The Rogue General's Shadow

There is a particular danger in dismissing a political figure as a clown, a buffoon, a creature of the margins. The Guardian's editorial on Roberto Vannacci, the former paratrooper general who has founded the National Future party, takes this threat seriously, and so should we. Vannacci's rise from disciplinary case to potential kingmaker is not a curiosity of Italian politics; it is a signal of something deeper and more troubling across the continent.

The Guardian's argument is stark: Vannacci's party, which openly sympathises with Russia, opposes the EU, and calls for the expulsion of immigrants and their descendants, is now polling just behind Forza Italia, the second-largest party in Giorgia Meloni's coalition. This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is the normalisation of the extreme, the point at which the far right's own radicalisation begins to outpace the mainstream parties that sought to harness it. The general's book, The World Turned Upside Down, was a bestseller; his politics, once a disciplinary offence, are now a parliamentary reality.

For Prime Minister Meloni, the dilemma is acute. To win the next election, she may need the support of a party that does not disguise its sympathy with Italy's fascist past. But to seek that support would betray her own efforts to present Brothers of Italy as a mainstream conservative force. The Guardian is right to call this a dilemma, but it is more than that: it is a test of whether the far right can govern without being consumed by its own extremes. Vannacci is not a rival to Meloni; he is her reflection, the unvarnished version of the politics she has cultivated.

The rest of Europe should indeed sit up and take notice. Vannacci's openness to funding from Moscow and Beijing, as reported by the Guardian, is a reminder that the far right is not merely a domestic phenomenon but a vector for foreign influence. The continent's mainstream parties have spent years accommodating the far right, hoping to tame it. The lesson of Vannacci is that the far right does not moderate; it radicalises, and it drags the centre with it.

We write this not to alarm but to clarify. The world's coverage of Italy often focuses on the picturesque — the vineyard dinners, the summer spritzes, the sunloungers. But the political weather is less benign. The rogue general's shadow falls across the piazza, and it is longer than it appears. Europe's democracies must decide whether they will meet this challenge with clarity or with the same complacency that has allowed it to grow.