Loading ...LUONGO’S TAKE ON THE ITALIAN ELECTION SITUATION
Wow…this is far more complex than Right vs Left ! Luongo is Italian Descent and seems to be keenly aware of their politics .
This link is from his paid service but it is SO IMPORTANT i am sharing it
Let me know if you all can access it ! There are some charts I can’t pst but i copied the text in the first comment.
As always I would appreciate your take Mamare
snip
Meloni’s rise to power is important. She is the real deal. But remember also that the Italian Swamp is older and deeper than that of D.C. So, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Before I go into the Brussels response to this, I have to put my two cents on the table about Italy and Italians, because many of you simply won’t understand why this election result, while not perfect, is still far more than enough to give Brussels fits.
Italian culture is very mother-centric. It’s incredibly provincial when it comes to inter-generational conflict. I’m not saying we’re unique, but when it comes to ‘honor they mother and father’ Italians take that shit to the next level.
And then some.
And then some.
This is the culture that so reveres their mothers (and not necessarily in a healthy way) that they raised Mary to nearly god-like status. Italian mothers can tend towards narcissism and emotional abuse which they inflict on their boys.
Ask me how I know this
Morning Munchings: Revolt in Italy Over Family, Identity and Dignity
There is a two-minute clip of the end of this speech making the rounds this morning. This is a 2019 speech from Giorgia Meloni, presumed to be the next Prime Minister of Italy.
This is 2019, when Meloni wasn’t anyone and her party languishing in the polls.
The Italian elections have come and Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FdI) have taken the election. The final results were not brilliant. They didn’t represent a shift towards the sovereigntist right at a percentage level over where the country was when Matteo Salvini and Lega were polling 36% when the coalition fell apart and his bid for snap elections failed.
Back then the Italian right polled together around 46% – 49%.
Then Salvini faltered, was stabbed in the back by Five Star Movement (M5S), and it led to the three years of suck Italy has had to endure since.
Right-leaning voters rightly punished Salvini for his miscalculation and Lega fell quickly from that 36% to garnering only 9% yesterday.
So, yesterday’s results clearly show a simple reorganization of the Italian right that Salvini gave hope to, many of whom voted for M5S’s fake populism in the 2018 election.
The Italian right got 43% total on slightly lower turnout than in 2018. Two things to note.
One, Meloni’s Brothers took Lega’s voters, cannibalizing their disaffection. That’s understandable and it still represents a major shift over 2018, where the same three parties (FdI, Lega and Forza Italia) together polled 36%.
Two, the Azione (or Action!) party came in as the new Left Wing Kid on the Block, led by former PM to try and replicate the success of the strategy which brought Emmanuel Macron and his “En Marche!” party to power in France.
It bled off a few points likely from centrist voters wanting to send a protest vote to Rome, which was the goal. So, Azione did its job, which was to prevent a supermajority in both houses of the Italian parliament. The good news is that former PM Matteo Renzi’s party got completely shellacked, but Azione, led by Carlos Calenda, was clearly the New Renzi Party by another name.
Even half of those 8 points could have swung this election into the nightmare scenario for Davos. Now, they have a clear majority to deal with but not one that has the electoral mandate to change the Italian constitution and take Italy out of the EU unilaterally.
The support for PD, the Democrats and the most established of any of these parties, held firm tells you this is the baseline support for the status quo among the professional/political class that clearly benefits from the current arrangement.
Ultimately, we had to expect this result, really. Meloni is untested at the national level. The public wasn’t going to give her that amount of power right out of the game. Salvini, battle hardened, may actually not be a buffoon now that he has some really support in Rome, rather than a clearly infiltrated M5S whose job is to try and play kingmaker.
Together under the guiding hand of old warhorse Silvio Berlusconi (if that’s the role he actually plays), Meloni and Salvini can form a strong enough front to stand tall to Brussels and consolidate their power over the next year or so.
Meloni’s rise to power is important. She is the real deal. But remember also that the Italian Swamp is older and deeper than that of D.C. So, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Before I go into the Brussels response to this, I have to put my two cents on the table about Italy and Italians, because many of you simply won’t understand why this election result, while not perfect, is still far more than enough to give Brussels fits.
Italian culture is very mother-centric. It’s incredibly provincial when it comes to inter-generational conflict. I’m not saying we’re unique, but when it comes to ‘honor they mother and father’ Italians take that shit to the next level.
And then some.
This is the culture that so reveres their mothers (and not necessarily in a healthy way) that they raised Mary to nearly god-like status. Italian mothers can tend towards narcissism and emotional abuse which they inflict on their boys.
Ask me how I know this.
I’m trying not to generalize my personal experience but you’ve seen this in Scorcese’s Italian mob movies. The stereotype of the Italian mother isn’t that far off from reality. We all laugh at it when it’s played for jokes because comedy is tragedy plus time.
