The granting of honorary citizenship of the Italian village of Anguillara Veneta to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has become the latest symbol of the historic dispute between the far right and the far left in Italy. Demonstrations were scheduled for next Monday (1st), the day on which the president will be honored, right after the meeting of the G20 (20 largest economies in the world) in Rome.
The city of Anguillara Vêneta, commanded by politicians considered to be on the right and far right, ended up being preyed upon by an environmental group as a “response” to the tribute to Bolsonaro, which managed to attract criticism from various leftist groups in Italy for other reasons, such as deforestation Amazon and the CPI’s accusations against its management of the pandemic, all refuted by the president.
But what does Bolsonaro have to gain from all this imbroglio? According to David Magalhães, professor of international relations at PUC-SP and Faap and coordinator of the Observatório da Extrema Direita, “receiving a tribute from a conservative political leadership, no matter how important, helps to energize Bolsonaro’s radical base, which from time to time it needs fuel to keep its militancy engaged, especially in the networks, while the narrative is built up that the president is not isolated, he is admired and that those who reject him are a progressive national and international elite.”
For Italian political scientist Fabio Gentile, a professor at the Federal University of Ceará specializing in fascism, the tribute to the Brazilian president because of his great-grandfather is also surrounded by symbolic and historical ties related to a traditional right-wing and extreme-right flag in Italy: the granting of Italian citizenship to descendants born in other countries.
“In a logic of political propaganda, Bolsonaro would be the symbolic value of an Italianity in the world, of an Italian nationalism that has spread for many decades, and this is one of the great themes of the Italian right. Italians in the world. This involves the idea of ​​a supposed Italian race, as if they had inherited by blood a supposed Italian race, its values ​​and its capabilities,” says Gentile.
According to him, it is no coincidence that the mayor who awarded the honor, Alessandra Buoso, is from the Liga party, led by Matteo Salvini, a right-wing nationalist senator close to the Bolsonaro family.
This acronym inherited the political banner of bloody Italianity defended by other right-wing and far-right parties from the 1980s onwards, such as the Italian Social Movement, founded by former members of the fascist regime led by Benito Mussolini. Italian citizenship is regulated by a 1992 law. It is based on the principle of “jus sanguinis” —the Latin term for the right of blood— and can be passed on to anyone of Italian descent in all generations.
They can be children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren or even descendants of more distant generations.
On the other hand, there is no principle of “jus soli”, or land right, in which nationality is granted according to the place of birth. Children of foreigners who were born in Italy can apply for citizenship after they turn 18, but they must meet several prerequisites.
In general, it is leftist politicians who defend broader citizenship for these immigrants, such as the Italian-Brazilian deputy Fausto Longo (Democratic Party). Gentile claims that these two principles of citizenship are at the root of the relationship between the racist identity of recent years against immigrants (especially from Africa and the Middle East) and the defense of an alleged Italian race spreading around the world, even if the Italian people is one of the most mixed in Europe at its origin.
According to the researcher, the nationalist Liga party, which even adopted a fascist motto to defend itself from criticism of its anti-immigration position (“many enemies, much honor”), managed to mobilize in its favor the racist dissatisfaction on the part of the Italian population against the conflicting process of integration of citizens from former colonies, aggravated by the recent refugee crisis.
This theme, by the way, was discussed at a meeting in Italy between Salvini and federal deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro. Questioned by the president’s son about the two principles of citizenship, the Italian replied that the only immigrants that interest Italy are the descendants of Italians who live in other countries, such as Brazil and Argentina. This meeting was facilitated by the Italian-Brazilian deputy Luis Roberto Lorenzato (Liga), who supports President Bolsonaro and the granting of the title of honorary citizen to him and criticizes the use of the term “extreme right” to characterize his party’s politicians.
The parliamentarian defends the right to blood and refutes the right to soil because “you are born Italian”.
“The real wealth of Italy is the 60 million Italians by right of blood (“jus sanguinis”), who live particularly in Brazil, and are well qualified in the Brazilian middle class and who should be able to create a true relationship with our motherland. Italy investing, doing business and even the dream of having a ‘cousin house’ in Italy and thus permanently guaranteeing the cultural and historical identity of the Italian people,” he said in his election campaign.
To give you an idea, the great Italian immigration at the end of the 19th century took to Brazil, according to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), more than 1.2 million people in the period from 1876 to 1920. One of them it was Vittorio Bolzonaro, who was born in Anguillara Veneta and emigrated to Brazil in April 1888, at the age of ten, in the company of his father, mother and two other brothers.
Angelo, son of Vittorio born in Brazil years later, married a Brazilian of German descent, and in 1927 the couple had Percy Geraldo. Twenty-eight years later, the third of Percy’s six children, Jair Messias Bolsonaro, was born.
Left and extreme left movements protests to Bolsonaro’s title
The tribute to Bolsonaro has generated strong reactions from leftist groups and representatives of the Catholic Church since it was announced by Mayor Buoso and approved by the City Council. The president denied political motivations at the time, but this was not enough to demobilize opponents.
The episode served as a trigger to unite several extreme left groups critical of the president. Two other fuels for movements against him were the accusations of Covid’s CPI, which resonated a lot in the Italian press, and the absence of Bolsonaro at COP26, a climate summit in Scotland that discusses concrete measures and targets against global warming.
“His presence in this city is undesirable; just remember the criminal management of the pandemic carried out by the Brazilian authorities, and the parliamentary inquiry commission that asked him to be tried for crimes against humanity. In recent years, Bolsonaro has become one of the main bastions of the denial —both pandemic and climatic— of the most vulgar racism, colonialism and sexism,” says a group that calls for protests against Bolsonaro in Padua and Anguillara Vêneta, in northern Italy.
According to Luca Dall’Agnol, representative of the ADL Cobas union, his entity will participate in the acts against Bolsonaro and the decision of the city to grant him the honorary title as an act of solidarity to all who have mobilized in Brazil against the president in recent years . “Its policies have led to accelerated deforestation in the Amazon and an escalation of attacks on indigenous communities, and its denial response to the Covid-19 pandemic has led to the loss of many lives.”
For the unionist, Bolsonaro is a “fascist of our time”. “It is clear from his contempt for democracy that the only thing that prevents him from assuming authoritarian powers is the social balance of power that exists today and the resistance that has been made by Brazilian citizens.”
Fabio Gentile, from the Federal University of Ceará, states that anti-fascism has permeated the Italian Constitution since the end of World War II, in 1945. “There is an anti-fascist culture within the formation of the contemporary republican Italian state, which has also become a network of associations who, from the 1940s and 1950s onwards, are defending the anti-fascist values ​​of the Italian Constitution. The biggest one is the Anpi (National Association of Partisans of Italy, which will also protest against Bolsonaro).”
According to the researcher, the struggle between fascism and anti-fascism has dragged on for decades in the country, but “of course there is a very ideological use of these concepts, because not everything the extreme left is fighting is fascism”. In any case, Gentile assesses that the acts against Bolsonaro may also be being used as a response by these movements to the invasion of the headquarters of the General Italian Confederation of Labour, the main Italian union, in early October.
The place was invaded in an act led by the far-right Força Nova party and by anti-vaccination protesters, who criticized the union for not having fought against the mandatory vaccination for all workers in the country. “In my opinion, what are the anti-fascist movements thinking? It is really absurd to give citizenship to a guy like Bolsonaro, who is against the vaccine, associates vaccine with AIDS and says other things without scientific basis that end up encouraging and mobilizing denial movements and antivaccines.”
Bolsonaro was the only G20 leader who claimed not to have been vaccinated against Covid-19.​
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