The Munk Debates Podcast - David Broder Dialogue - Is The Future Of Western Democracy Fascism?

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Some are worried that far right parties are poised to make big political gains in advanced democracies as inflation, economic stagnation and elite distrust surge. Of all western countries Italy is fast emerging as a petri dish for populist politics and potential herald of the political dynamics that could grip the larger eurozone and North America. The technocratic government of Mario Draghi has collapsed, and with an early election happening this fall, the potential exists for the Brothers of Italy to lead a coalition of far-right parties taking charge of a major European economy. Other countries are already looking toward the Brothers of Italy as an inspiration: the Vox party in Spain, another far-right party, has steadily risen in the polls to 20 per cent. What started all this? Is there any way to stop this rise of far right populism? And does this signal a new and dangerous challenge to pluralist democracies?   QUOTES:   There's been a collapse in left wing working class electoral turnout. We no longer have the mass parties of the past. So instead you just get this polarization between right wing populist forces or even ones with the fascist past. And then the only alternative is the sort of technocratic pro-European liberal center.    The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Producer: Marissa Ramnanan  Editor: Adam Karch  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Hello, Monk podcast listeners. There's Redyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, the latest edition of our summer monk dialogue series. These are long-form interviews with some of the world's sharpest analysts on the big issues and ideas transforming this extraordinary moment that we're all living through. On this installment of the monk dialogues, we're going to go deep into Italian politics. In case you haven't heard, there's a major election underway in Italy this September. Right now, according to opinion. polls it looks like the far right, the populist right in Italy, is poised to seize power to form the next national government. What will this mean for the future of Europe for Italy? And what lessons can we draw from the seeming success of populism in Italy at this moment for other populist movements across the Western world? As I said, we're going to go deep into Italian politics

to get a view possibly on the future of our own politics here. here in Canada, the United States, and across Europe. Our guide for this conversation today is David Broder, a Rome-based writer and translator. He is the European editor of Jacobin Magazine and writes regularly on Italian politics, including a terrific New York Times op-ed published this month, August. He's also the author of the Verso book. First, They Took Rome, The Rise of the Populist Right, and How They Could, conquered Italy. The next voice you'll hear is me, Rudyard Griffiths, your host and moderator

in conversation with David Broder. I hope you enjoy this monk dialogue. David, welcome to the monk dialogues. Hi, thanks to having me on. Very much. Looking forward to this conversation today, as we'll get into in this conversation with you, you know, Italy is in some ways not just a creator of fabulous cars, furniture, wine. They have been historically exporters of ideas, of politics, of political movements. And I think looking at Italy right now is just a fascinating thought experiment in terms of how our politics is changing, the metamorphosis of populism in our society, the new kind of trends that are coursing through a body politic in the Western world that, as we know, is being

convulsed by all these different forces of war in Ukraine, surging inflation, intense voter distrust and alienation. So the opportunity to kind of go deep on Italy, something we don't do enough, frankly, here in North American media is a privilege indeed. So let's begin, David, by having you set the scene for us a little bit. What's happened? And why do you think that's important in terms of Italian politics and what we might see unfold over the next 60 to 90 days? Well, I think you're quite right to suggest that Italy is an exporter of ideas and I would say a kind of political laboratory. And part of the reason is that when I talk about the rise of a new far right in Italy of a party led by Georgian Maloney, Fratelli d'italia, which is leading opinion polls, and which is a party which draws on a neo-fascist tradition.

What I'm not saying is that this is a return to the past. It's not going back to historical fascism. We're not talking about dictatorship or war or the kind of forms of mass politics of the 20th century. I think the Italian experience is interesting precisely because it's a harbinger of trends we're seeing in other Western countries like you mentioned. like the collapse of trust in political institutions.

