We were used to following Giorgia’s footsteps, because of our professional duty and institutional role. The summer of 2024 advised us instead to keep an eye on the subject of Ariadne. Just think that just a week ago, Italy’s most famous sister seemed to be the victim of a media and judicial conspiracy that seemed to have been foiled by the diligent and preventive denunciation of the newspaper’s director, Sandro Sallusti. A week later, there is still no trace of the investigation into influence-peddling against Meloni Arianna – but who knows, maybe it will come out after a while – and yet the same sister of the Prime Minister appears on the front page with great consistency and regularity for completely different topics. On Friday, an investigation by the newspaper il Domani revealed that the Alleanza Nazionale Foundation, of which Arianna Meloni is a member of the board, financed a neo-fascist association to buy the walls that house the historic Missino club in Acca Larenzia; a tragic event. A symbol of neo-fascist militancy that recalls the identity of the Years of Lead. Arianna and her friends say that she has no decisive role in the decision: but by the way, she is on the Board of Directors, and it is the Board of Directors that oversees the decisions of an organization.

Arianna Meloni on vacation with her ex

Who knows if it is a coincidence, but the day after Friday, Saturday, Arianna Meloni is on the front pages again, this time that of Il Foglio. There is also talk of politics, of the desire to create a right-wing school of politics: but in short, the news of the day is definitely different; she and Lollo (brigida), Francesco, are said to be Minister of Agriculture. They have left his sister’s government, but they still share the house. Just think of how beautiful the farmhouse was until a few days ago, when two sisters from Italy arrived there for “holiday” with two clumsy ex-lovers. Of course, in two cases out of two, private life is both a public endeavor and a public discourse that hides the others; all political and certainly more relevant to the lives of all of us.

Autonomy and the ius scholae

In fact, there will be no shortage of reasons to reflect on the political moment in which we live and which we have experienced precisely on the shoulders of this two-time Melonian government. The week that has just ended, speaking of politics and again of family, but in another sense, has continued to revolve the debate around two important, different words that are only seemingly distant from each other: citizenship and differentiated autonomy. While Ius Scholae, Soli, Sanguinis speak of reforming the criteria of citizenship on the one hand; and the relationship between the central state and regional autonomy, already confirmed and “threatened” by popular referendum, the so-called “differentiated autonomy”.

They seem like very different and distant issues, and in many ways they are. But if you think about it, they are both about the reasons why a country is a country, why a nation defines itself as such. They question the roots of our being together as an institutionalized community that is called upon to vote, to pay taxes, to go to compulsory school, in short, to see itself as a citizen. These are very serious questions and discussions that form the foundations of democratic politics and that in our country, in recent days and certainly in the days to come, are treated as clubs that are put at the service of petty propaganda: first of all, those who come from within a right come together to govern, but then they have a very hard time being together and governing.

Let’s start with differentiated autonomy. The flagship of the League that Salvini sought to repair the history and the leadership of the North of a party that he brought to the South, to extreme nationalism and to the right in the first part of his secretariat, is the ripe fruit of a journey that began twenty-five years ago with the hands of the center-left. The center-left, composed of Prodi, D’Alema and Bassanini, who, fearing the competition of Umberto Bossi’s Northern League, reorganized the institutional and constitutional system in such a way that even regions with ordinary status could benefit from the privileges (pardon the simplification) and the autonomy enjoyed by those with special status. These reforms, whose roots go back to the legislative assembly that started in 1996 and ended in 2001, in which three center-left governments alternated, made possible and legitimate the reform that Roberto Calderoli signed in this assembly. In short, it is the openness of the center-left to the demands of the Northern League that has made possible a reform that today the center-left definitively opposes, albeit with different nuances, and that the right in power supports with different convictions. Some center-right governors, especially in the south, despite being pressured and vaguely threatened by their coalition partners, support in every forum a referendum to repeal the Calderoli law. Sensitivities within the government are also different, which is inevitable when the interests represented are so different, even regionally. Because it is quite clear that Luca Zaia and Giorgia Meloni have different stories, represent different worlds and regions, and that the fundamental interests of those who vote for one or the other have been in conflict for centuries.

Surreal debate over citizenship

And what about the surreal debate about the criteria for acquiring Italian citizenship? A country with more than 10% of legal immigrants, where the proportion of foreigners is as high as 20%, where hundreds of thousands of children and young people fill the schools, a country that would otherwise be a mirror of the demographic desert that we, the natives, have created, a country that would not have enough workers, at least in certain areas of its territory, if it were not for the work of immigrants. Here, that country, that is, us, must discuss very seriously how to really become a citizen, including rights and duties. This is certainly not to side with the Ius Scholae; it is a proposal that makes sense, and is supported, among others, by the silent thorn in the side that Tajani is becoming. To begin with, one can be satisfied with the fact that, as Luca Zaia says, there is a real achievement when they reach the age of 18, and perhaps not only for those born here, but also for those who have studied here for 10 years. an automatism in assigning citizenship to these Italian children instead of subjecting them to the first Italian and multi-year bureaucratic process of their lives. For a country that seems to be living in the middle of the twentieth century, where the only immigrants are Italians from the south or northeast who go to the cities and the others leave, this would already be a step forward, however inadequate.

Fear of losing votes

But no, we can’t talk about that either. Because – explains Salvini – all this is not included in the government program “voted by Italians”. The truth is that if he and Meloni wanted to say it, they are afraid of losing the votes of those on the far right, without even realizing it. The votes of those who live with their heads in a past that no longer exists. If it were really that beautiful, that past would not come back. For those who remember the wonderful novel by Cesare Pavese with that title, your countries’ times were not so beautiful. Times of communities that were always together from the cradle to the grave, sometimes the first was more disturbing than the second from the cradle to the grave. The time when you recognize Italians by their facial features, to quote a general who unfortunately discovered his passion for politics. It is Italy that tells us that there is a dictatorship of minorities, referring to homosexuals, and above all to immigrants and those who help them. It would be good to remind them that a general followed by retirees and poorly literate young idlers in every real and virtual square is not yet the majority. It would be good if Giorgia Meloni remembered this too. The idea of ​​an enemy on the right lives in terror. But as everyone knows, in order to grow up, at some point you have to kill your fathers. And your grandparents too.

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