Francesca Trifirò, research intern at the Ayaan Institute, analyses the link between political parties, the media and the generation of racism/anti Muslim hate.

The rise of right-wing populist parties has become a politically influential factor around Europe. Competing factors such as the post-2008 economic recovery, increasing job insecurity, immigration, and political disengagement have generated mass discontent among those who feel “left behind” from the politics and economies of their countries. It is precisely this segment of the population that is mostly targeted by populist right-wing political parties that have emerged across the European Union.

Italy has not escaped these political trends. Amid a drastic economic precarity and social welfare decadence, the feeling that traditional political parties were unable or unwilling to address citizens’ anxieties and problems led to the creation of different populist parties, mostly anti-establishment and anti-European in nature. It is in this context that we witnessed the rise of right-wing and extremist conservative parties whose popularity peaked in 2018-2019 when the Lega became the second largest political power in the country, thus forming a coalition government along with the 5 Stars Movement (Movimento 5 stelle).

The right-wing front of Italina politics is currently represented by a coalition composed by Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Fratelli Di Italia (Brothers of Italy) headed by Giorgia Meloni, and the aforementioned Lega whose leader is the former minister of internal affairs Matteo Salvini. Importantly, the growing rise of conservative political ideologies in Italy has allowed the creation of different satellite extremist groups that collaborate with the big-3 of right-wing politics. These extremist groups identify themselves as neo-fascist entities which were previously organised as violent militia groups. Subsequently, due to the rise of political right extremism, organisations like CasaPound or Forza Nuova have organised themselves as small political parties.

The analysis of such right-wing movements is not only necessary from an ideological point of view but also relates to the treatment of refugees due to the highly charged anti-immigration, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim tone of these parties’ agendas. In particular, Lega and Fratelli Di Italia weaponised and championed a new type of anti-immigration propaganda, which uses fear and perceived security threats to national welfare, and ideology as a tool to channel hatred against foreign identities. Indeed, mass anxieties about job loss and national security are channelled into the rhetoric of neo-nationalism. This ultra-conservative understanding of national identity implies establishing the dichotomy of ‘traditional’ and ‘foreign’, entailing the discrimination of the latter. An illustrative example from the Italian case can be identified in Giorgia Meloni’s motto “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Christian, I am Italian”. This simple slogan gained huge media coverage, reaching almost two million views on the YouTube channel of the newspaper La Repubblica, and becoming viral (more than 11 million views on YouTube) for its remixed parody. The slogan perfectly defined the notion of what constitutes a conservative Italian society

Already present as a ‘funding ideology’ of such parties, the neo-nationalist and xenophobic agenda became a policy-shaping reality after 2018’s elections. The right-wing coalition formed by Fratelli Di Italia, Lega and Forza Italia made significant gains across Italy, ending up in control of 37% seats of the Lower Chamber (Camera dei deputati) and 37.49% of the Higher Chamber (Senato della Repubblica). Despite many changes witnessed by the Italian political establishment, since 2018 the right-wing coalition parties have become a permanent political presence, capable of effectively jeopardising the rights of minorities in Italy via their institutional power.

This phenomenon has been analysed as a form of institutional racism, which peaked during the first Conte government when Matteo Salvini was appointed minister of internal affairs. In power, he shaped migration and security-related strategies. Salvini took the chance to put into practice his xenophobic agenda, thus targeting migrants and refugees seeking shelter on Italian soil. A practical example of this right-wing law-making was Salvini’s “Security Decree”, which modified Italy’s consolidated law in migration by eliminating the residence permit for humanitarian reasons, thus causing the loss of legal permits for more than four hundred thousand people. The Security Decree initiated and encouraged the practice of blocking humanitarian NGO vessels entering the country, to prevent migrants saved at sea from disembarking on Italian jurisdiction.

In addition, the widespread rhetoric of right-wing parties against migrants/refugees has caused a drastic change in the way refugees are perceived and treated in Italy. No longer considered people in danger, the rhetoric of “illegal migrants” that “steal jobs” and “do not fit in Italian society” became an all-encompassing view on refugees. This is worsened by the underlying racism and islamophobia which frames the discussion upon asylum. Undoubtedly, the rise to power of conservative parties and the promulgation of their policies have had a sharp negative impact on refugees’ communities in general, and on Muslim refugees in particular. The following analysis aims at identifying the main modalities and effects of such impact, reflecting on the instrumentalization of media vìs-à-vìs neo-nationalism and intercultural integration, as well as assessing cultural and practical consequences of the rising conservative consensus.