Italy no longer has any of the same parties it had in the post-war decades, the old Christian Democrats and socialists and communists. It has falling voter turnout. It's had more than two decades of flatlining GDP. Italy is basically poorer now than it was when it joined the euro in 1999. And so we have this very conflictual and volatile politics, often framed in terms of ideas of Western decline and Europe, it's falling place in the world, which takes very harsh and polemical forms and of which Frateri de Talia is the latest example.

Of course, only recently we had another far-right party in Italy which surged to prominence, Matteo Salvini's Lega, which only a couple of years ago had a third of the vote behind it. now it's a half of that. So Frateri di Italia is, in a way, it's a particularly interesting phenomenon, of course, because of its fascist roots. It's reached an old party called the MSI, which was created by former Mussolinian hierarchs

and lieutenants just after World War II. So it kind of says it's not looking to go back to the past. It always hates being accused of fascist ties and so on, But nonetheless, it's a party which expresses a very strong resentment, which expresses very much the politics of a sort of resentful national identity, which talks about great replacement theory, about elite plots for the ethnic substitution of European whites, but which is in Italy seen as part of the mainstream now in a very volatile political system and one in which maybe the old codes of legitimacy and who's allowed. to speak or not have fallen away. Fratelli d'Italia is the main party of the broad right. And there's a good chance that the general election on September 25th, they will both come first place and that their leader, Georgia Maloney, could become prime minister.

Terrific summary. Thanks for kind of bringing us up to date. So let's try to understand these parties and personalities. I mean, going back to this idea of... that there's something novel happening here. What do you see as a kind of evolution of populism in Georgia of Maloney in Brothers of Italy? Because we've seen this movie before. We've had Nigel Farage in the United Kingdom, you know, a similar set of messages.

Marie LaPen has now made multiple attempts at the French presidency. Is there something different this time? Or is it continuation? Is this just the evolution of a spectrum? Or do you think, again, there's something genuinely novel here that Italian politics is innovating? What I'd say is that I think Italy is further along the same path. Because we've seen, you're right, we've seen this before in other countries, but we've also seen it before in Italy in the 1990s. You know, many people have drawn the parallel between when Sylvia Berlusconi first became prime minister in 1994.

He was a TV billionaire tycoon from outside the world of politics who amidst general distrust in the political system, nonetheless managed to push himself to the front as an even more obviously corrupt avatar of the fusion of politics and financial wealth. And his coalition brought the old neo-fascist party MSI, which is effectively the origin of Frateri de Italia, Like already then in the 1990s, they were in government as a junior partner.

So while in the examples you mentioned, like Farage or Le Pen, particularly, you know, Le Pen's party also is rooted in the history of World War II collaboration, Vichy France, as well as the French colonial war in Algeria, you know, she's struggling still a bit to make her way into the mainstream. whereas in Italy, although a lot of what Georgia Melani has to say may sound very extreme to foreign is, her party is actually a quite well-established part of the political landscape. And actually, I mean, part of the strange thing with these elections, I guess, and also the reaction to my own New York Times piece in Italy was the kind of tiredness with which the accusation of, or the perceived accusation of fascism was treated. It's like the reaction is the left has nothing to talk about. It has no ideas, it has no proposals.

All you can do is go on about the fact that we have a fascist past. And that really, I think, although it's important for historians and students of politics to look at these things, I think calling Melania a fascist is not going to pull votes away from her. Italian voters have heard this story before. But in terms of what's new about this specific moment, I mean, one of the things is that, I think, well, I think many accounts of the rise of Melani will too easily see it through the prism of the other recent cases, in particular in the sense that, you know,

being accused of seeking a split with the European Union, as in the case you mentioned of Nigel Farage. And one of the curious, I think, aspects of the Italian case is that a lot of Maloney's critics will accuse her of seeking some sort of split with the European Union. She's very explicit that she doesn't want that, and she'll probably appoint sort of more consensual or even technocratic ministers to show her commitment to Europe. She's also very strongly emphasised her commitment to NATO and Italy's place in international institutions. So actually, I think one of the interesting things about the example of Italy is that although the proposals and language of the party sound extreme,

