A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI, #202 - The Meloni Government's Policy - The Distortion of Memory and the Reinterpretation of History as a Tool of Fascism (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In recent years, Italy has been witnessing a silent but profound 
transformation. Beneath the surface of a supposed "democratic 
normality," a political agenda is taking shape, intertwining cultural 
control, historical revisionism, and social regression. ---- The Meloni 
government does not represent a break with the past, but rather the 
coherent evolution of an authoritarian model that, behind the facade of 
"popular sovereignty," hollows out institutions, manipulates memory, and 
reduces citizens to subjection.
Through economics, culture, and history, a new common sense is being 
constructed that tends to normalize injustice and rewrite the notion of 
freedom.
A growing sense of unease pervades each of us: the shortsighted and 
irresponsible management of power endangers what should be inalienable; 
I fear that public healthcare is being progressively hollowed out, 
giving way to privatized logic.
My direct experience in public healthcare shows that excellence still 
endures,
embodied in extraordinarily competent and dedicated doctors and 
paramedics, but the risk of seeing it sacrificed on the altar of private 
interest is increasingly real.
Alongside this, scientific and medical research represents a lifeblood: 
without concrete investment, without dedicated minds and laboratories 
capable of discovery and innovation, many people would not even be able 
to seek treatment, grow healthy, or maintain the ability to read, write, 
and understand the world around them. Research is not a luxury: it is 
what allows each of us to live fully, to hope, to learn, to build a 
viable future. Every cut to research is a life compromised, a knowledge 
lost, a fundamental right denied.
And it's not just healthcare that's causing alarm: the world seems to be 
sliding into a vortex of wars that shatter lives and territories, of 
increasingly widespread poverty, of ignorance that feeds on 
misinformation, of rights that are systematically limited or erased. The 
fragility of institutions, indifference to the common good, and cultural 
inertia make the present unsettling and the future uncertain. In this 
context, I feel the urgency to cultivate attentiveness, responsibility, 
and solidarity. Every gesture of care and awareness becomes a resistance 
against what risks being lost: humanity, justice, freedom, and 
everything that makes life worth living.
The Meloni government has built much of its consensus on the idea of 
discontinuity, on the promise of freeing Italy from technocratic elites 
and returning politics to the people. But behind the identity-based 
rhetoric and aggressive language lies a government line perfectly 
aligned with the tenets of European neoliberalism.
The so-called "sovereignist shift" is proving to be a deception: public 
finances remain rigidly anchored to the principle of a balanced budget, 
with linear cuts to social spending and no real industrial policy, 
saving money today to spend tomorrow on weapons and gifts for friendly 
classes ahead of the 2027 elections.
The tax reform, presented as the fairest in the history of the Republic, 
is proof of this: a regressive measure that favors the highest income 
brackets, shifting the burden onto employees, the middle classes, and 
pensioners. High-earners save hundreds of euros a year, while those who 
live off their wages receive crumbs. The Meloni government's economic 
policy is nothing more than the continuation of the Draghi agenda, which 
is being rigorously and consistently applied to bring public finances 
under control, effectively imposing a policy of austerity without even 
saying so.
The changes made to revise tax rates are decidedly class-biased because 
they contradict the principles of equality and progressive taxation. 
They save the highest-earning classes around EUR400 a year, while an 
employee saves only EUR26. In fact, compensating for missed wage 
increases through taxes doesn't work. It's not a policy of 
redistribution, but of concentration: wealth always moving in the same 
direction, from top to bottom, one way.
The difference compared to the austerity of past years lies only in the 
language: it no longer speaks of sacrifices, but of national 
responsibility, not of cuts, but of efficiency. The substance, however, 
is identical: less welfare, fewer social rights, more precariousness. 
The goal is not so much to restore the finances as to discipline 
society, accustoming it to sacrifice and internal competition, while the 
great economic powers remain untouchable.

