After nearly four years of right-wing government led by Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, with elections due in 2027, Italy is witnessing the ascendance of a new force on the populist right. Its figurehead, retired general Roberto Vannacci, was elected to the European Parliament in 2024, receiving the second highest number of votes after Meloni herself. In February 2026, he broke with the Lega – its leader Matteo Salvini branded him a ‘traitor’ – and founded his own party, Futuro Nazionale. The polls are rewarding Vannacci with between 6 and 7 per cent of the vote, while Futuro Nazionale has amassed 130,000 members in less than six months. He accuses the government of tacking to the centre, above all on immigration and law and order. Vannacci’s rise presents a strategic dilemma for Meloni – she has already lost seven members of her coalition to Futuro Nazionale. How should this insurgency on the government’s right flank be understood, and how might it reshape Italy’s political landscape ahead of next year’s elections?

Until three years ago, Vannacci was unknown to the general public. The son of an army officer with far-right sympathies, he too pursued a military career, deployed to the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere; until the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, he had been military attaché at the embassy in Moscow. Notoriety came when, on his return to Italy, he wrote and self-published Il mondo al contrario (The World Upside Down), a jeremiad against immigration, feminism, homosexuality, environmentalism and the left – familiar themes of the populist right, which had by this point moved from opposition to government. The difference was that its author was a high-ranking officer. In the post-war period in Italy, the military establishment has often been linked to subversive far-right projects, yet Vannacci had violated the formal impartiality of the armed forces.

While the ensuing controversy earned him a suspension from the army, it also turned him into a media sensation. Condemned for his incendiary statements by part of the country, he was lionized for taking a stand against ‘political correctness’ by another. It was at this point that Salvini decided to capitalize on Vannacci’s infamy – or neutralize the threat he posed – and put him forward as a candidate for the Lega. After Vannacci was elected as an MEP, he was appointed deputy secretary of the party. But the partnership never worked – Vannacci neglected to pay his party fees, the extremity of his views was not well regarded by the leadership and he was organizing his own faction behind the scenes (‘Team Vannacci’).

Much of Vannacci’s renown derives from the brazenness with which he proclaims such views (‘Gays, get over it, you’re not normal people’, ‘I loudly claim the right to hate and have contempt’). He traffics in provocation. Mussolini was ‘a statesman’, he has said. His campaign for the European Parliament invoked the Decima Mas, one of the most violent units assisting the Nazi occupiers in suppressing the Resistance and targeting civilians deemed to be sympathizers; its commander, Junio Valerio Borghese – rescued by the Americans immediately after the war, becoming a frontman for the anti-communist cause in Atlanticist circles – attempted a coup in 1970. Among Vannacci’s associates, whom he refers to as camerati (‘comrades’) – a term with fascist associations in Italy – are many former military personnel and avowed neo-fascists who have been emboldened by their leader’s brashness. Like Trump, Vannacci makes extensive use of AI in his propaganda, releasing lurid and shoddily produced clips that make a splash. One portrays him as a gladiator receiving a golden fasces from Meloni, brandishing it before the jubilant people of Ancient Rome, then sending his political opponents to their deaths in the lions’ den. Vannacci enjoys targeting opponents and critics publicly. According to his confidantes, he dreams of becoming the Italian de Gaulle.

The watchword Vannacci repeats obsessively is ‘remigration’, the plan to expel not only undocumented migrants, but also foreign nationals who hold citizenship yet are not ‘assimilated’. This is unconstitutional but the Italian right has consistently shown that it has no procedural qualms. Failure to keep its promises on ‘security’ has been the central thrust of his criticism of the government, which despite its large parliamentary majority and durability – Meloni will soon be able to boast of having led the longest-serving administration in the history of the Republic – has been easy to paint as ineffectual. During the past four years the government has pursued numerous repressive initiatives, beginning with a bizarre law against rave parties. Legislation has been introduced to restrict the right to strike and protest. Tens of millions of euros were invested in setting up migrant sorting centres in Albania – yet this was a complete flop since they were not in line with European regulations and were therefore rejected by the Italian courts. Meloni also placed great emphasis on a referendum over a politically motivated overhaul of the judiciary: despite the relentless hype, she lost the vote last spring, with 53 per cent against the changes, suffering major political damage.

On the economy, the government’s failures are glaring. Italian wages are the only ones in Europe that have not risen; indeed, they have been falling for the past thirty years. No measures have been taken to tackle job insecurity, and the ‘citizen’s income’ – a support scheme for the unemployed – was scrapped. The birth rate is at an all-time low. Industrial output is in continuous decline. Meloni staked much political capital on her rapport with Trump, claiming she could act as a bridge between the US and the EU, but the relationship soured. Between tariffs, rising fuel costs and White House demands to increase military spending from 2 to 5 per cent of GDP, Trump has in fact cost the Italian right dearly. Meanwhile, over the last few years millions have taken to the streets to oppose the Italian government’s support for Israel.

