‘No regionalism please, we are Leghisti !’ The transformation of the Italian Lega Nord under the leadership of Matteo Salvini (original) (raw)
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‘No Federalism Please, We Are Leghisti!’ The Lega Nord under Matteo Salvini.
Since 2013, the ideology of the Lega Nord (LN – Northern League) has changed under the influence of its new leader, Matteo Salvini. Having abandoned the claim that Italy should become a federal state and having embraced nationalism, Salvini has focused his party’s message on immigration/law and order and started to collaborate at various levels with extreme right organisations, both inside and outside Italy. In so doing, the LN’s leader has sought to capitalise on the state of disarray which has recently characterised the LN’s former ally in government and competitor on the right: Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI). Based on empirical data collected in 2016 and 2017 via an analysis of the party’s strategic communication, and elite interviews with LN regional leaders, this paper explores the extent to which the LN’s ideology has changed under Salvini and how recent developments are seen within his party. It concludes by arguing that Salvini’s Lega Nord now fulfils the criteria to be included in the ‘populist radical right’ party family.
Populist Success in Italy How Populist Rhetoric led to Rapid Rise of Lega Nord
2020
By 1970s, having preserved dialect and cultural differences adopted by regionalist movements and leagues in Italy has demonstrated that these political movements can easily gain support through regionalist claims. Thereafter, they have drawn attention of voters at 1983 elections and in the following year, (1984), Umberto Bossi has founded Lega Lombarda-Lega Nord in Italy's wealthiest Northern region where regional autonomy of Lombardy had been promoted. However, by 2012 resignation of Bossi over corruption scandal, and soon after replacement by Matteo Salvini, the party's policies were shifted from mere regionalism to regionalist-populist style. The aim of the study is to demonstrate the controversy how Lega has effectively used the public aspiration for the "long standing localism" and "decentralized power", but after becoming a member of the coalition with Five Star Movement his party changed its rhetoric of regionalism. The study highlights Matteo Salvini's role in bringing 'populist and nationalist parties' under one group in order to control the elites in Italy. The study is based on secondary sources among others interviews, newspapers, election statistics and data, as well as social media activity. It provides a data-driven audience engagement of how Matteo Salvini mobilizes masses and sells it in political market by his populist rhetoric. The findings compare Salvini's personality and communication style with other populist leaders of Italy and reveal how the mainstream social media has become a powerful mechanism for political campaigns to strategize his communication plans.
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Italy's Lega Nord is one of the most notorious radical right-wing parties in Europe. It was founded in 1991 as a movement that represented the interests of the country's northern regions which were collectively labelled as 'Padania' in their political platform. Under the leadership of Umberto Bossi (1991-2012) it participated in coalition governments with Silvio Berlusconi and continually advocated for federalism and sometimes independence for the North of Italy. The Northern League's success was largely due to its opposition towards what they regarded as the 'Other' i.e. southern Italians, immigrants and the EU. In 2013, Matteo Salvini became the party's leader and began changing its strategy. It stopped being hostile to southern Italians and rebranded itself as the Lega, but its anti-migrant and anti-EU discourses have remained intact and have been amplified by Salvini's shrewd use of social media. This article aims to explain why the League wanted to confront their main enemies and how they were represented in its discourse. It will start with a description of the party's evolution between 1991 and 2013 that will be followed by an examination of the Lega's position on 'Padanian' identity, southern Italians, foreign migrants, and European integration during this period. Afterwards, an account of how the League has changed under Salvini will be provided, before finishing with an analysis of his treatment of immigrants and the EU and his social media approach. The source material for this article includes books, edited chapters, journals and online articles written in English and Italian.
The Lega Nord in the Second Berlusconi Government: In a League of Its Own
For regionalist populists like the Lega Nord, participation in coalition at national level requires striking a delicate balance between being a party of government and a movement of opposition. The key to this is choosing the right ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’ within government. In contrast to its previous time in power in 1994, in the second Berlusconi government (2001–05) the Lega cast itself as the Forza Italia leader’s most faithful ally, while being seen to be in almost constant conflict with its fellow junior coalition partners: Alleanza Nazionale (AN) and the UDC. Indeed, as AN repositions itself within a respectable governmental ‘European’ Right, so the Lega appears ever more in a league of its own within the Italian centre-right. Based on exclusive recent interviews, this article examines the Lega’s relationship to its heartland and its positions on issues such as immigration, Europe, globalisation and constitutional reform. We argue that the party has transformed itself into an ‘institutionalised’ populist movement that has successfully walked the tightrope of being seen to have ‘one foot in and one foot out’ of government.
Journal of Language and Politics, 2022
The European project has always played a pivotal role in Italy's politics and Italian political discourse. The European Union (EU) represented the primary vehicle through which to regain international legitimacy. From this perspective, the intensification in the last few years of the Eurosceptic and populist discourse of Matteo Salvini's Lega has marked a critical turning point. This article contributes to an understanding of such process from critical discursive and historical perspectives. Building on the concept of recontextualization as elaborated in CDS but also more generally appealing to conceptual history and Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) frameworks, this study deconstructs the Lega's Euroscepticism diachronically, interpreting populism as a key discursive element of the Lega's Far Right ideology. We thus highlight how the Lega's Eurosceptic discourse and the recontextualisation of the European legitimisation process present a dramatic change and seem highly indicative of a new ideological and extraparty cleavage of 'sovereignism' .
Making Sense of Italian Populism: The Five Star Movement and the Lega
Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research, 2020
This paper examines the rise of two Italian populist movements, the cyber-populism of the Five Star Movement under Beppe Grillo, and the nativist populism of the Lega under Matteo Salvini. I first frame the rise of Italian populism and the brief coalition government the two parties formed in 2018-2019 within broader political and institutional trends, and then compare the role of leadership in the two movements and analyse the discursive strategies used in both to mobilize "the people" and win voters' support.