It seemed that Matteo’s words alone were not enough Salvini – with an invitation to look to the future, not to the twenty year period – to stop that controversy in the League regarding deputy secretary Roberto Vannacci. The position of historiographic revisionism towards fascism expressed on Saturday evening, and then confirmed on several occasions, with an implicit defense of Mussolini’s regime and the racial laws themselves, was not well received by many leaders of the Via Bellerio party. However, the orders Salvini gave his men were very complete: Avoid controversy until the election is overwe cannot allow internal clashes days before the vote, was the reason of the leader who reached the Northern League.
After all, the problem remained before everyone’s eyes. However, no one wanted to expose him personally. “But now everyone is saying it, Salvini has to throw him out”, said a leading lawmaker from the party in a quiet voice. For now, it was the two governors in the League who showed their faces. Monday Wounds Zaiawho headed the list in Veneto, said no to any revisionism, recalling the involvement of the Shoah and Mussolini in the extermination with “disgusting racial laws”.
Today, Massimiliano Fedrigapresident of Friuli Venezia Giulia, attacked Vannacci. “Fascism is one of the greatest crimes in our country, racial laws are the most shameful thing, and in this we must use clear words, not justifications or plays on words to try to cover up this shame” he warned, then expressed his “closeness to the Jewish community”. Zaia and Fedriga did not consider the merits of what could be – after the vote – pressure on Salvini to fire the former paratrooper chief. But that distance is absolute.
Meanwhile, someone from the party will review it Constitution approved at the last congress, considering the possibility of regulatory action against Vannacci. A hypothesis that is still valid today. Special attention is paid to article 34, where i disciplinary actionranging from written warnings to the “expulsion” of militants, who hinder “the activities of Salvini’s Premier League or regional territorial structures or harm his political image”.
Requests for disciplinary intervention can be made by the board of directors of the province where the targeted militant is located, then the decision will be taken by the regional board which can delegate the matter to the ‘Discipline and Assurance Committee’. The Federal Council itself will have the final say in the appeal, where Salvini, his deputies including Vannacci himself, the regional governors, the group leaders of the House of Representatives and the Senate and the regional secretaries have positioned themselves. This may end up being futile, but that scenario does not appear to be on the agenda.
Even in militant chatterwe learn, there will be an intervention against Vannacci, many agree with Zaia and Fedriga, there are also those who want to ask Salvini to remove the general, who is considered incompatible with the values of the League’s founders. Vannacci’s ‘sympathy’ for fascism had been at the center of the federal council’s attention last September, ahead of the vote in Tuscany. The former chair of Folgore, Susanna Ceccardi, a fan of the League, in the League’s parliament, had strongly denounced the “turn to the right” (which was also the slogan chosen by Vannacci for the regional vote, which ended in resounding failure in the list imposed by the general).
On that occasion, Salvini had stopped everyone, deciding to close the Federal Office prematurely, so as not to give room for disputes between his deputies and the former mayor of Cascina. After the defeat in Tuscany, the head of the group in the DPR, Riccardo Molinari, blamed Vannacci for the disaster, explaining that previously the League had taken votes from both the right and the left, in accordance with Bossian tradition and now the “ideology” of the right wing had won. Vannacci was challenged for omitting actual Northern League members from the list: “Tuscany is a region that had its own ruling class that was overthrown in this election campaign…”. Even in this case, it was the leader, Salvini, who tried to calm the situation, explaining that we all win and lose together, and that the general is a plus for the party.
In short, the current party leadership is trying by all means to prevent the outbreak of conflict, with uncontrollable consequences. Some of his colonels recalled that the general’s co-optation was also born to prevent Vannacci himself from giving life to his personal party, from his ‘inverted world’, which would have created many problems for Salvini himself, who had also long been oriented towards the nationalist and sovereignist League, unbalanced towards the right wing.
But the coexistence that was born after the Florence congress last April, with the general finally putting his League membership card in his pocket, especially in the north at this time is very painful, as Attilio Fontana himself has pointed out on several occasions, who holds the copyright of the phrase “by ca… we make ourselves vannaccisa”. Vannacci’s team took to the field to defend the general, after being in the federal government’s final crosshairs on October 21, reaffirming the correctness of their leader’s interpretation of fascism. Who wants to launch his new book at Christmas, dedicated specifically to his thesis about twenty years, which could be called ‘reverse history’.