Italian Conservatives and Media – Two Cases, One Bias

Despite some differences in the political identity of parties like Fratelli Di Italia and Lega, the defamation and downgrading of the refugee status is the fil rouge connecting the agenda of different right-wing parties and constitutes the main populist argument used to win conservative votes. While it is undoubtedly in the best interest of right-wing parties to fuel the discussion on migration, it also highlights the responsibility of Italian media in spreading disinformation and hate messages, as they hope to gain the conservative reader’s attention. It is a shared opinion among Italian scholars and media experts that both traditional media, such as newspaper and television, and social media concur in consolidating ethnic-based and religious-based prejudices on migrants. Indeed, the media are crucial in shaping generalist and essentialist assumptions on migrants and refugees in Italy, by reinforcing the idea that individual behaviours are common to entire communities. This results in a culturalist reading of events linked to migrant communities and thus leads to the legitimisation of racist and anti Muslim opinions in public and political debates.

A clear example of this can be found when comparing media and political reactions to reporting of two different crime stories. The first case study presented is the Sana Chema murder of 2018, which exemplifies media and political reactions to crimes committed by third-country nationals in neo-nationalist Italy. On the other hand, the murder case of Youns El Boussetaoui, a first-generation migrant from Morocco, at the hand of Massimo Adriatici shows the clear ethnic bias deployed in framing the murder.

An analysis of the first example reflects on how newspapers and right-wing politicians framed the case of the murder of Sana Chema, a 24-year-old girl from Pakistan who resided in Brescia (northern Italy) since her teenage years. During a trip to Gujrat, her family’s hometown in northeast Pakistan, Sana was allegedly murdered by her father and her brother because she turned down an arranged marriage with her older cousin. Friends and colleagues of Sana confirmed this narrative and informed the newspapers that Sana was about to marry an Italian man despite her family’s disapproval. As the murder allegedly took place in Gujrat, the case was investigated in Pakistan and was closed with the defendant’s acquittal due to lack of evidence. Doubts persist on the Sana case, mainly due to her father’s confession in 2018, which was withdrawn shortly after and was never taken into consideration by the court.

The Italian media’s attention on the case was enormous and persists after three years from the events. It can be argued that some peculiarities of the case perfectly reflect common stereotypes on Islamic gender culture, were instrumentalised by the media and right-wing parties to spread culturalist readings of the event. Without underestimating the problem of transnational arranged marriages, the rhetoric, and weaponisation of the case must be read as orientalist expressions of Islamophobia and xenophobia. This is the case, for example, of Rai News’ piece that writes “Pakistani girl opposes arranged marriage imposed by her father. […] She was allegedly subjected to years of mistreatment and threats of physical harm due to the prohibition to live the western lifestyle. The father allegedly forced her to accept an arranged marriage according to Islamic traditions” (13/07/2018). The dichotomy between western and civilised culture and Islamic barbaric traditions is clear, despite the generalist and inaccurate description of forced arranged marriage as part of Islamic tradition. Interestingly, Sana herself is recounted in a generalised tone, as her name never appears on the article, in which she is only referred as ‘the Pakistani girl’.

A different narrative is deployed by other journals like Il Giorno. In reporting the event, this daily newspaper seems to stress the “Italianness” of the girl, by pointing out that she has always lived and worked in Brescia. According to her ‘being Italian’, the newspaper reports proofs of her modernity by investigating her social media. In the article, publishing photos on Facebook and following Chiara Ferragni (Italy’s most famous influencer) are addressed as evidence of modernity, to be opposed to the mindset of her Pakistani traditional family, which “made her pay for her desire of freedom” (21/04/2018). The article quotes the comment of Matteo Salvini saying that “In Italy there is no place for those who bring this so-called culture”, referring to the Islamic one.