it's also kind of consigned itself to not carrying through a very radical agenda in terms of really transforming Italian citizens. society. Much as the party's popularity is a sign of distrust in political institutions, the weakening of democratic choice, people feeling they can't make big decisions. I think actually materially, it's also true that Fratelli will very soon find itself hamstrung by the same factors that have made it difficult for recent governments. You know, Italy's enormous public debt, the limits imposed by euro membership, and so on. So I think, although, the party certainly will seek to make very harsh anti-immigration measures and rack up other kind of symbolic victory is important to its supporters. I'd actually question whether the volatility and angry tone of politics will actually be translated into big shifts in the policy choices that could be made.

I'm interested by this, your idea that there's a kind of trajectory. here of possibly more than just Italy, you know, Western advanced democracies. And Italy simply may be the kind of time traveler further down some kind of wormhole of populism. How we've arrived at this moment in Italy is important to understand that, and I want to hear you expand a bit on this, that Italy has for this immediate political period been kind of led and governed as a technocracy under the prime ministership of Mario Draghi, the former head of the ECB, a kind of a figure head arguably of the European political and economic establishment. So I'm curious to get your thoughts as to, you know, in a sense, what that, how that backstory is kind of set up this moment

for Italian voters and for a kind of Italian political sentiment, but also in a sense, maybe the risk that it shows right now in terms of the rest of Europe, you know, countries like Canada here also at times seeming to ping pong between, you know, populist urges and surges on one hand And then the other response, quite binary, highly technocratic, some cases undemocratic responses to challenges and crises, whether it be COVID, the economy, inflation, the rise, the return of central banks to, you know, paramount policymaking importance and supremacy, arguably, in a lot of our economies right now. So talk to us a bit about Mario Draghi, what's happened and what's happened and what. why, again, this is possibly foreshadowing a journey that other advanced democracies may soon go on as we confront this period of economic and political disruption. Well, yeah, I mean, I think the word disruption is interesting because it feels, I think, to many people, that the crisis is no longer a single, moment or like a passing phase we go through, but rather becomes a permanent condition of politics.

And that's not just because of volatility or people exchanging angry messages on Twitter. That's because of very fundamental deep-rooted economic problems. Related to, among other things, the general decline or the relative decline of the West, the need to confront the environmental emergency, aging populations, these kind of very broad structural factors, which make it harder for politicians to convincingly sell the idea that soon we're going to return to prosperity. We seem to have this kind of permanent stagnation. And in Italy, a lot of people might think, well, Italy's always had colorful and weird politics, but it was a very strong economy in post-war decades, in fact, became richer than Britain in the

1980s, whereas the last two decades it's really been stuck. Massive debt, no economic growth, constant budget austerity. And so with that, the kind of range of political choice has withered, because no one can really do anything to break out of it. I think the draggy premiership was characteristic of the way, as you alluded to in your question, the way in which liberals like to imagine that this will end, which is a saviour figure with real expertise and institutional background, who will sort of put an end to political rouse and pointless arguing and maybe even kind of get one over on the public who vote for weird parties. You know, this idea that you can bring someone in and he'll sort of reshuffle the political system from above. And we've actually seen this in Italy

a lot before. It happened in the early 90s with the first technocratic governments. We had it with Mario Monti, who was a former European Commissioner, who was Prime Minister in the early 2010s. So while when Draghi was appointed Prime Minister in February 2021, we had this huge international acclaim. This is Super Mario who's going to save Italy like he saved the Euro. I don't doubt that Draghi as an individual is popular or that the recovery funds from the EU were received positively in Italy. But then I just feel that this is a very poor substitute for the left or the centre left, you know, rebuilding its own proposals, having its own growth alternative. And I think like the draggy experience, you know, the Democrats are running in this election saying, we will defend Draghi's agenda.

