A rogue general's rise finds an echo in Italy's emptying regions

The Guardian's editorial board this week delivered a stark verdict on the rise of Roberto Vannacci's National Future party, warning that its early success 'sends an ominous signal as extreme politics become normalised' in Italy. The paper's commentary traces the party's trajectory back to 2023, when Vannacci, then a serving Italian general, published a far-right tract titled The World Turned Upside Down, prompting a disciplinary inquiry.

For a region like Molise, the rise of a figure such as Vannacci is not an abstract national story. The Guardian's framing describes a general who has tapped into a current of discontent that runs deep in Italy's interior, where depopulation has hollowed out communities and left voters feeling abandoned by Rome and Brussels alike.

The editorial's language is pointed: it describes Vannacci as a 'rogue general' whose political ascent has been fuelled by the same resentments that have reshaped European politics. The Guardian argues that his success reflects a broader pattern of extreme politics shedding its stigma.

The Guardian's editorial, published on Thursday, situates Vannacci's rise within a wider European trend. It notes that his 2023 pamphlet was a 'sustained' attack on what he framed as the orthodoxies of the establishment, and that the disciplinary inquiry that followed did little to slow his political trajectory. The paper draws a direct line from that controversy to the founding of National Future and its early electoral performance.

The connection to Italy's periphery is one the Guardian does not make explicitly, but it is legible from the region. Molise is the smallest and one of the most depopulated regions in Italy, with a population of roughly 289,000 and a steady outward flow of young people. The Guardian's own coverage of Italian politics has repeatedly noted how the disaffected South and interior have become fertile ground for protest movements of various stripes, from the Five Star Movement to, now, harder-right formations.

The editorial warns that the normalisation of such politics carries risks beyond Italy's borders, given the country's role in the European Union and NATO. It calls on mainstream parties to confront rather than accommodate the new formation. The paper does not predict Vannacci's trajectory, but its tone is one of concern rather than dismissal.

Seen from Campobasso, the concern has a particular texture. The Guardian's analysis points to a politics of grievance that thrives where the state's presence is thinnest. In Molise, where the joke that the region 'doesn't exist' is a staple of national humour, the appeal of a general who promises to turn the established order upside down is not hard to imagine. The wire does not report any specific Molise reaction, and none is claimed here; the connection is one of context, not event.

What the Guardian's editorial makes clear is that the phenomenon is no longer marginal. National Future's early success, the paper argues, is evidence that the taboos around far-right politics in Italy have eroded. For the regions the party seeks to represent, the implications are as much about identity as about policy.