In recent years, Italy has been witnessing a silent but profound
transformation. Beneath the surface of a supposed "democraticnormality," a political agenda is taking shape, intertwining cultural
control, historical revisionism, and social regression. ---- The Meloni
government does not represent a break with the past, but rather the
coherent evolution of an authoritarian model that, behind the facade of
"popular sovereignty," hollows out institutions, manipulates memory, and
reduces citizens to subjection.
Through economics, culture, and history, a new common sense is being
constructed that tends to normalize injustice and rewrite the notion of
freedom.
A growing sense of unease pervades each of us: the shortsighted and
irresponsible management of power endangers what should be inalienable;
I fear that public healthcare is being progressively hollowed out,
giving way to privatized logic.
My direct experience in public healthcare shows that excellence still
endures,
embodied in extraordinarily competent and dedicated doctors and
paramedics, but the risk of seeing it sacrificed on the altar of private
interest is increasingly real.
Alongside this, scientific and medical research represents a lifeblood:
without concrete investment, without dedicated minds and laboratories
capable of discovery and innovation, many people would not even be able
to seek treatment, grow healthy, or maintain the ability to read, write,
and understand the world around them. Research is not a luxury: it is
what allows each of us to live fully, to hope, to learn, to build a
viable future. Every cut to research is a life compromised, a knowledge
lost, a fundamental right denied.
And it's not just healthcare that's causing alarm: the world seems to be
sliding into a vortex of wars that shatter lives and territories, of
increasingly widespread poverty, of ignorance that feeds on
misinformation, of rights that are systematically limited or erased. The
fragility of institutions, indifference to the common good, and cultural
inertia make the present unsettling and the future uncertain. In this
context, I feel the urgency to cultivate attentiveness, responsibility,
and solidarity. Every gesture of care and awareness becomes a resistance
against what risks being lost: humanity, justice, freedom, and
everything that makes life worth living.
The Meloni government has built much of its consensus on the idea of
discontinuity, on the promise of freeing Italy from technocratic elites
and returning politics to the people. But behind the identity-based
rhetoric and aggressive language lies a government line perfectly
aligned with the tenets of European neoliberalism.
The so-called "sovereignist shift" is proving to be a deception: public
finances remain rigidly anchored to the principle of a balanced budget,
with linear cuts to social spending and no real industrial policy,
saving money today to spend tomorrow on weapons and gifts for friendly
classes ahead of the 2027 elections.
The tax reform, presented as the fairest in the history of the Republic,
is proof of this: a regressive measure that favors the highest income
brackets, shifting the burden onto employees, the middle classes, and
pensioners. High-earners save hundreds of euros a year, while those who
live off their wages receive crumbs. The Meloni government's economic
policy is nothing more than the continuation of the Draghi agenda, which
is being rigorously and consistently applied to bring public finances
under control, effectively imposing a policy of austerity without even
saying so.
The changes made to revise tax rates are decidedly class-biased because
they contradict the principles of equality and progressive taxation.
They save the highest-earning classes around EUR400 a year, while an
employee saves only EUR26. In fact, compensating for missed wage
increases through taxes doesn't work. It's not a policy of
redistribution, but of concentration: wealth always moving in the same
direction, from top to bottom, one way.
The difference compared to the austerity of past years lies only in the
language: it no longer speaks of sacrifices, but of national
responsibility, not of cuts, but of efficiency. The substance, however,
is identical: less welfare, fewer social rights, more precariousness.
The goal is not so much to restore the finances as to discipline
society, accustoming it to sacrifice and internal competition, while the
great economic powers remain untouchable.
While on the economic level, the right follows the path of financial
orthodoxy, on the cultural and media level, it pursues a deeper project:
building a new common sense, bending the collective imagination to an
authoritarian and identitarian vision of the country.
The systematic occupation of cultural institutions is now evident: from
RAI to theaters, from museums to research centers, to the university
system. Appointments are based on membership, not competence. The
criterion is simple: ability doesn't matter; just loyalty (affiliates),
perhaps even relatives. Public information is progressively reduced to a
government megaphone. Opposition spaces are dwindling, inconvenient
journalists are marginalized, and in-depth programs are transformed into
propaganda talk shows.
At the same time, the spread of a populist and anti-intellectual culture
is encouraged: complexity is seen as a flaw, competence as suspect,
doubt as betrayal. It is the construction of a people who must not
think, but recognize themselves in symbols and slogans.
In this context, culture is no longer a terrain of debate, but a field
of conquest. The right does not seek dialogue: it aims for hegemony. And
to achieve it, it adopts a reversed Gramscian strategy: seizing control
of cultural apparatuses to legitimize its own worldview, hollowing out
from within the democratic and anti-fascist values on which the Republic
is founded.