So Draghi's coalition, when he was prime minister, included the spectrum of centre-left to far right, had the Lega, had Berlusconi's party, Silvio Berlusconi's party, Fartze Italia, had the five-star movement, which used to be called an anti-establishment movement, but has been in every government in the last five years. So, you know, this was,

this was meant to be a national unity government, included all parties, but now the Democrats say, you know, this is our record, that's what we're running on. And, you know, they're on 22, 23%, which is not impressive. And the right-wing parties are, look very likely to, to win the election. But, I mean, I think the, so I think like this, I mean, another thing I'd add to that is that I think that it's kind of, it can be too easy to imagine that the death of the old working class left-wing vote, and obviously working-class voters in Italy haven't been inspired by this cast of central bankers and technocrats who always asked for just a bit more austerity, just a bit more budget-cutting, and then eventually we'll get

somewhere. Working-class voters are no longer turning out for the left. That doesn't mean that they've directly defected to the far right, or that that's exactly what's driving. the support for Fratelli d'Italia per se, because I think if you look at its social profile, it's very mixed. I think the real phenomenon is that there's been a collapse in left-wing, working class electoral turnout. We no longer have the mass parties of the past. So instead, you just get this polarisation between right-wing populist forces or even ones with the fascist past, and then the only alternative is the sort of technocratic pro-European liberal centre, but which basically doesn't reach power by winning elections.

And I think that this is a kind of model of politics, which we've already actually, you know, obviously as an Italianist, it's in my interest to say, well, Italy is the future. But we see the same thing in Eastern Europe as well. And I think it's generally characteristic of democracies that, I think democracies where there's like a sense of decline, where there isn't economic growth, that it's no longer, the left is kind of proving no longer able to mobilize people around the idea of like progressive reform or like the idea that it can like improve working class people's lives. So instead we have this politics much more focused on national identity. If we think about the upcoming election, what might resolve from it?

Is there the potential here for Italy to kind of pioneer and promote, um, and prong, prove out a resurgence of, as you say, a populist politics that, again, has fascist elements, hallmarks to it, but at the same time, seems to be walking a careful positioning vis-a-vis some of the other, as you rightly pointed out, the other traditional bat noirs of the right, most notably the European community, the bureaucracy in Brussels, the European Central Bank. Is that sustainable? Is that possible? Is there the risk here, David, of some kind of showdown between the institutions of Europe and the politics of Italy? First, I'd say that I think that Georgia Maloney will not seek to provoke such a clash,

at least early on in her government. I think it was actually very interesting on the day that Draghi resigned as Prime Minister. She said, well, you know, maybe he knows that the economic conditions are worse than we know. And, you know, we're going to have this energy and inflation crisis in autumn. And it's going to be a big mess. And Draghi will be able to say, oh, this all happened because I wasn't here. So I think what, you know, she's kind of getting her excuses in early there, I think. But I think, you know, whatever happens for any government.

elected in September, they're going to soon face a very difficult economic situation. Pretély di Italia and the Lega, the other main hard right party in Italy, their base, they don't want to split from the European Union or crash out of the euro or any of these kind of things. That's not in the interests of Italian savers, it's not in the interests of businesses which are in supply chains with German firms, but they're nonetheless hurting from the effects of the years of crisis and the fact they don't feel they have the tools to change course. So I would expect more symbolic clashes with Europe, particularly around the issue of immigration, also because it's something that the government is basically much more

autonomous in regulating and where it can strike a posture more effectively. Meloni has spoken about a naval blockade in the Mediterranean to stop migrant boats as part of a militarisation of the border infrastructure of Italy. So I think if they're looking for a clash with Europe, it's much more likely to be on that kind of terrain than in terms of the fundamentals of Italy's position in the European order or in NATO or its support for the war in Ukraine and this kind of thing. In fact, Melani has explicitly said that she will seek to pursue Draghi's foreign policy. Hi, Rudyard Griffith here, your host and moderator.