While on the economic level, the right follows the path of financial 
orthodoxy, on the cultural and media level, it pursues a deeper project: 
building a new common sense, bending the collective imagination to an 
authoritarian and identitarian vision of the country.
The systematic occupation of cultural institutions is now evident: from 
RAI to theaters, from museums to research centers, to the university 
system. Appointments are based on membership, not competence. The 
criterion is simple: ability doesn't matter; just loyalty (affiliates), 
perhaps even relatives. Public information is progressively reduced to a 
government megaphone. Opposition spaces are dwindling, inconvenient 
journalists are marginalized, and in-depth programs are transformed into 
propaganda talk shows.
At the same time, the spread of a populist and anti-intellectual culture 
is encouraged: complexity is seen as a flaw, competence as suspect, 
doubt as betrayal. It is the construction of a people who must not 
think, but recognize themselves in symbols and slogans.
In this context, culture is no longer a terrain of debate, but a field 
of conquest. The right does not seek dialogue: it aims for hegemony. And 
to achieve it, it adopts a reversed Gramscian strategy: seizing control 
of cultural apparatuses to legitimize its own worldview, hollowing out 
from within the democratic and anti-fascist values on which the Republic 
is founded.
The manipulation of collective memory is the other pillar of this 
political project. For years, we have witnessed a process of systematic 
revisionism: not a simple historical debate, but a full-blown war on 
republican memory. Any excuse is good to celebrate events and dates of 
the fascist regime, not only by re-proposing anniversaries and 
celebrations with Roman salutes, singing fascist thug songs, and 
decidedly anti-republican attitudes, but also by attempting to introduce 
a reinterpretation of historical events that replaces the one 
constructed in previous years. Hence the celebration of the martyrdom of 
the foibe, with an emphasis that goes beyond the proper commemoration, 
ignoring the colonial massacres in Libya and Ethiopia, the massacres in 
the Balkans, and the Italian internment camps.
Fascist Italy is portrayed as less evil, more civilized, different from 
other totalitarian regimes. It is the return of the myth of the Italians 
as good people, which collectively absolves the nation and allows the 
cult of a strong homeland and the man of order to be revived, in new forms.
August 2nd is an important date, not because we're going to Bologna to 
commemorate the anniversary of the massacre that occurred at that city's 
train station during the strategy of tension. Rather, we must remember 
August 2nd because it is the anniversary of the Battle of Cannae (216 
BC), which marked a crushing victory for Hannibal, who surrounded and 
destroyed the Roman army. Minister Giuli noted this when he stood before 
a stele commemorating the event, reflecting on the danger of the migrant 
invasion: after all, Hannibal was African! A seemingly marginal example, 
but in reality symptomatic of a broader plan: replacing civil memory 
with myth, tragedy with epic, democracy with the nostalgia of command.
This revisionism is the ideological premise of gentle fascism: one 
doesn't impose a regime, one constructs a narrative that makes it 
desirable. Writing down the past serves to govern the present, defusing 
any critical consciousness and transforming history into a narrative 
reassuring for those in power.
The rhetoric of sovereignty is accompanied by the practice of 
repression. The Meloni government's penal policy expresses a punitive 
vision of society: the idea that the problem is not inequality, but 
disorder; not poverty, but those who manifest it. The notion of 
self-defense is broadened, making the use of weapons by private 
individuals legal; penalties for minor offenses are harshened, while 
environmental or financial crimes are turned a blind eye; social 
movements, roadblocks, and climate protests are criminalized. Repression 
becomes the standard response to every form of conflict.
Caivano's intervention is paradigmatic: social degradation is addressed 
with military means, not with educational policies or public investment. 
Where social justice is needed, the army is sent in.
It is the logic of order as ideology: an order without justice, which 
demands obedience rather than participation.
The housing crisis today represents a social emergency, yet the 
government addresses it with indifference or with measures that openly 
encourage speculation. The lack of a national housing plan, the 
unrestrained liberalization of short-term rentals, and the divestment of 
public property are exacerbating an already dire situation. In cities 
like Milan, Rome, and Florence, thousands of public housing units remain 
empty or in disrepair, while rents reach unsustainable levels.
The right to housing guaranteed by the Constitution is being replaced by 
the right to real estate profit. Those who cannot afford to live in 
urban centers are pushed into increasingly isolated suburbs, lacking 
services and opportunities. Marginality becomes a structural condition, 
no longer a temporary emergency. Behind the rhetoric of urban security 
lies the desire to expel the poor, to make hardship invisible, to 
transform cities into showcases for tourists and investors.
The Italy of patriotic revitalization is, in reality, a country 
expelling its own citizens. The discourse on birth rates and family 
values completes the ideological framework. The traditional family is 
invoked as the cornerstone of national identity, but there is no 
investment in childcare, support for working mothers, or equal pay. The 
cancellation of the Women's Option program, the chronic shortage of 
public daycare centers, and the high cost of living make the choice to 
have children increasingly difficult. The rhetoric of family thus serves 
to mask a decline in social and gender rights. Motherhood is exalted as 
an abstract value, while real mothers are abandoned to the 
precariousness of daily life. It is an ideological use of the family: a 
symbol to be brandished, not a reality to be supported.
The overall result of this intertwining of economic, cultural, and 
social policies is a profound shift in the relationship between the 
state and its citizens. The Republic of rights is transformed into a 
Republic of clientelism. People are no longer citizens, but subjects 
seeking protection: the protection of their leading politician, their 
powerful friend, their minister close to the people. Power returns to 
being personal, not institutional.
Loyalty is rewarded, not competence; favors are distributed, not rights. 
It is the restoration of an ancient, pre-modern model, which confuses 
democracy with subordination, participation with obedience. Italy is 
experiencing a phase of civil and political regression. The greatest 
risk is not the return of fascism in overt forms, but its silent 
normalization: the progressive loss of cultural antibodies, the habit of 
authoritarianism disguised as efficiency, the replacement of thought 
with fear.
You can erase a law, but not a memory. And this is precisely why the 
decisive battle is being fought today on the terrain of culture, 
education, history, information, and even a return to 
counter-information, as was done so successfully in the 1970s. Because 
whoever controls memory, controls the future. And the future of Italy, 
today, depends on the capacity to remember and resist.

Rocco Petrone

https://www.ucadi.org/2025/11/30/la-politica-del-governo-meloni-il-travisamento-della-memoria-e-la-rilettura-della-storia-come-strumento-di-fascistizzazione/
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