Unsurprisingly, Matteo Salvini was not the only conservative politician commenting on the affair. From members of parliament like Laura Boldrini, to local political figures as Paolo Grimoldi, Sana’s homicide had always been viewed through a cultural lens. Among the harshest and most cited comments, we find Giorgia Meloni’s tweet stating “We have nothing to learn from these so-called cultures that the left-wing like so much. My moved thoughts are for Sana and for all the victims of tribal fundamentalism that consider women as inferior beings to men that are to be slaughtered as cannon fodder”.

This political narrative was quoted in various newspaper articles and was reconceptualised vìs-à-vìs the question of migrant’s integration. This is the case of the previously mentioned Il Giorno, which concludes the article by writing “This confirms that in 12 years the extremist Islam made no progresses in Italy, it did not become more moderate and submissive, but stands firmly on its extreme positions that cannot be reconciled with our way of living and that make integration impossible”.

A more sinister narrative is given by the daily Il Mattino, which opens it’s analysis on the case by stating “we see them on buses, some of them are veiled while some others are dressed like our girls. They are our daughter’s schoolmates or our co-workers’ daughters. We think that they are integrated, instead, we do not know the hell they often go through when they enter their teenage years” (23/06/2021). The Sana case highlights the gender-based violence many women undergo in the name of culture, tradition, or family. This event must certainly be politically, economically, and culturally contextualised, and cannot be seen as an isolated incident. However, there is a much difference between contextualisation and politicisation. The narrative perpetuated towards Sana’s murder fuels the right-wing racist framework in which “foreigners” – migrants, Italian citizens of foreign origin, and refugees – are presented as violent, as a cause of insecurity in Italian cities and towns, and as impossible to integrate into Italian ‘civilised’ morals and societies. Interestingly, the highly politicised outcome of this media campaign peaked when Brescia’s public prosecutor framed Sana’s death as a “political murder” given that “the girl has been strangled because she lived by western customs”. It is worth noticing that such legal framing strangely coincides with the judicial definition of political murder according to Italian Criminal Law, which considers ‘political’ only as a felony that violates the State’s political interests or that is caused by political reasons.

To demonstrate how conservative politicians, guided by strong xenophobic tendencies, shape and direct media representation of crimes in Italy, the Sana case is compared here to the media discussion on another murder, namely the Voghera homicide. The murder took place in Voghera, a small town near Pavia in Northern Italy on the night of 21^st of July 2021, during which the town’s assessor to public security Massimo Adriatici shot under uncertain circumstances the citizen Youns El Boussetaoui. Noticeably, Voghera was elected as representative of the Lega, in northern Italy his electoral stronghold.

According to the first hypothesis elaborated by the district attorney, the two men engaged in a fight that culminated with Adriatici shooting El Boussetaoui, who died later in hospital. The accused politician was bringing his registered gun and claimed his right to defend himself during the fight with El Boussetaoui, who was allegedly drunk during the brawl. Contrarily, further police investigations showed that Adriatici voluntarily shot El Boussetaoui as various security videos witness him aiming at his barely conscious victim. Adriatici is still on trial with the court charging him for manslaughter instead of abuse of self-defence.

While the dynamic of the murder per se justifies the media coverage that exploded around the case, Adriatici’s political alliance with Lega has undoubtedly attracted national attention. The debate around the cause was further intensified when Salvini himself commented on the event defending the politician. Undoubtedly, Salvini’s instant comment on the case was decisive in influencing the media framing of the murder. Indeed, the Lega’s leader published a video within 24h from the incident, in which he described Adriatici as “the victim of aggression” during which “the gun accidentally went off”. Salvini tried to distract the public opinion from the murder per se, as he implied that such a tragic accident was indeed a tool for discussing and re-evaluating the Italian law on self-defence. In presenting the murder as a tragic incident, he reminds the public that “self-defence is always legitimate during an aggression”, thus implying a certain level of justification for the killing.

