The idea, even for those who have accompanied him on his most extreme ideological journeys, is too difficult to support this time. But Matteo Salvini, leader of the League and vice president of the Italian Government, has decided to ignore his people and place Roberto Vannacci, a homophobic, racist general with supremacist inclinations, as number one on his party’s lists for the European elections. This time, the occurrence embarrasses a part of the League, which sees how a Salvini in low times resorts to offensive experiments to avoid losing ground against his coalition partners. Even the Brothers of Italy consider the decision too embarrassing and some of the colleagues in the Council of Ministers have not hesitated to mock their candidate.
Roberto Vannacci (55 years old), who has recently become a crude caricature of an extreme rightist, became known through a controversial self-published book last summer and titled The world on the contrary(The world upside down), which became a best sellerwith more than 250,000 copies shipped. A sad portrait of a part of Italian society, since in its pages one could read ideas such as that homosexuals are not “normal” and that, in any case, if they have come to be considered that way it is only because of the “conspiracies of the world.” international gay community that have banned definitions that until recently were in dictionaries such as pedophile, invert, faggot, effeminate, asshole… and that are now court terms.”
The general also showed his racism openly by attacking the Italian volleyball champion Paola Egonu, ensuring that she was not “fully Italian” because “it is evident that her physical features do not represent Italianness,” because she is black and of African origins. And there were all kinds of conspiratorial ideas, also around climate change, which the high-ranking military man denies, and about women, whom he would prefer to see at home taking care of the children.
Vannacci was commander of the military unit Task Force 45 during the Afghanistan war and during the Iraq war he led the main parachute brigade of the Italian army; Among his decorations he has the Order of Merit of the Republic. But when he published his book and the Italians learned his opinion on all these matters, the Minister of Defense, Guido Crosetto (Brothers of Italy), harshly attacked him and censured that a high-ranking army official could express himself in that way. . This week, when it became known that Vannacci will occupy number 1 on the League list, Crosetto once again ironically attacked the soldier: “It’s a choice win-win, as they say. If he is elected it will be a good thing for the army and the European institutions will be able to enjoy his ideas and values.”
The accounts of Salvini, who fears a catastrophic result in the European elections (his party could even be surpassed by the moribund Forza Italia), seem simple. If Vannacci has sold 250,000 books, he can give him at least a similar number of votes. And with the electoral system that governs these elections, it would be a non-negligible contribution.
The unrest in the League, however, has also been growing with the days. Especially in the north of the country, fiefdom of the old Northern League and whose barons are increasingly distant from Salvini. The governor of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Luciano Fedriga, also distanced himself from the general’s candidacy, as the party’s spokespersons in Parliament, Riccardo Molinari and Massimiliano Romeo, had already done: “In my constituency there are three very good candidates from the region: myself I will vote for them,” he said, hinting that he will not support Vannacci.
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The general’s latest idea has been to target the disabled, ensuring that they should be in segregated schools, especially for them. Some statements that, this time, made Salvini frown, who has always considered that this was an interesting population segment from an electoral point of view (his idea of creating a disability ministry has been used by all the governments in which he has participated). Vannacci, here, has had to qualify his words so as not to lose the favor of his main supporter.
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