The political centre grappling with the AfD’s success. Maiorino (M5S): “It’s down to rearmament”. The ghosts of Conte

This time, there will be – or at least there should not be – any protesters from Potere al Popolo, the organised unemployed who disrupted the first (and so far only) policy rally. If anything, it will be the presence of Sahra Wagenknecht that will highlight certain differences within the left. Two months on from the kick-off in Naples, the leaders of the broad coalition will once again be together on the same stage at the Festa di Avs in Rome. The aim will be to set aside the controversies surrounding the primaries and foreign policy, to avoid further setbacks in drawing up the programme. The AfD’s victory in Saxony is both fuel and glue: the black wave advancing across Germany – with Vannacci and Salvini jumping on the bandwagon – the danger of fascism on the horizon, which is also drawing nearer in these parts. From Fratoianni to Conte, via the PD, all opposition forces have highlighted this. To give just one example, even Clemente Mastella yesterday called for unity – a ‘National Liberation Front’ (CLN) comprising moderates and progressives – urging the political community to move beyond the Conte-Schlein dichotomy and focus instead on policies, proposals and the middle class. But beyond the good intentions and the statements, we always end up back here: at rivalry and the race for leadership. Thus, even regarding the AfD’s victory in Germany, different nuances have emerged. While the PD secretary, at least until yesterday afternoon, allowed her own party members to speak out (Boccia invoked Hitler and Germany in 1933), the leader of the M5S made it clear as early as Sunday evening that rearmament is one of the main reasons for the far right’s success. He spoke about this at the Festa dell’Unità in Pesaro, alongside Matteo Ricci. Yesterday he added: “In Germany, we now find ourselves facing the prospect of a military superpower, with arsenals full of weapons and an AfD claiming the government of the country with the complicity of Meloni, who has endorsed – and indirectly contributed to – all of this by signing up to a European rearmament plan”.

This view is also shared by some members of the Democratic Party, particularly those whose full support for Schlein remains unclear. Filippo Sensi, from the PD minority, also points this out, essentially saying: “What rearmament? These arguments seem to me to come from people who are unfamiliar with that reality. We must address people’s fears.” Others still – and there are even whispers of this within Avs circles – recall the correspondence from some time ago between the Movement and Sahra Wagenknecht, the leader of the red-brown Bsw party, which espouses pro-Russian positions, takes a very hard line on migrants and might not stand in the way (engage in dialogue, collaborate?) of the formation of an AfD regional government in Saxony. She had been a guest of the M5S Constituent Assembly in November 2024; even before that (i.e. before joining The Left), the possibility of founding a group in the European Parliament together with the BSW had been explored in Via di Campo Marzio. More recently, Wagenknecht’s party had taken part in the anti-NATO summit organised in The Hague by Conte and his allies a year ago. Now that BWS could tip the balance, this past is resurfacing, causing some in the broader coalition to turn up their noses.

In the corridors of the Senate, Alessandra Maiorino does not shy away from the issue and explains that Wagenknecht’s U-turn – ready to break the cordon sanitaire against the AfD – “was predictable”. And what about the M5S? Wasn’t their approach to BWS a little rash, then? “BWS simply played its cards shrewdly and unscrupulously. Fresh from defeat in the general election, I think it has honed a new, more unscrupulous strategy. At the time, this wasn’t on the horizon,” replies the M5S senator, before sharing her analysis of the German election with Il Foglio. “Setting aside the specific circumstances of Germany – the eastern regions in particular – there is a lesson that European progressives should learn.” What is it? “You don’t win by chasing the far right onto its own playing field. The original sin of the post-1989 left was to embrace the neoliberal economic model as the only possible one, thereby rendering itself virtually indistinguishable from the right. Rearmament policies represent the culmination of all this.” The result, according to Maiorino’s reasoning, is that “left-wing voters have become disheartened: some have taken refuge in abstention, whilst others – particularly those in the most economically and culturally vulnerable groups – have shifted to the right”.