This justificatory framework was reinforced via the instrumentalisation of xenophobia, as the minister reinforced via the media the respectability of Adriatici as a lawyer and public servant, in opposition to El Boussetaoui who was “known, very well known, by the police forces, the local shop owners and by everyone in Voghera for his crimes”. This binary framing can be found in other comments on the case. As reported by various national newspapers (La Repubblica, 21/07/2021; La Stampa 22/07/2021; Fanpage, 21/07/2021) Salvini kept emphasizing his narrative on legitimate self-defence by stating “it seems from the dynamic that he just defended himself, reacting during an encounter with a man with a criminal record, an illegal migrant, infamous for his violence, aggressions and public indecency”.

Noticeably, these early comments were delivered in absence of an official reconstruction of the events, as well as in contradiction with the actual Italian Law on self-defence. Nonetheless, Salvini managed to get the audience and media attention thanks to his populist framing of the two protagonists of the case. For example, he publicly stated that “before judging or condemning someone we need to be careful. The one who reacted was a scholar and university professor of Criminal Law, as well as a police trainer and a notorious and respected lawyer of Voghera”. Salvini depicts the murdered as respected, educated, and well-liked in his community due to his political activity and his profession, thus implying that such a figure would hardly harm someone if not compelled by a dangerous situation. On the other hand, the description of Youns El Boussetaoui as a criminal and an illegal migrant reinforces the narrative of the violent and drunk man who ‘had it coming’. While the media rarely aligned with Salvini’s defence of Adriatici, the binary framing of the two men has been widely reproduced by media as it resonates with the captivating populist narrative of the dangerous migrant v. the good Italian man.

In describing the killer, newspapers like Milano Today include an entire section to list Adriatici’s achievements: “Adriatici is Voghera’s assessor to public security from October 2020. Elected in alliance with the Lega party, he is head of a notorious law firm and was celebrated in local newspapers for his initiatives against the malamovida (disturbance of public order caused my night parties)” (21/07/2021). On the other hand, innumerable titles and entire articles referred to El Boussetaoui only as “the foreigner” or “the Moroccan”, as in these examples:

• True, 21/07/2021 : “Murder in Voghera, foreigner killed by gunshot”;
• Il Messaggero (22/07/2021) : “Voghera’s murder, the declarations from the lawyer of the Moroccan”;
• Ansa (21/07/2021) : “Fight in Voghera, council member shoots and kills a foreigner”;
• Blitz (21/07/2021) : “The Lega party and the victim “(negatively) known in the city”.

Indeed, the climate around the case discussion was so full of racist stereotyping that peaked with Voghera’s council member Massimo Della Nina declaring to the press “now you are putting under the spotlight Adriatici who will have his life ruined forever by this human garbage. That’s what died the other day in Voghera, a human garbage. Today the world is a cleaner day”. While the following statement sparked outrage among civil society and leftist politicians, Salvini and the Lega as a whole decided not to distance themselves from Adriatici, while the media contributed to the circulation of racist comments on the case by frequently quoting Salvini in their articles. As held by the representative of the Islamic community of Bologna Yassine Lafram “this murder and this mediatic campaign are the results of years of propaganda, hate speech and violence” (Bologna Today, 25/07/2021).

Anti-Migrant Propaganda: Evaluating the Negative Effects on Italian Society

The previous sections have highlighted how anti-immigration sentiments are built by conservative neo-nationalist and populist propaganda. It has been argued this xenophobic and often Islamophobic ideology is built and instrumentalised by political parties such as Lega and Fratelli Di Italia with the help of traditional media searching for further audience appeal. Here I concentrate on how this right-wing rhetoric has been affecting Italian society, its views on migration issues, and its opinions on integration. It is argued that in using migration as their propaganda scapegoat right-wing populist parties have triggered what Hall (2014) has defined as “the strengthening of identities”. According to this sociological theory, dominant ethnic groups if induced to feel threatened by ethnic“others” in “their” territory reject the integration of the said external group. In response, minority identities who witness exclusion and racism, respond defensively and in turn equally strengthen their identity. According to Hall’s theory, the dynamic lays the basis for a hugely polarised and causes conflict in society. Despite it being a theoretical framing, we can see such effects from the evidence and politics already presented.