Despite all this, Fratelli d’Italia still leads the polls, though the party has dropped to around 25 per cent. The government is cushioned by the right’s suffocating control of radio and television; the three main private channels are owned by the Berlusconi family. The print media is in crisis, but the majority of the daily newspapers take a pro-government stance. That the most prominent challenge to the government has emerged from the right is a reflection of the latter’s cultural hegemony in Italy today, dictating the agenda while portraying the left as the protector of violent criminals and undocumented migrants.

The evidence suggests that Futuro Nazionale is primarily attracting disaffected Fratelli d’Italia and Lega voters. These supporters are predominantly male (62 per cent), according to a study published in Corriere della Sera, and in low and lower-middle income brackets (50 per cent). The party especially appeals to manual workers and the unemployed – the classic profile of a right-wing populist party, primarily attracting ‘protest’ voters lower down the socio-economic ladder, working in less-skilled occupations, and often living outside urban areas. This demographic is less likely to rely on traditional news sources and more likely to follow debates on social media, whose algorithms favour Futuro Nazionale’s aggrieved, factitious agenda, with ‘security’ (not social security of course) at the forefront, even though all the statistics from recent decades point to a general decline in crime.

The threat posed by Futuro Nazionale may force a change of attitude from the ruling right-wing bloc. If Vannacci were to stand independently in 2027, he might cause Meloni to lose. The next parliamentary term is of paramount importance because it will also decide the new President of the Republic who will take over from Sergio Mattarella, in office since 2015. Statements by the ruling parties distancing themselves from Vannacci may thus be rowed back if necessary. Should Futuro Nazionale ultimately reach an agreement with Meloni to join a coalition, the potential risk is the loss of Forza Italia and the more moderate vote. Precedent suggests however that there may well be a way through – Berlusconi won the 1994 election by allying himself with both the separatists of the Northern League and the post-fascists of the National Alliance, two forces that appeared incompatible. Historically, the right has shown an ability to close ranks in order to gain or retain power.

The immediate effect of the rise of Futuro Nazionale is to have shifted public debate even further to the right, with a race to see who can propose the most draconian measures to resolve the perennial ‘security emergency’ – witness Meloni’s theatrical suspension of the Schengen agreement with Madrid in response to the arrival of thousands in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. Migration remains the dominant issue, continuing to overshadow the economic, energy and climate crises facing Italy. One case that has been seized upon as a symbol by Vannacci is that of Mario Roggero. In 2021, three robbers entered his jewellery shop in Piedmont, armed with a knife and a fake gun; once they had left with the stolen goods, Roggero chased after them with his own real gun, shot them, killing two, and then kicked one corpse in the head. Though all three levels of the judicial system found Roggero guilty of murder, a media uproar erupted against his sentencing. Vannacci has expounded on the right to kill a thief in graphic detail: ‘Why shouldn’t I be allowed to shoot him, to stab him with whatever object comes to hand?’, ‘If I plunge the pencil I have in my pocket into the jugular of the guy attacking me, killing him, why should I risk being convicted?’. A glorification of inhumanity has become the ethos of an increasingly uninhibited right.

Yet the rise of Vannacci also exposes longstanding fractures. Historically, the heirs of Italy’s fascist era included a current known as the ‘social right’, which placed more rhetorical emphasis on labour and an interventionist role for the state. The trade union CISNAL acted as a link with the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano; in foreign policy, a section of the MSI considered itself hostile to Atlanticism; the rule of law and the fight against the Mafia were regarded as priorities. Both Salvini and Meloni – albeit in a contradictory and opportunistic manner – have always drawn from this ideological strand. But this is not the case with Vannacci, who advocates a deeply conservative, hierarchical vision of society where the rich must be left to prosper because only through their wealth can we hope that something will trickle down to those below.

It is notable who Vannacci has met with at the European Parliament so far: major fossil fuel companies; arms manufacturers and dealers; industrial confederations representing the chemical, maritime, pharmaceutical, steel and automotive sectors. His project is one that sets out to defend with an iron fist – and indeed expand – the power of capital. Yet it is presented under the guise of victimhood, with Vannacci the archetypal forgotten man who is saying the unspeakable. He is gaining a hearing from many who have lost the most and still have the most to lose from an exclusionary economic and social model that stokes anger and fear – while doing nothing to address the conditions which produce them.

Read on: Matteo Pucciarelli, ‘Salvini Ascendant’, NLR 116/117.