New “Independence” Party in Italy Starts off on the Right Foot

Launched in late November by former Italian Agriculture minister Gianni Alemanno, the new party “Indipendenza” seems off to a good start  (cf. SAS 49/23). Economist Michele Geraci has been named foreign policy spokesman, a job which he accepted as an “independent”, and the first foreign policy event of the party, to be held Jan. 18 in Rome,  will be dedicated to the Belt and Road and BRICS issues. Geraci is the architect of the 2019 Italy-China Memorandum of Understanding, which was later revoked by the current government. That decision in Geraci’s view, which is shared by Alemanno, was insane. The conference is entitled: “Belt and Road and BRICS, Growth Opportunity for the Italian Economy in the New Multipolar World”.

The new party is also critical of the government’s  support for sanctions against Russia, which have failed to weaken Moscow but have damaged the Italian (and European) economy, and of the “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza. Referring to the accusation that Giorgia Meloni’s party never settled accounts with its past sympathies for Mussolini’s fascism, Geraci tweeted Jan. 3: “In their, most likely, total ignorance of history and subservience to the dictates of other countries, the three ‘governing’ parties have not even realized that supporting the actions of the Netanyahu government certainly does not help them shake off the alleged image of having sympathies for fascism; on the contrary, it reinforces them precisely because these actions bring back memories of what happened in Germany in the 1930s.”

“That the government of Israel is doing such acts and white-washing  past history, just as has been happening for the past two years with the white-washing of Nazism in Ukraine, may surprise many. But not the leaders of the three parties [in power], probably clouded by excessive attempts to ‘show up abroad.’ The reality is that Meloni’s support for such acts casts shame on Italy and Italians.”