The incessant political discussion on migrant landings and the inaccurate news coverage on migrants and refugees’ arrivals in Italy has caused a flawed awareness of the migratory phenomenon. Among citizens of different EU-Member states, misperception of the presence of migrants is highest in Italy.  While in Italy the percentage of migrants from non-EU countries amounts to 7% of the population, various samples of Italian citizens perceive migrant presence to reach over 25% of the population (Istituto Cattaneo, 2018). With a perception error of +17.4 points, Italy exceeds other equally high rates of “presence misperception”, as Portugal’s (+14) and United Kingdom’s (+12,8). As argued by Pew Research Centre, this data is relevant as hostility towards migrants increases with the increasing misperception of their numbers in the country. The correlation has been proved via the NIM scale measure (Nationalist, anti-Immigrant, and anti-religious Minority), which record-high levels of hostility in the country. Importantly, the deviation between the real number of migrants and the perceived number of migrants is higher among interviewees who defined themselves as conservatives. Specifically, the sampled conservatives believe the number of migrants as being 32.4% of the national population, recording a +7% in comparison to the national average.

Moreover, the Centre registered the widespread negative perception of migrants and refugees to be also qualitative in nature. As part of the test, EU citizens were asked to express their opinions about the following issues: (1) the correlation between migration and crime rates; (2) the hypothesis that migrants reduce their chance to be employed; (3) the contribution given by migrants and refugees to the national welfare. It has been shown that Italian’s general opinion on these themes is greatly more negative than other EU countries’ responses. For example, the number of Italians who believed that migrants and refugees worsened the crime rates in their hosting cities was 74%, thus registering a +17% when compared to the European average of 57%. In noticing that the theme of ‘security’ plays a crucial role in the populist right-wing rhetoric, we can undoubtedly create a cause-effect relation between the exhibited data and the conservative anti-immigration propaganda.

A similar correlation can be established between the presence of right-wing or far-right parties/groups and the increase of physical violence against migrants, refugees, third-country nationals, and Muslims. Predictably, such dynamic is not exclusively Italian in nature, and sociological research on this effect has flourished in the post-Trump era. This network of studies allows us to draw a clear casual link between the presence of Lega, FI, and other right-wing local governments and discrimination and/or violence against migrants. The ‘local’ dimension here is of the utmost importance because, as expressed by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in Italy “a difficult situation in the sense of protecting the rights of minorities has developed. If at the national level, the law protects their rights, at the regional level, these rights are at the local authorities’ discretion. […] This situation has led to various problems among Muslims, as the Italian authorities (both local and regional) associate Muslim communities with terrorism and radicalism” (Lujujic, 2016).

The OSCE’s concerns are proved to be correct by Alessio Romarri’s data analysis on Italian municipalities. Romarri demonstrated that where a mayor supported by conservative parties was in power, the probability of hate crimes is significantly higher (around +5%) than the Italian average, with specific higher incurrence of severe hate crimes (i.e., physical assaults or damages). Moreover, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) has estimated that the data on racist and Islamophobic violence in Italy are scarce, thus suspecting that the incidents could be much higher. As already noted in 2016, there is a systematic lack of a coordinated and transparent Italian system of data collection on discrimination and racist violence (ECRI, 2016).

If the pattern of systematically condoned hate crimes among civilians is alarming, it is the recent wave of neo-fascist violence against foreigners that should be primarily addressed by the Italian judiciary. Renown among Italian civil society is the presence of neo-fascist violent groups like Forza Nuova, CasaPound and Avanguardia Nazionale, which have been recently transformed into small political parties allied with the more ‘moderated’ right-wing parties of Fratelli Di Italia, Lega and Forza Italia. From a legal point of view, the presence of such fringe groups is determined via the Italian Constitution, which prohibits any form of reorganisation of fascist parties, and by the Scelba and Mancino laws against fascist apologia. This is required as the configuration of such militias as neo-fascist is not subject to arbitrary opinions but is determined by their self-description. For example, the CasaPound group explicitly refers to itself as fascist and racist, claiming to be the heir of the Italian Social Republic. Nonetheless, CasaPound and Forza Nuova have been allowed to run in elections despite their neo-fascist ideology and practices, winning mayoral offices and even participating in European elections. This is allowed despite the usual and unfamous racist raid carried out by their militias, which are organised to target migrants, Muslims, and foreigners in small and big cities around Italy. This is the case of the “Bangla tour” carried on by Forza Nuova in Rome, in which minors are asked to harass and beat Bangladeshi citizens as a rite of passage to militancy. If the perpetration of racist raids is strongly connected with urban deprivation and lack of public security, the silent acceptance of the right-wing movements of Lega and Fratelli di Italia play a clear role in the institutional tolerance of such movements. Indeed, the members of extreme-right militias and their followers constitute a small and yet important electoral constituency, which can make the difference within the highly fragmented Italian political panorama. Despite Lega and Fratelli Di Italia’s attempt to distract public opinion from such political ties, a recent investigation from the independent newspaper Fanpage has via an undercover operation documented the link between Lega and FDI, fascist organisations and filo-Masonic corruption networks.

