OPINION
The General's Gamble
Editorial Board359 wordsEdition №73Friday, 7 August 2026 — Edition № 73
The Guardian's editorial this week sounded an alarm that deserves our full attention. The rise of Roberto Vannacci's National Future party, led by a serving general who published a far-right tract in 2023, is not merely a curiosity of Italian politics. It is, as the Guardian argues, an ominous signal that extreme politics are becoming normalised. We agree, and we would add that the danger lies precisely in the word 'normalised'.
Vannacci's trajectory — from disciplinary inquiry to political success — is a story the international press has told with growing concern. What makes it particularly unsettling is the context. This is not a marginal figure operating at the fringes; this is a man in uniform, a representative of the state's coercive power, translating military authority into political capital. The Guardian is right to call him a rogue general, but the more troubling question is what his success says about the institutions that allowed him to flourish.
The foreign coverage tends to treat such figures as aberrations, as departures from an Italian political tradition that somehow knows better. Our view is less comforting. The normalisation of extreme politics is rarely a sudden rupture; it is a gradual erosion of the boundaries that once seemed fixed. When a general can publish a tract that turns the world upside down and then ride that notoriety into parliament, the boundary between the barracks and the ballot box has already shifted.
We would extend the Guardian's argument with a caution. The world watches Italy's political experiments with a mixture of fascination and dread, but it should not mistake them for a purely Italian phenomenon. The conditions that allow a rogue general to thrive — distrust of institutions, economic anxiety, a longing for simple answers — are present across Europe and beyond. Italy is not the exception; it is the warning.
The response cannot be mere condemnation. It must be a recommitment to the institutions that extreme politics seeks to dismantle: the press, the judiciary, the parliament, the very idea of a public sphere where ideas are tested rather than asserted. The Guardian has sounded the alarm; our task is to keep the watch.