The ill-fated trip of the current Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Matteo Salvini, to the Polish town of Przemysl is etched in the memories of many. It was March 8, 2022, the armed forces of the Russian Federation were setting Ukraine on fire, and the leader of the Northern League had suffered image damage comparable only to the unforgettable shootings of that crazy summer on Papeete Beach. After giving him a cold welcome, Mayor Wojciech Bakun showed the cameras showing him and the T-shirt with Putin’s face on it, which the Northern League member had displayed on various occasions in Moscow’s Red Square and even in the hall of the European Parliament.
Unfortunate statements of the deputy prime minister
His many endorsements of the Russian president came back to him dramatically and definitively. And everyone thought that day that after this humiliation he would change his tune, consider the consequences of such exposure a little more before declaring his unconditional support for this or that leader to stimulate the digital markets. . Because if the many laudatory remarks directed at the Kremlin leader, whom Salvini described as “the greatest statesman on the international stage”, represented his most unsuccessful political position, the remarks in favor of Donald Trump were no less serious. Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is responsible for a massacre due to his crazy management of the epidemic, and the tragicomic Javier Gerardo Milei, who worried administrative authorities around the world in Argentina, will be tried after the attack on Capitol Hill.
There are those who say, somewhat maliciously, that all the foreign politicians openly supported by Matteo Salvini ended badly, but let’s leave these evaluations to superstitions. But what is very clear is that the current deputy prime minister is trying to play a leading role in the world’s international far right, taking advantage of the increasingly “soft” positions of prime minister Giorgia Meloni and her party. , the most populist, anti-Islam, anti-European, anti-vax and anti-system. The aim is clearly to stop the bleeding of votes in favor of the Brotherhood of Italy by taking the political line as extreme as possible and once again eclipsing its institutional role.
Support for Wilders
The Union leader’s celebration of the election victory of Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, who won the last round of elections in the Netherlands, should be read in this context. Wilders is the prototype of a foreign leader that Matteo Salvini cannot possibly dislike: He represents the anti-immigrant far right, winks at conspiracy theories against vaccines, runs a campaign very similar to that of the leader of the Northern League. There are restrictions and lockdowns during the pandemic, and he has a not-so-denied history as a pro-Russian anti-EU.
However, there is a detail that Salvini and the large team that communicates with him probably overlooked: Geert Wilders is also anti-Italian. Fiercely loyal to the rigidity of frugality in economic matters, the tendency to portray the countries in the “south” of the continent as burdens to be left to their own sad fate and then bought at rock-bottom prices, the leader is the party that won the jackpot in the Dutch elections, governments in the last 2020 the biggest aid in the history of Europe While discussing the stakes of his plan, he shouted “Geen cent naar Italie!” He hung a sign saying: translated means “Not a penny to Italy”.
Schlein: “Salvini is a masochist”
The oversight, assuming it did, did not go unnoticed, with many on the Northern League leader’s pages commenting ironically to ask the deputy prime minister how “Italians first” was compatible with “Not a penny for Italy”. Also ironic was Elly Schlein, who became the victim of an “ironic” video published on the Union’s social networks for her support of the defeated socialist leaders in the Netherlands and Argentina. Recalling Wilders’ attitude towards Italy, he commented: “I love Salvini’s masochism.”
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Source: Today IT
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.