A Look at the New Draghi Government, what will Change?

The formation of a new Italian executive led by former BCE president Mario Draghi has made the news worldwide. Undoubtedly, Draghi is an experienced and internationally respected figure, who is described as the ‘new messiah’ of Italian politics. Draghi’s government has managed to create a coalition government that included members of every major Italian political party. If on one hand this can be positively interpreted as a sign of cooperation between Italy’s notoriously prone-to-fight parties, this also implies that Draghi must govern with particular attention vìs-à-vìs debated social issues that could undermine the stability of the coalition. Unsurprisingly, this also includes migration policies. Presently, Matteo Salvini is engaged in a defamatory campaign against the current Minister of Internal Affairs Luciana Lamorgese. The increasing number of incoming migrants recorded in 2021 is instrumentalised by Salvini to advance once again his anti-immigration security propaganda, hoping to gain media attention and galvanise his electorate. Minister Lamorgese is accused of allowing the landing of “hundreds of un-vaccinated legal migrants”, in a pattern of weaponization of COVID-19 anxieties. Clearly, this new wave of mediatic chaos and accusations is a desperate attempt to regain media and political influence as Salvini’s popularity is slowly dying. Indeed, June 2021, political polls show a sharp decrease in consensus for Salvini’s Lega, which lost its dominance as the first party in the country. With a registered electoral consensus of 20.1%, Lega is now third among Italian political preferences, as the Democratic Party is now leading the Italian political landscape with 20.8% support, while in second place is Giorgia Meloni’s party Fratelli Di Italia (20.5%). Despite acknowledging that Salvini is currently using the migration crisis for his political advantage, the rise of sea and land arrivals in Italy is factual and compels Draghi’s coalition government to put migration at the top of the political agenda once again.

First, Draghi has directly responded to Salvini’s pressures to remove minister Lamorgese from office, thus defending her public work and pointing out his full support for her. Moreover, Draghi addressed the issue of his government’s migration policies with an official speech at the Senate on the 20^th of October. According to his declaration, Draghi is keen to construct a two-fold “balanced, human and effective strategy”, able to both address the protection of national borders from illegal migration and human smuggling and to adequately welcome migrants and refugees. Additionally, he stressed the need of renewing the European cooperation agreement on migration which was temporarily suspended because of COVID. Therefore, it is possible to foresee a more humanitarian and Euro-centric approach on migration from the current government, which stresses how Italy “needs to transform migrants into brothers through an adequate reception system, otherwise, it (Italy) will only create enemies”. Undoubtedly, the President’s words appear to give renewed hope of a more humanitarian and fairer attitude towards migration. But how is Draghi’s human approach affecting Italy’s policies on migratory issues? Reportedly, the current government did not interrupt Salvini-instigated procedures of blocking international NGOs from sailing into Italian waters. This practice aims at containing migrants and refugee arrivals in Italy by avoiding their landing into Italian jurisdiction, an act that compels Italy to take charge of their reception and humanitarian aid. Furthermore, the government is currently re-engaging in the stipulation of bi-partisan cooperation agreements with Libya aimed at the containment of migration flaws from Sub-Saharan Africa. The contradiction between Draghi’s words and actions has not been positively welcomed by the NGOs such as Open Arms, whose founder Oscar Camps defined the Draghi-Lamorgese strategy as worst than the far-right Salvini’s government.

Francesca Trifirò is a Research Intern at Ayaan Institute carrying out research into refugees in Italy and Germany.