The manipulation of collective memory is the other pillar of this
political project. For years, we have witnessed a process of systematic
revisionism: not a simple historical debate, but a full-blown war on
republican memory. Any excuse is good to celebrate events and dates of
the fascist regime, not only by re-proposing anniversaries and
celebrations with Roman salutes, singing fascist thug songs, and
decidedly anti-republican attitudes, but also by attempting to introduce
a reinterpretation of historical events that replaces the one
constructed in previous years. Hence the celebration of the martyrdom of
the foibe, with an emphasis that goes beyond the proper commemoration,
ignoring the colonial massacres in Libya and Ethiopia, the massacres in
the Balkans, and the Italian internment camps.
Fascist Italy is portrayed as less evil, more civilized, different from
other totalitarian regimes. It is the return of the myth of the Italians
as good people, which collectively absolves the nation and allows the
cult of a strong homeland and the man of order to be revived, in new forms.
August 2nd is an important date, not because we're going to Bologna to
commemorate the anniversary of the massacre that occurred at that city's
train station during the strategy of tension. Rather, we must remember
August 2nd because it is the anniversary of the Battle of Cannae (216
BC), which marked a crushing victory for Hannibal, who surrounded and
destroyed the Roman army. Minister Giuli noted this when he stood before
a stele commemorating the event, reflecting on the danger of the migrant
invasion: after all, Hannibal was African! A seemingly marginal example,
but in reality symptomatic of a broader plan: replacing civil memory
with myth, tragedy with epic, democracy with the nostalgia of command.
This revisionism is the ideological premise of gentle fascism: one
doesn't impose a regime, one constructs a narrative that makes it
desirable. Writing down the past serves to govern the present, defusing
any critical consciousness and transforming history into a narrative
reassuring for those in power.
The rhetoric of sovereignty is accompanied by the practice of
repression. The Meloni government's penal policy expresses a punitive
vision of society: the idea that the problem is not inequality, but
disorder; not poverty, but those who manifest it. The notion of
self-defense is broadened, making the use of weapons by private
individuals legal; penalties for minor offenses are harshened, while
environmental or financial crimes are turned a blind eye; social
movements, roadblocks, and climate protests are criminalized. Repression
becomes the standard response to every form of conflict.
Caivano's intervention is paradigmatic: social degradation is addressed
with military means, not with educational policies or public investment.
Where social justice is needed, the army is sent in.
It is the logic of order as ideology: an order without justice, which
demands obedience rather than participation.
The housing crisis today represents a social emergency, yet the
government addresses it with indifference or with measures that openly
encourage speculation. The lack of a national housing plan, the
unrestrained liberalization of short-term rentals, and the divestment of
public property are exacerbating an already dire situation. In cities
like Milan, Rome, and Florence, thousands of public housing units remain
empty or in disrepair, while rents reach unsustainable levels.
The right to housing guaranteed by the Constitution is being replaced by
the right to real estate profit. Those who cannot afford to live in
urban centers are pushed into increasingly isolated suburbs, lacking
services and opportunities. Marginality becomes a structural condition,
no longer a temporary emergency. Behind the rhetoric of urban security
lies the desire to expel the poor, to make hardship invisible, to
transform cities into showcases for tourists and investors.
The Italy of patriotic revitalization is, in reality, a country
expelling its own citizens. The discourse on birth rates and family
values completes the ideological framework. The traditional family is
invoked as the cornerstone of national identity, but there is no
investment in childcare, support for working mothers, or equal pay. The
cancellation of the Women's Option program, the chronic shortage of
public daycare centers, and the high cost of living make the choice to
have children increasingly difficult. The rhetoric of family thus serves
to mask a decline in social and gender rights. Motherhood is exalted as
an abstract value, while real mothers are abandoned to the
precariousness of daily life. It is an ideological use of the family: a
symbol to be brandished, not a reality to be supported.
The overall result of this intertwining of economic, cultural, and
social policies is a profound shift in the relationship between the
state and its citizens. The Republic of rights is transformed into a
Republic of clientelism. People are no longer citizens, but subjects
seeking protection: the protection of their leading politician, their
powerful friend, their minister close to the people. Power returns to
being personal, not institutional.
Loyalty is rewarded, not competence; favors are distributed, not rights.
It is the restoration of an ancient, pre-modern model, which confuses
democracy with subordination, participation with obedience. Italy is
experiencing a phase of civil and political regression. The greatest
risk is not the return of fascism in overt forms, but its silent
normalization: the progressive loss of cultural antibodies, the habit of
authoritarianism disguised as efficiency, the replacement of thought
with fear.
You can erase a law, but not a memory. And this is precisely why the
decisive battle is being fought today on the terrain of culture,
education, history, information, and even a return to
counter-information, as was done so successfully in the 1970s. Because
whoever controls memory, controls the future. And the future of Italy,
today, depends on the capacity to remember and resist.
Rocco Petrone
https://www.ucadi.org/2025/11/30/la-politica-del-governo-meloni-il-travisamento-della-memoria-e-la-rilettura-della-storia-come-strumento-di-fascistizzazione/
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