True populism: a subject to be studied at school

If there were a headteacher in Italy keen to provide their pupils with a textbook capable of recounting the tragedy of Italian populism, rather than focusing on anti-Meloni propaganda nonsense – that is, rather than describing Italy as a country in the grip of modern fascism – they should focus on a different story, a far more concrete one, capable of clearly demonstrating what can happen to a country when anti-establishment instincts take hold of our contemporary society. The story in question, which is a definitive manifesto of our country’s populist decline, is the one that took place just over a year ago in Milan, where a public prosecutor’s office – one of the most important in Italy – built a case based on nothing, founded on suspicions rather than evidence, on theories rather than facts, on conjecture rather than evidence – which a large part of our country’s political establishment and media landscape treated as though it were the dawn of a new era, the start of a much-needed clean-up, the beginning of a new ‘Tangentopoli’. The news that emerged yesterday from Milan, concerning the famous urban planning investigation, is both reassuring and disheartening. It is reassuring, of course, to know that the main corruption strand of an investigation based on nothing has, as was to be expected, resulted in a request to dismiss the case, and it is reassuring to know that even the public prosecutor’s office has realised that it was impossible not to request the dismissal of the case against Mayor Beppe Sala, the former councillor for Urban Regeneration Giancarlo Tancredi, architect Stefano Boeri and the CEO of the Coima property group, Manfredi Catella.

In the proceedings in question, charges were brought on various grounds, including forgery, corruption and undue influence (the application will now, of course, have to be assessed by the investigating judge). The requests for dismissal filed yesterday represent the final chapter of an investigation as fragile as a house of cards built on sand during a particularly windy day, and the spectacle we have witnessed over recent months has been humiliating for all those who, over the past few months, had staked their hopes on this investigation in an attempt to tarnish the image of Milan, its administration, its architects and its entrepreneurs involved in the world of urban planning.

From July 2025 to the present day, a series of significant events have unfolded. Detention orders have been issued for individuals whose liberty should not have been restricted. Allegations of corruption have been made which the public prosecutor’s office itself no longer considers tenable in court. Even private conversations of Pierfrancesco Maran, dating from before his election as a Member of the European Parliament – extracted from Catella’s mobile phone, lacking any criminal relevance and subsequently removed from the case file – were included in the case records and ended up in the newspapers. Construction sites that should not have been seized were seized. People who should not have been discredited were discredited in the press. And whilst most people remained indifferent, we have witnessed a judicial system incapable of avoiding its worst excesses. We have witnessed an abuse of pre-trial detention. We have witnessed a judiciary that has repeatedly attempted to overstep its bounds. We have witnessed the judiciary’s casual use of its power to act as a substitute for the state. We have witnessed investigations designed to criminalise profit. We have witnessed statements by public prosecutors eager to operate in Milan with the air of those who feel duty-bound to combat not crimes but the sins of a city.

The investigation into urban planning in Milan – the main corruption thread of which has now led to a request for the case to be dismissed – which a large part of Milan’s ruling class has, unfortunately, passively gone along with, without feeling obliged to speak out or report the abuses, as a small newspaper has attempted to do in recent months, has not merely been a window into the failings of a judicial system incapable of staying within its own bounds. It has been much more than that.

It was a striking and depressing glimpse into the intellectual bankruptcy of a not insignificant section of Italian politics and the media. It is hard to forget that a section of the centre-left, backed by the prosecutors’ mouthpiece – namely Il Fatto Quotidiano – in the wake of the urban planning investigations, cried ‘scandal’ without a second thought, calling for the public crucifixion of those under investigation, capitalising on a widespread anti-Milan sentiment that exists in the country, and demanding the resignation of the Sala administration. “Sala must resign,” declared the populist leader Giuseppe Conte at a press conference shortly after the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office launched its investigations, using language similar to that adopted by other figures from the broad coalition, such as Avs.

The PD defended Sala, as did Italia Viva and Azione, but the PD did so only after having cowardly chosen to refrain from approving a measure – the ‘Salva Milano’ bill – which could have provided greater certainty regarding the town planning regulations applied by the local council and reduced the paralysis caused by the investigation, which arose from a controversial interpretation of the regulations used to drive the city’s town planning process forward (and if Sala, as early as March 2025 – before his inclusion on the list of persons under investigation became public – had stood firm in defending the right of politicians to engage in politics, without withdrawing his support for ‘Salva Milano’, perhaps Milan would have been spared the judicial turmoil of recent years).

However, the appalling scenes revealed by the Milan investigation do not concern only a section of the centre-left but also a section of the centre-right, including its affiliated newspapers. Giorgia Meloni and Antonio Tajani never sought to capitalise on the Milan investigation. Within the centre-right, however, there were many who tried to turn an investigation that did not hold water into a new ‘Tangentopoli’. Ignazio La Russa called for the mayor’s resignation. Matteo Salvini called for the mayor’s resignation. A Fratelli d’Italia city councillor, Enrico Marcora, on the day of the investigation into Sala, posted – and then deleted – an image of Sala dressed as a prisoner. On 17 July, city councillors from FdI and the Lega, together with Silvia Sardone – the candidate the Lega would like to put forward as mayor of Milan – organised a protest outside Palazzo Marino with a banner reading: ‘Resign. Sala and his council must free Milan’. We have witnessed politicians incapable of upholding due process when faced with political opponents. We have seen newspapers that are theoretically committed to due process, yet which have gleefully jumped on the bandwagon of the investigation—despite the lack of evidence—by splashing various ‘monsters’ across their front pages (following the investigation, it was La Verità and Libero that called for Sala’s resignation; these papers covered the legal proceedings against ‘the Milan system’ in a style mirroring that of Il Fatto Quotidiano).

And yet, in the face of the investigation into town planning, it was not all that difficult to grasp the situation at hand. As this newspaper pointed out as early as November last year, when adverbs and adjectives abounded in the prosecutors’ closing arguments and the investigating magistrates’ rulings, it does not take much to realise that we are dealing with investigations driven more by a desire to uphold a moral code than by a desire to enforce the criminal code. And when one is faced with a justice system that has spun out of control – one that favours theories over evidence, allusions over facts, reasonable suspicion over reasonable doubt, and hot air over substance – failing to uphold due process means having taken sides.

It means having chosen to contribute to fuelling the very populism that deserves to be studied in history books to understand what a country risks when its defences crumble, when investigations are launched into matters that ought not to be investigated, when people are arrested who ought not to be arrested, when the freedom of those whose freedom ought not to be restricted is curtailed, and when judicial inquiries are used more to create a smokescreen than to deliver justice. It was meant to expose political malpractice, but in the end it laid bare the sins of an unchecked justice system, in which, amidst the indifference of the majority, dealing with sins becomes more important than dealing with crimes. The investigation into urban planning in Milan, perhaps, deserves to be studied in schools – provided, that is, that anyone in Italy is interested in dealing with real populism, not the bogus sort.