The 50 shades of the right and Europe's assault on Meloni

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The point in the end is all here: was it Meloni who assaulted Europe or was it Europe that assaulted Meloni? There is a new phenomenon in world politics that has not been sufficiently illuminated in recent months. The phenomenon concerns a profound, sudden issue that has to do with a new equilibrium that is gradually emerging in the great democracies and that month after month sees a gradual increase in countries governed by parties that gravitate around the centre-right and at the same time sees countries governed by parties that gravitate around the centre-left enter a crisis (the Canada of Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister and Labour leader who has just resigned, is only the latest in a long series).

In the new European Council, the countries governed by politicians belonging to the European Socialist Party are now only four out of twenty-seven. Among them, the most solid government is that of Spain's Pedro Sánchez, leading a minority government. The least solid, in the home straight, is that of Germany's Olaf Scholz. On the margins are Mette Frederiksen's Denmark and Malta led by Robert Abela. To these four countries we could add the shaky France of Emmanuel Macron, closer to the centre-left than to the centre-right. Outside the EU, the cases of large countries governed by the centre-left can also be counted on the fingers of one hand. There is Keir Starmer's England, of course, there is Mexico, whose president is the ultra-progressive Claudia Sheinbaum, there is Lula's Brazil and until a few hours ago there was Trudeau's government in Canada.

Few governments, few tituli, and many countries ruled by leftists that many leftists would consider right-wing rather than left-wing, like Starmer's England, to say. But the point of our argument is not so much the few countries that the world's leftists now hold.The point of our reasoning is another and concerns some decisive nuances.The Left, around the world, is roughly divided into two large blocs, the same as always, and to be brutal we could summarise them as follows: Blairites, i.e. not hostile to the market and not hostile to the West, and anti-Blairians, i.e. enemies of globalisation and rather distrustful of the saving virtues of the West. 

The world of the Right, on the other hand, has not limited itself in recent years to conquering the casemates of world power, from the United States to India, passing through Argentina to the European Union, where, as Professor Fabbrini pointed out a few days ago in Il Sole 24 Ore, eleven member countries are directly led by parties that recognise themselves in the EPP, two are led by parties that recognise themselves in the ECR, two are extreme right-wing parties such as Hungary and Slovakia, and four are independent countries supported by right-wing governments.The world of the right has done something more: it has multiplied, it has increased its nuances, it has made them rise, occupying almost all possible political positions.

The result of this operation is twofold. On the one hand, there are right-wingers around the world who are light years apart from each other (think of the distance between the European People's Party and the so-called Patriots, think of the differences between Le Pen and Meloni on Russia, think of the differences between Trump and Milei on globalisation, think of the jostling between the German Populars and the Musk model right-wing). On the other hand, the variety of the political offerings of the world's right-wingers has turned some right-wingers into alternatives to those same right-wingers. And if we add to this the fact that some left-wing governments (such as the British one and the Danish one) on certain issues (such as immigration and security) have political positions that a good part of the world's left wing considers to be right-wing (first and foremost the Italian one);and if we add to this the fact that the most extreme left-wing parties have positions on certain issues (protectionism, Putinism) that are similar to those held by the most extreme right-wing parties (the more one goes towards the extreme left, the more one usually ends up on the extreme right); one will have an even clearer picture of the historical phase we are going through.

Once the picture has been observed, it is possible to try to unbalance it with a few final considerations. One of these concerns a basic contradiction that coincides with a question: apart from being enemies of the left, do the world's right-wingers have anything in common? Little, on paper, and the divisions that run through the many shades of right-wingers around the world are enormous and so great that right-wingers often consider extreme right-wingers the most dangerous threats to their own countries (see Germany). But something in common in truth the right-wingers do have. It is something that does not concern their supposed affiliation to the current of unbridled neo-liberalism, as some lazy progressive thinkers claim (liberalism, in many cases, is a brake on right-wing populism, which often draws on statist nationalism). And it is something about a common description that the world's right-wingers bring forward when they describe certain enemies they intend to fight and confront.

The global elite. The mainstream press. The corrupt establishment. Wokism. The invasion of migrants. The grand replacement theory. As different as right-wingers may be from one another, these elements are recurrent and often offer a useful glue to feel comfortable in the often imaginary evocation of a left-wing extremism to fight against with all possible force. A narrative whose contents are often abstract, elusive, and elusive, but a narrative that the progressive world endures and is unable to overturn with a flick of the wrist. To this consideration must then be added another that coincides with a double characteristic that concerns Italy. Few countries around the world have within the same government three examples of right-wingers belonging to political families that in any other part of the world would struggle to be together in the same room. And few countries around the world have a right-wing party like the one led by Giorgia Meloni, which with all its flaws has a potential that others do not: to try to be a hinge, a meeting point, between world right-wing parties that are irreconcilable and incapable of dialogue.

And Meloni's challenge, after all, is also here. To try to exploit the unique characteristics of her government, and of her leadership, even in relations between the United States and Europe, to try to make Italy count for more in a season dominated by the fifty shades of the global right, and to try by pragmatism to smooth out the angles of the most extreme right-wingers dangerous not only for democracies but also for our country: Trump has said that Meloni assaulted Europe but the real feature of the Italian right so far has been the exact opposite, and it was Europe, if anything, that assaulted the Meloni government. 

So, in summary. Decimated Lefts, around the world, and incapable of reacting. Dominant Lefts, around the planet, but incapable of teaming up, indicating a common path. Who knows if the Italian laboratory does not offer observers useful reasons to offer voters an alternative to right-wingers and left-wingers who are all talk, badges, diversions and political leaderships that are the daughters more of artificial intelligences than of natural intelligences.

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• Claudio Cerasa Direttore

• Nasce a Palermo nel 1982, vive a Roma da parecchio tempo, lavora al Foglio dal 2005 e da gennaio 2015 è direttore. Ha scritto qualche libro (“Le catene della destra” e “Le catene della sinistra”, con Rizzoli, “Io non posso tacere”, con Einaudi, “Tra l’asino e il cane. Conversazione sull’Italia”, con Rizzoli, “La Presa di Roma”, con Rizzoli, e "Ho visto l'uomo nero", con Castelvecchi), è su Twitter. E’ interista, ma soprattutto palermitano. Va pazzo per i Green Day, gli Strokes, i Killers, i tortini al cioccolato e le ostriche ghiacciate. Due figli.