Vannacci's National Future casts shadow over Umbria's quiet politics

The Guardian's editorial this week draws attention to the rapid rise of Roberto Vannacci's National Future party, which polls now place just behind Forza Italia in Giorgia Meloni's coalition and ahead of Matteo Salvini's League. The former paratrooper, once a military attaché in Moscow, founded the party in February, arguing that the government has sold out its far-right supporters by not being extreme enough.

Vannacci first came to prominence in 2023 when his book The World Turned Upside Down, a tract attacking the "normalisation" of homosexuality and questioning whether a high-profile black volleyball star could be considered Italian, landed him in disciplinary trouble with the military. The controversy sent the book into bestseller charts and the author was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute.

For Umbria, a region known for its quiet hill towns and Franciscan heritage, the national shift toward more extreme politics carries particular weight. The Guardian's editorial warns that the emergence of National Future confirms that Europe's far right is itself radicalising, dragging mainstream politics toward more extreme positions on immigration.

The Guardian notes that Vannacci, now a member of the European parliament, advocates a "true right" that is pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine, anti-EU, and committed to restoring the "cultural homogeneity" of Italy through the expulsion of immigrants and their descendants. He has declared himself open to the idea of funding from Moscow and also Beijing, at a time when Russian influence on the far right is already a cause for concern across Europe.

For Meloni, the Guardian argues, Vannacci's rise presents a major dilemma. 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. 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.

In Umbria, where the interior has long voted along traditional lines and where the Church's presence in Assisi shapes a more moderate Catholic conservatism, the radicalisation of the right could reshape local allegiances. The region's small towns, facing depopulation and an ageing population, are precisely the places where appeals to "cultural homogeneity" and anti-immigration rhetoric may find a receptive audience, even as the region's economy depends on seasonal labour and tourism.

The Guardian's editorial concludes that the rest of Europe should sit up and take notice of Vannacci's rise. One year out from Italy's next general election, the question of whether the far right will continue to radicalise or be absorbed into the mainstream remains open, and the answer will be written as much in Umbria's hill towns as in Rome's corridors of power.