I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits, including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that work. watching around the world and you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world all of that again free at www.w.munkdebates.com I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now back to our program. We're seeing right now increasing stress in European bond marks.

where European debt is diverging. So lower borrowing costs for seemingly solid and stodgy Germany, higher boring costs for the periphery, most notably Italy and Greece. The ECB has come forward with yet another acronym, this time the TPI, the transmission protection instrument. People saying this is targeting Italy, the extent to which Italy's borrowing costs could be the subject of even more speculation and pressure in the bond market. People also suggesting that the ECB has created some conditions here that would possibly constrain a future government in Italy in terms of accessing the support through this fund and therefore lower borrower.

foreign costs, which are pretty important to Italy, given it's one of the most indebted countries in the world on a GDP to debt basis. So to what extent here are we seeing a kind of return of the technocrats via the backdoor, David? Instead of running Italy through the prime ministership, they're now going to run Italy through the bond market and through the European Central Bank and the implied threat, that if European Italian politics diverges too much from European norms that the ECB will no longer be there to prop up Italy's very, very difficult fiscal and financial picture. I think it's certainly true that the ECB very much has the power to control what goes on in Italian

politics in that way. Of course, we actually saw this already happen in practice. in 2011 in the final moments of the last government led by Sylvia Berlusconi. Interestingly, Georgia Milani, as part of her efforts to strike a more consensual and mainstream centre-right pose, has been talking up the idea that Giulio Tremonti, who was actually Berlusconi's finance minister, would in fact be the finance minister of her own next government. And I think that also provides the key to understanding part of how this is likely to play out in the sense that it's very likely that indeed the ECB will impose conditionalities on Italy in order to do things, well, in order to respond to the supposed pressure from the bond market,

the famous hand of the market, but which in fact obviously the ECB can control by choosing to do bond buybacks or not. But in that case in 2011, the Berlusconi government did indeed accept the conditionalities that were imposed on it from Mario Draghi and Tricia who had the head of the ECB at the time, but nonetheless the government was manoeuvred out of office by the president of Napolitano of the time. So, I mean, I think the thing is that some of the things that the right-wing parties are talking about doing economically are very ambitious and unlikely to come off in practice. So, you know, the Lega talks about having a flat tax set at 15%. And, you know, according to some research institutes and so on, that would mean a 80 or even 100 billion fall.

in tax revenue. Fratelli d'italia talk about a 23% flat tax, but also like tax cuts for things like, you know, tax cuts for businesses who recruit more workers, which obviously sounds good, but then has the significant drawback that Italy's lack of competitiveness and the lack of hiring also owed to the fact that it's uncompetitive because of the lack of investment, the lack of R&D, which has been going on for decades. I mean, Italian R&D investment is only about half of Germany's, and it really, although Italy does remain a major European industrial power, it's basically only able to compete at the level of low wages.

And the fact that, say, it's in the same currency as Germany, obviously, a major competitor, makes that very difficult to pursue in practice. So, I mean, I think it's certainly the case that a government led by Fraternity Italia, although very popular, although the party appears very popular at the moment, could very quickly run into this kind of difficulties. But given that the energy and inflation crisis appear to be so dramatic in their proportions, I am slightly reluctant to be drawn with a prediction to how it will play out exactly. In our remaining moments, just go a bit bigger, bigger,

picture here. You're in the process of writing a book about Italian politics. So you're thinking a lot about, you know, the history of the country, where it finds itself now. There's an interesting, you know, for those of us who know and love Italy, there's an interesting kind of set of contrast, as you say, real challenges, economic, political, and otherwise. But simultaneously, a culture that has undeniable vitality, creativity, energy, a kind of the Dulce Vita, a kind of an approach to life that is that many of us admire. Is all of that sustainable? Are all these kind of contradictions in Italian society, in a sense, just what we'll see in the future? Italy, as it has in the past, we'll get through this. It may be shambolic at times. It may be care.

chaotic, but fundamentally, there is some culture there that will sustain Italy through this period. And the country that we know today fundamentally won't be that different a decade or two from now. Or, and let's put it out there, or do you think that there is some bigger potential here for cleavage, for collapse, for calamity? I wouldn't put it in the language of collapse or calamity, no. I mean, I think the thing is there are a lot of pressure valves for society even faced with this kind of long-term stagnation or even decline. I mean, one of the notable factors is that Italian immigration is at the highest levels it's been since the 1950s. I'm in Berlin now. there's lots of Italians here and keeping the Italian culture you mentioned alive even even in Germany.

