After spending months denying that he would leave the League—the party through which he entered the European Parliament with an impressive personal result in terms of preference votes—Roberto Vannacci, the former Italian Army general and former commander of the Folgore Brigade, has finally broken with Matteo Salvini’s party to establish his own political movement, Futuro Nazionale (“with Vannacci,” of course, in keeping with today’s era of personality-driven politics). Only weeks after its launch, this new force on the Italian right has already shaken up the national political landscape, eating into the support of governing parties and even overtaking Salvini’s League in opinion polls.
Around 2,000 delegates attended Futuro Nazionale’s founding congress, while party membership has reportedly reached 100,000 in a remarkably short time. Alongside its relentless rise in the polls, the movement has attracted a significant number of political figures from both governing and opposition right-wing parties. Not only members of the League, but also politicians from Forza Italia and even Fratelli d’Italia, as well as local councillors and centre-right officials, have boarded the Vannacci bandwagon, convinced they are backing a winning horse. At the same time, Gianni Alemanno’s party Indipendenza has merged into FNV, providing additional organisational resources to the fledgling movement. Beyond the handful of defecting MPs, there is growing excitement across the Italian right, with politicians scrambling to join the general’s party today, before tomorrow’s best positions and offices are already taken.
Alongside the publicity generated by his founding congress, Vannacci has made the full tour of Italy’s mainstream media, including the inevitable interview with Lilli Gruber on La7. Other television programmes are now discussing him constantly, while Giorgia Meloni appears to have abandoned her previous strategy of simply ignoring the general. The Prime Minister has now begun attacking him in Parliament, accusing him of playing into the hands of the left. The left, for its part, while alarmed by the mainstreaming of increasingly extremist ideas, is also enjoying the divisions within the right, hoping that this fragmentation will allow the so called “Campo Largo” (Large field) coalition to win the next election. Such fragmentation may well be a necessary condition for victory—but it is certainly not a sufficient one.
So what arguments and what political rhetoric are allowing Roberto Vannacci to cause such turmoil within Italian politics? Ever since the publication of his book “Il mondo al contrario” (The World Upside Down), the former general has embraced the entire ideological arsenal of the global sovereigntist right, whose strategic centre now lies in Moscow. The themes are familiar: remigration, the defence of the “natural” family, vaccine scepticism, climate change denial, and opposition to military aid for Ukraine. The agenda is unmistakable. Its inspiration leaves little room for doubt. There may even be a carefully orchestrated strategy directed from Moscow—as has happened countless times elsewhere around the world—but there is hardly any need to uncover secret files to identify the political and cultural imprint guiding Vannacci’s entire project. It is no coincidence that FNV’s founding congress concluded with a reading from Dostoevsky—in Russian, no less. The symbolism was difficult to miss. The party openly aspires to replicate the success of other political forces supported by Russia, such as Germany’s AfD and the movement led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella in France.
At this point, however, our concern is less with Vannacci himself than with our own response—”our” meaning the broad antifascist sentiment that still exists in Italy. Ever since La Repubblica journalist Matteo Pucciarelli first reviewed The World Upside Down, when it was still circulating as a self-published Amazon book, left-wing criticism of Vannacci has consistently failed to grasp one essential point: for years now, the political centre of global fascism has been located in Moscow. If one part of the left embraces the same foreign policy positions as the general by voting against military assistance to Ukraine, while another believes some form of “appeasement” with Moscow remains possible, then we face not only a profound political problem within the left itself. We also make it virtually impossible to oppose Vannacci and his political project effectively.
Meanwhile, another development looms on the horizon: the possibility that Alessandro Di Battista’s movement could mirror Vannacci’s strategy from the opposite side of the political spectrum. His organisation, “Schierarsi” (Take a side), long associated with the so-called “red-brown” milieu and closely aligned with the Kremlin’s political agenda, may soon enter electoral politics. This potential “left-wing Vannacci” could further erode support for the Five Star Movement, but, more importantly, it could become yet another significant Russian point of reference within Italian politics, especially as Salvini—the original pioneer of this political line—continues his electoral decline. Di Battista’s rhetoric is particularly troubling because the former Five Star politician managed to preserve his credibility by distancing himself from the M5S crisis early on, while gaining considerable media attention through his uncompromising campist interpretation of the Palestinian question.
Opposing and exposing the idea of remigration, building networks of solidarity for migrants, strengthening the LGBTQIA+ movement, and confronting climate denial through a clear ecological and anti-capitalist programme—these priorities must now be accompanied by another: fighting Russian fascism itself. This is necessary because it finances political movements across much of the world and actively contributes to their success. It is no longer possible to cling to the simplistic belief that the further left one stands, the more one must support “peace” by advocating some fantastical form of negotiation with Moscow—a negotiation that Putin has never genuinely pursued except after destroying his opponent. Nor can we continue repeating the absurd narrative that Europe is waging an aggressive war against Russia, that NATO somehow “barked” at Russia’s borders, and all the familiar talking points we have unfortunately grown accustomed to hearing. Year after year, the most accommodating positions towards Putin’s regime have been repackaged as the truly left-wing and antifascist ones—from refusing to designate Russia as a terrorist state, despite overwhelming evidence, to dismissing the legitimate right of self-defence and national self-determination as warmongering.
Unfortunately, we are convinced that Vannacci’s rise has only just begun, and that his political trajectory will pose a very real threat to the lives of migrants, LGBTQIA+ people, and other marginalised communities. This is not an abstract theoretical scenario or an intellectual debate. Fascism must be confronted in all its forms, and doing so requires every available analytical and political tool. If today the left spectacularly fails to understand where these phenomena originate, it will also fail to defeat them. It falls to us to articulate the full complexity of this challenge and to call on everyone to rise to meet it, together with all the contradictions it entails.