacci, whose success probably prevented the party from toppling Salvini. The general assures that Salvini has no reason to fear his competition. But it seems as if Vannacci has long since broken away from his mentor. When Salvini recently joined the party’s founding event via video stream, he was greeted with indignant grumbling from the room.
500 people came together for this, comrades of the former paratrooper Vannacci, supporters of neo-fascist splinter groups, radical Lega party members, high-ranking military officials and also some diplomats. Salvini, who was present, invoked solidarity, but his “Uniti si vince” (together we win) was drowned out by boos. When Salvini defended Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in his speech, he was booed.
Vannacci confidently announces that there is a place available for his movement in the Italian party spectrum. He presented his manifesto at the party founding event. It includes eight points: fatherland, security, sovereignty, identity, defense of national borders, family, traditions and work. “Today we are giving a political home to everyone who doesn’t have one,” shouted Vannacci’s right-hand man Fabio Filimeni. As befits a general’s party, the 63-year-old is also a military man, but wisely lower in rank than Vannacci: Filimeni is a colonel.
Source: Stern

I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.