But I mean, and also, I mean, I think after my article, I sort of faced a certain accusation of sort of talking Italy down and saying it's rubbish or that like. Just to remind our listeners, you referenced it before, but it was a much commented article in the New York Times where you kind of set out a lot of what we've discussed in this conversation. today. Yeah, so I said Italy's, Italy is the future. You know, other policies, other economies are heading the same way as Italy because of the facts I mentioned, like the aging population, the decline of West relative to the rest of the world and so on. But, and that's a bleak prospect. But I think it's one marked more by stagnation, by a loss of hope, a loss of, also of big projects, a loss of big political ideas, rather than not. necessarily taking the form of disaster and certainly not.

I mean, one thing I'd add is, you know, Italy, even in the 1970s, when it was at its, the end of its long period of economic growth, Italy had much worse political violence than now. So, you know, we certainly do see neo-fascist groups active in Italy now, and there are some that have been murder, you know, racist killings and, you know, and so on, although I'd add at a lower level even in the contemporary United States, and never mind the Italy of the 1970s. So while there's a very sharp political polarisation, I'm not sure that that really translates into society as a whole.

Also, of course, even if I say, well, you know, the cadres, the leaders of Frateri di Talia are people with a neo-fascist background. Firstly, that doesn't mean that everyone who votes for the party is a far. fascist. And of course, even if it's the most popular party, it's still, you know, it's still getting one quarter of the votes out of the two-thirds of people who vote. So I'm certainly not saying, oh, everyone in Italy is, is of that type. But yeah, I mean, I think outside of party politics, outside of the heat of debates over public memory over fascism and anti-fascism, then, of course, there are many things to be loved.

and admired about Italian society. I mean, if we look at the public response to the COVID pandemic, at first there was a lot of rhetoric, particularly in the German media, about, oh, well, Italians have brought this crisis on themselves because they kiss each other's cheeks too much because they're too lazy and careless

and all this kind of stuff. But actually, what the crisis showed was a country which, although, of course, as everywhere, it was an extremely difficult and critical moment, a country whose healthcare system did hold up and one which didn't, you know, it wasn't like the fabric of society became undone. So even while we can talk about big, chronic problems

that all Western societies face, including the climate emergency and so on, yeah, I think it would be mistaken to exaggerate the idea of some sort of return to the past or of real, like, violence. to social strife. Are we talking, David, more just about maybe we call it managed collapse at a prolonged period, as you say, of secular decline that is, you know, its hallmarks are, as you've described it, the evaporation of kind of mainline parties that might have

traditionally aggregated and channeled the bigger segments of the larger segments of the a public opinion around some kind of consensual politics between the 40-yard lines of political debate. Maybe another hallmark is this political fracturing. And I guess what I'm wondering is, why is that the extremism or the energy? Why is it, you've talked a little bit about it, but I want to kind of end on this, because I think it is the key point is, why is that energy right now at the right and far right of the political spectrum. And what, if any, hope is there for rebalancing, either of a push of political energy and consensus and focus to the center and or, you know, resurgence, as you've mentioned earlier,

of a progressive left view that similarly could capture and command the public attention in ways that the right is doing right now very effectively through these issues of insecurity, identity, you know, a criticism, a thesis about elites that stretches from plausible elements with the ECB to the absolute insanity of the Great Reset. why is it that all the action, the energy, the political potential seems to be at the right of the spectrum, not in the center, and where is the left? Part of what explains the very current moment, the immediate election ahead of us is that in the previous parliament with Draghi as Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney's party was the only opposition. so that allowed it to pose as the voice of everything that wasn't in the government,

