ROME: A retired general who criticizes the EU, wants to send home illegal migrants and says Ukraine should accept a peace deal with Russia is challenging Italy\u2019s hard-right government on its own turf.<\/p>\n
Roberto Vannacci, 57, last month defected from the far-right League party, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s coalition government, and set up a new party he said is \u201cproud of being right-wing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opinion polls put the new \u201cNational Future\u201d at around three percent support, most of it taken from the League, led by Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, but also Meloni\u2019s far-right Brothers of Italy.<\/p>\n
Meloni\u2019s party remains the most popular, polling at more than 29 percent support \u2014 more than it won in 2022 elections.<\/p>\n
But the general offers \u201cthe first movement emerging on the right that isn\u2019t aligned with the three main parties,\u201d Lorenzo Castellani, professor of politics at Rome\u2019s Luiss University, said.<\/p>\n
A career soldier with experience in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Vannacci shot to fame in 2023 with the publication of a controversial book, \u201cThe World Upside Down.\u201d<\/p>\n
In it, he complained about a \u201cdictatorship of minorities,\u201d while saying Italian star volleyball player Paola Egonu, who is black, had features that \u201cdo not represent Italian-ness.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was suspended from his army job, with Defense Minister Guido Crosetto \u2014 a member of Meloni\u2019s party \u2014 saying that his \u201cpersonal ramblings … discredit the army, the Defense Ministry and the constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n
But in the end, he was allowed to retire, and the controversy made him a celebrity on the far right.<\/p>\n
Salvini, whose anti-immigration League has been losing ground to Meloni\u2019s in recent years, invited him into his party and Vannacci was elected to the European Parliament in 2024.<\/p>\n
But last month the ex-general struck out on his own, taking with him two League MPs and another who was independent but formerly in Meloni\u2019s party.<\/p>\n
He is targeting voters disenchanted with Salvini and also Meloni, who has radical far-right roots but in office has taken a more pragmatic approach.<\/p>\n
National Future is \u201ca party of the true right, pure, sincere, proud, unashamed of being right-wing,\u201d and \u201cnot hesitant, not fearful,\u201d Vannacci told the foreign press association Thursday.<\/p>\n
Once a firebrand euroskeptic, Meloni has worked closely with the EU in office, while her flagship promise to cut illegal immigration has been tempered by a major boost in visas for legal migrants.<\/p>\n
Vannacci has \u201ca more extremist approach to issues like immigration, like security, where he explicitly talks about remigration,\u201d Castellani said.<\/p>\n
The ex-general highlights Italy\u2019s Roman-Christian roots and has called for migrants to be returned to their countries of origin if they arrived illegally or committed a crime.<\/p>\n
While Meloni has distanced herself from Italy\u2019s Fascist past, Vannacci was accused of revisionism last year after a social media post defending the democratic credentials of dictator Benito Mussolini.<\/p>\n
National sovereignty, meanwhile, is a priority, with Vannacci lambasting the EU as both overreaching member states\u2019 rights and globally ineffective \u2014 not least in the current wars in the Middle East and Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROME: A retired general who criticizes the EU, wants to send home illegal migrants and says Ukraine should accept a peace deal with Russia is challenging Italy\u2019s hard-right government on its own turf. Roberto Vannacci, 57, last month defected from the far-right League party, a partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni\u2019s coalition government, and set …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":94740,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94742,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94727\/revisions\/94742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}