Vannacci's National Future party shakes Italy's far right

A year out from Italy's next general election, the rise of Roberto Vannacci's National Future party is sending an ominous signal across the country, according to a Guardian editorial published this week. The former paratrooper general, who once served as a military attaché in Moscow, founded the party in February after exploiting the notoriety of his 2023 far-right tract, The World Turned Upside Down, which was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute.

The Guardian reports that polls now place National Future just behind Forza Italia, the second-biggest party in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's hard-right coalition, and ahead of its third main component, Matteo Salvini's League. The party argues that Meloni's government has sold out its far-right supporters by not being extreme enough, advocating a pro-Putin, anti-EU line and the expulsion of immigrants and their descendants.

The editorial, titled "The rise of a rogue general," warns that Vannacci's rapid rise threatens to become a major dilemma for Meloni. To beat the combined forces of the left next year, she may require the support of a party that does not disguise its sympathy with Italy's fascist past, the Guardian argues. But to seek it would give the lie to efforts to present her own Brothers of Italy party — which retains a neo-fascist political symbol in its logo — as part of the mainstream conservative tradition.

For Molise, Italy's smallest and emptiest region, the far right's radicalisation carries a particular edge. The region has long been a stronghold of conservative and centre-right voting, but its population of roughly 289,000 is ageing and shrinking, with the young leaving for work in the north or abroad. In such a landscape, a party promising to restore the "cultural homogeneity" of Italy through expulsion of immigrants may find a receptive audience among those who see migration as a threat to a way of life already under strain from depopulation.

The Guardian also notes that Vannacci has declared himself open to the idea of funding from Moscow and Beijing, a concern at a time when Russian influence on the far right is already a cause for alarm across Europe. The emergence of National Future confirms that, as well as dragging mainstream politics towards more extreme positions on immigration, the continent's far right is itself radicalising, the editorial concludes.

The editorial's warning comes as foreign observers watch Italy's political trajectory with unease. The rest of Europe should sit up and take notice of Vannacci's rise, the Guardian writes, framing it not as a purely Italian curiosity but as a signal of a broader continental shift. For the Molise bureau, the story is a reminder that even the smallest, most overlooked regions are not immune to the currents that shape the national mood.