everyone who didn't support the government, and that has given it a golden opportunity to, yet to just of visibility and of claiming to represent novelty. In Italy, the fact that there have been 20 years in which the economy, even before the pandemic, 20 years in which the economy shrunk, in which immigration went up, in which real wages fell, in which it became harder for small businesses, in which they feel that they're becoming more uncompetitive. All of those things make it easy for outsiders to promote themselves

as able to come in and shake things up. And the problem the Italian left has is the one you alluded to an earlier question, which is that it, fundamentally, the Italian Democratic Party, which is modelled on the US Democratic Party, presents itself as the defender of institutions, the defender of the European Union, the defender of the growth model that Italy has followed for the last two decades or so.

And it was, effectively, the centre-left was largely responsible and certainly the most enthusiastic for bringing Italy into the euro and most of the choices that followed from that. I think the problem is that the fact that the centre left, its identity is so connected to that and the defence of the status quo from what it calls populist insurgents means that it's really tied itself to a model, which over time has clearly not worked. Yet at the same time, it's also very difficult to point to specific alternatives.

Like, it's not like Italy can just tumble out of the euro and start again. You know, it isn't alone a, you know, likely to, and you know, we saw it in Greece as well, where there was a government of the left under Syriza, right? It's kind of bound by the European rules, but also terrified of splitting and breaking away. So actually, and like all Italian, you know, all Italian governments are basically quite easily brought into line in that sense. I mean, I think there are sort of social changes in Italy which correspond to broadly left-wing or progressive themes. Of course, Italy, like before the 80s,

didn't really have a large native-born non-white population. So the politics of race and immigration in Italy can often appear to be very far behind countries like Britain or even, say, Germany. But, yeah, I mean, I think that the advantage that the right has in Italy is that they can raise very simplistic and identity-based responses. You know, they can denounce the powers that be. They can say that Italian identity is being trampled upon, that people are being ignored and so on, but without really needing to provide a great deal to their voters in order to sustain their support.

And also, I mean, even apart from reviving the left, I mean, we've seen over the years, and again, in this election, this constant attempt to create a centre. So as with the, a little like the kind of, you know, the more kind of centrist wing of the Republican Party in the United States, we have these efforts to create a kind of centrist poll, neither left nor right and so on. And basically those kind of parties have consistently done extremely poorly, and they've, but have been able to maintain their place in government, even without securing electoral support thanks to the consistent presence in government of technocrats and so on. So again, though, I'd reiterate that the polarisation of language and identity is very extreme, and on that terrain, the right are certainly winning.

But at the same time, it's not like we're returning to real social strife and violence, except, you know, there are, of course, cases. But in a way, the kind of identity wars are taking place on a quite superficial terrain. David, thank you so much for this fulsome conversation. We're all going to be watching this election coming up in September carefully. You provided us with just a real tour to force here, a sense of what's at stake and the key players and just the context, political, economic, cultural that's informing a critical moment, not just for Italy, but an election

and a political moment that we need to all kind of focus on as we ponder the trajectories of our own democracies in a period of increasing kind of disruption and instability. So thank you so much, David, for coming on the Monk Dialogues today. Well, thanks a lot for having me. I enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for listening to the Summer 2022 Monk Dialogue series. My name is Roger Griffith. And again, we'd love your feedback on what you've just heard on our program today. Please send me an email to podcast at monkdebates.com.

Do you think there's something happening in Italy that could suggest the future of populism across the Western world? What were the key points or ideas that you took away from my conversation with David Broder? We'd love again your feedback. Also, check out our website. www.munk debates.com. Lots of great debates on populism, both on our podcast feed and the main stage debate, recommend going back, taking a look at it,

David Frum and Steve Bannon debating whether the future of Western politics is populism. We've got that main stage debate for you as part of our complimentary monk membership. You can grab your membership right now at triple W monk debates. com forward slash membership. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to restore some civility

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