The tests on the left on the Vannacci Parade

The Vannacci Parade is the summer hit of 2016 that nobody really needed. It’s an extremist version of Fabio Rovazzi’s ‘Andiamo a comandare’, complete with slippers in the club, no tractor on the ring road, and photos that – instead of being taken with my dog or as blurry selfies à la Guè Pequeno – are snapped with all the paraphernalia we’ve come to recognise from the ‘perfect fascist apprentice’. The enormous golden fasces handed to Vannacci by Meloni in the grotesque AI-generated video featuring the general in slippers in the club. The double-headed axe around his neck – a symbol of the *Ordine Nuovo* – left dangling in the video with the two ‘melons’, amidst a black vest. The reference to the squadrist ‘I don’t give a damn’ attitude. The dissidents labelled as ‘Badoglian traitors’. All set against the romantic backdrop of the thoroughly fascist Decima Mas, which is to the summer of 2016 what the ‘can-I-buy-you-a-drink-she-says-that’s-fine’ line was to the summer of 2016.

The Vannacci Parade – complete with a half-functioning brain and the occasional outstretched arm – is the catchphrase of this summer, and there is no political debate that isn’t in some way linked to the futurist general’s agenda. On the right, to avoid the risk of Vannacci – with or without his slippers – taking command on the ring road, they are taking steps to pre-empt his moves. On the left, in an attempt to lump the entire right together, they are trying to prove that anyone who does not adhere to the left’s doctrine is automatically an obvious fascist traitor. Over the past few months, the ‘Vannacci Parade’ has been played to the right in an attempt to identify some sort of acoustic symmetry between the general’s words – who is already being heard in his slippers at the Ministry of the Interior – and the Melonian right, which took the reins four years ago. It’s true. Vannacci’s tirades represent a daily stress test for the right, in comparison with what it could have been but was not, and in comparison with what it might once again become after having changed. And there is no doubt that the right, which took power four years ago with a view to returning to power in a year’s time, is doing everything in its power – and more – to try not to let the general steal the limelight, even if it means toning down its rhetoric when it comes to Ukraine and even if it means turning up the volume when it comes to security.

The right wing, which aspires to govern, must occasionally remind itself – so as not to betray what it has become whilst in government – that aligning itself with Vannacci amounts to making a mockery of itself. But the Vannacci Parade, that summer craze we could well have done without, is – if observed closely – also an interesting stress test for the entire left, which seeks to paint the whole of the right as a bunch of fascists. And if you listen to it carefully, the Vannacci Parade offers some not-bad food for thought – ‘every time I find myself in an awkward situation’ – for the left as well. The first point is simple. If Vannacci is the embodiment of everything a political coalition must reject, then when Vannacci’s ‘symphonies’ find willing allies on the left, as well as asking Meloni’s right to distance itself from Vannacci, perhaps we should also ask the left that follows Vannacci whether it might be time to sideline those on the left who parrot Vannacci’s words. The clearest example, speaking of Rovazzi’s “awkward situation”, concerns foreign policy, and we wonder whether the PD secretary notices any difference between Conte and Vannacci on these issues. On the Russian threat, which is fabricated or exaggerated. On the 5 per cent defence budget, which is madness. On rearmament, which does not increase security. On the money spent on weapons that should instead go to healthcare. On the folly of continuing to supply weapons to Ukraine. On the mistake of allowing Ukraine to strike Russia with Western weapons. And if one thinks these are merely words, we can also recall two occasions on which the paths of the Five Star Movement and Vannacci have crossed. On 30 April, to name but one example, Vannacci and the M5S voted against the European Parliament resolution condemning Russia’s deliberate attacks on Ukrainian civilians, hospitals and infrastructure. In July, Futuro Nazionale, the Lega and the M5S also found themselves opposing the report on Kyiv’s path towards the EU.

If aligning with the Vannacci agenda is seen as a sign of a fascist attitude, then the anti-Vannacci coalition’s alignment with Vannacci’s agenda on the most sensitive issue of all – foreign policy – must surely be seen as a sign of an anti-fascist short-circuit. The Vannacci Parade, to continue, with all its paraphernalia of unabashed winks towards Italy’s fascist strongholds, is a stress test for the left for yet another reason that directly concerns the quality of anti-fascism within the broad coalition. If Vannacci, as they say, is thriving in the spaces left vacant by Meloni during these four years in government, it follows that Meloni’s so-called authoritarian – and therefore fascist – drift, long described by the progressive camp during this parliamentary term, has been nothing more than a political hoax: false, lazy, politically suicidal, and typical of those who have no tools other than ‘autopilot’ to find useful arguments with which to build an alternative. But the truly dramatic issue, so to speak, concerning the criticism levelled at the ‘Vannacci Parade’ by the broad coalition is that the progressive camp, without realising it, seems to have become the protagonist of a famous Aesop’s fable. Aesop’s fable, as you will know, told the story of a young shepherd who enjoyed shouting ‘Wolf!’ when there was no wolf, thereby deceiving the villagers. When the wolf actually did arrive in the village, nobody believed the shepherd’s cry for help and nobody rushed to intervene. For years, the progressive camp has used the image of the ‘fascist wolf’ to describe anything that wasn’t left-wing, failing to realise not only the absurdity of its accusations but also a simpler fact: if everything becomes fascism, nothing is fascism anymore.

Today, facing both the left and the right, there is a general who does nothing to avoid being mistaken for a wolf. If the broad coalition were not to be believed in its warning about the wolf, it should perhaps ask itself what it has done in recent years to undermine the anti-fascist struggle by labelling as a wolf that which was not a wolf, and perhaps turning a blind eye when a wolf threatened Europe from the Ukrainian border. The Vannacci Parade is not just the summer craze we would happily have done without. It is something more. It is a stress test for everyone. It is one for the right, because Vannacci tests the courage to claim what the right has become whilst in government. It is also a test for the left, because Vannacci reveals not only the lack of a viable alternative but also the hypocrisy of the ‘cry wolf’ left, which has deceived voters for years with its anti-fascism that, as in Rovazzi’s hit song, has a problem in the head: it simply only works halfway.