This abuse manifests in the kind of volatility that only comes from a culture that will take abuse from the older generation and bottle that up for years. Until one day it’s one insult too many and BOOOOOM!
And I mean boom. There’s no putting that anger back in the bottle.
And within this dynamic and this fiercely proud, smart and passionate people there lurks the kind of darkness that is truly frightening. I know what it looks like. This service is a kind of therapy to channel that rage and frustration into something constructive.
It’s this inter-familial dynamic that leaves Italians vulnerable to that passion that is both immensely creative and potentially devastating.
We aren’t sane people, folks. And it’s been bred into us over thousands of years of culture. We are warm and open to a fault and your worst freakin’ nightmare if you disrespect us.
Because no one is more sensitive to disrespect than those that have been abused by a culture obsessed with handing it automatically to the older generation.
It’s why I personally find inter-generational analysis so fascinating and why Dexter White and I argue about it privately (now that I think of this). The difference between our ancestry and the dynamics thereof while similar are simply not the same because of the cultural differences that go back centuries, if not millennia.
So, if Brussels thinks they are going to play money and rules games with the Italians who just elected a woman who sparks in them all of these emotions they are in for a complete world of pain.
If Meloni is a firebrand of a different sort, a based woman aggrieved for her children, she will fight for Italy in a way no one has fought the Eurocrats before.
And judging by this morning’s headlines, I’d say I believe they are finally starting to get this. Their only weapon is international demonization. But at this point 1 in 4 Italians give zero f^cks what anyone else is thinking right now.
If Meloni comes in and begins gutting Brussels and even partially backs Viktor Orban’s sovereignty in Hungary, then that number goes to 1 in 3 overnight.
Now, to close up shop this morning….
What comes next will run something like this. President Mattarella will attempt to insert himself in the government-formation process like he did in 2018, by denying Italy’s choice of Finance Minister or Foreign Minister.
He will attempt to draw this out while the backroom dealing will be fully on display to break the coalition. The goal isn’t to win that fight, which, constitutionally he can’t. It is to draw out the pain for as long as possible.
Eventually Mattarella will back down, because he has no choice.
Meanwhile, the ECB will begin allowing the sovereign debt crisis to unfold, blaming the uncertainty over Italy and the energy crisis as the key driver. They have no other option now but to accelerate their plans to crash the European economy and blackmail starving and freezing people.
This collapse will be blamed on Meloni. If only you had chosen better Italians, we wouldn’t have to pull the plug on you. Now, given what I just wrote above do you think this is a winning strategy?
No.
Italians will rally around their mother-figure and will tell Brussels to go scratch.
Brussels will try and play the same game they played with Hungary. You voted wrong so we’re going to pull your support. Italians will be enraged. Meloni will threaten to leave the euro, if not the EU.
Europe will demand repayment of Italy’s TARGET2 liabilities, over $1 trillion dollars, while pulling ECB support of the Italian government through QE. Italian yields will spike.
The sovereign debt crisis will engulf the banks. Meloni will be under extreme pressure to do something. And Brussels will then make them the Big Offer:
We will forgive your debt (and everyone else’s) if you accept our CBDC and complete subservience to Brussels or you can starve while we drag out Italeave procedures.
Again, given what you just read about Italians who know a thing or two about blackmail, what do you think their answer will be?
Morning Munchings
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Buck Rogers
Unfortunately I disagree about this one, I lived in Italy for 4 years, opened a business, had kids at school ecc, and a huge part of Italians loooivvee the welfare state, basically these ppl definition of a good government is as much welfare as possible. Old style unionist Communism is still alive and many right wingers are fascists, something unacceptable for American, Brit and Brazilian conservatives. Italy’s idiosyncrasies are a liability not an asset
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Tom Luongo
This is no ‘libertarian’ revolution in Italy, Buck. Italy’s idea of ‘far right’ makes a mockery of the left/right divide. Meloni isn’t far right. She’s Italy first.
But, I don’t think in any way that Italy allows Brussels to dictate terms no matter how much payola the EU (who is broke) offers.
Luongo thinks of Italy as it was 60 years ago , but it is very different now , unfortunately it is like another American state in many ways, don’t forget he is not Italian he is of Italian descent like Fauci Pelosi DeSantis Cuomo etc…
Not to forget that Italy is VERY different from north to south where a rich modern industrialised north is in opposition to a more traditional poor rural south .
The best thing to do would be to restore some of the traditions and values of the past like Orban would like to do in Hungary….would our photoshop woman able to do that?
Luongo is right when he is saying that tptb will try to make her fall as soon as possible , the president of Italy Mattarella has already said he is will not support her if she doesn’t obey to them , just I don’t think Italians will have the balls to fight against the system if her will have the courage to go against it.
For me ( I repeat myself) the keys to this situation are Hungary and Russia, Meloni will be forced to condamn them if she want sto stay in power.
Thanks MAMARE….watching this unfold