Then in 2012, prosecutors discovered that the Northern League’s treasurer had misappropriated some €40m in public money, and that hundreds of thousands of euros had gone to the Bossi family. A party that had run on the slogan of “Roma, ladrona!” (“thieving Rome”) had been caught out in the basest kind of corruption. Money had gone to pay for renovations of the Bossi home, a luxury car and a phony university degree purchased in Albania for Bossi’s less-than-brilliant son, who was being groomed for a leadership position.[...]
The magazine found that Salvini’s following often spiked after he made an especially provocative statement – such as declaring, in 2016, that the pope’s welcome to immigrants would “encourage and fund an unprecedented invasion”. But another Wired study found that Salvini has become increasingly sophisticated in the last few years, stimulating positive feelings as well as the usual negative emotions of anger and fear. “The rhetorical strategy is clear: you lower the reader’s guard by playing on fear and anger, but also suggesting that, by putting faith in the Lega, things will get better,” the magazine concluded. “There is a positive element to his posts, even a bit of joy.”[...]
Salvini’s rise to power has heightened concerns in Italy about the escalation of racist and xenophobic violence in the country. Dozens of attacks on black people and Roma have been recorded in the last year, all over Italy, from Treviso in the north to Gioia Tauro in the south, including Florence and Rome. The attacks range from drive-by shootings with air guns, in which the attackers were reported to shout “Salvini!” to the assassination of a Malian trade unionist campaigning for fair pay for migrant workers. An Italian athlete of Nigerian descent, Daisy Osakue, the Italian under-23 champion discus thrower, was hit in the eye by an egg thrown from a car. Police have been pursuing attackers and making arrests, but the government has been more reticent. After a torrent of criticism for his anti-migrant policies – culminating with the headline “Get behind me, Salvini” on the cover of Italy’s largest Catholic magazine – Salvini responded with a favorite phrase of Mussolini: “many enemies, much honor.” He also insisted that the idea of widespread Italian racism was “an invention of the left”.[...]
While stopping boatloads of refugees from north Africa may satisfy an emotional need to restore a sense of order to immigration, it doesn’t change the basic demographic arithmetic, which shows that Italy actually needs a healthy level of immigration to survive. Last year, 664,000 Italians died, while only 464,000 Italian babies were born – 100,000 of those were of mixed couples, with one Italian parent and one foreign-born one, according to Istat, the national statistics bureau. If the country is going to maintain something close to its current population of 60 million and have enough working people to keep its pension system afloat, it will have to add to its population. Most of Italy’s immigrants are young, arrived legally, and are working and paying taxes.
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