An Italian Flash Mob Just Pushed Back Europe’s Populist Tide
Updated at 4:55 a.m. ET on January 28, 2020.
BOLOGNA, Italy—About a week ago, 30,000 people showed up to a piazza in this elegant city, known for its porticoes and tortellini, for a free concert. The event had been organized by the Sardines, a nascent civic-minded uprising that has been holding peaceful demonstrations to contest the nativist rhetoric of Matteo Salvini, Italy’s opposition leader and the head of its right-wing League party, a man who dominates airwaves and social-media channels with his sovereignist, anti-immigrant message. The atmosphere at the concert was convivial. Many waved cardboard cutouts of fish and sang along to renditions of “Bella Ciao,” the old anti-fascist anthem.
Just the day before, in nearby Maranello, the home of the Ferrari race-car factory, Salvini himself had campaigned in front of the town’s fascist-era city hall, wearing a red Ferrari baseball cap. The League, Salvini told the crowd, is the party of moms and dads and workers, while the left wears “cashmere socks” and “sings ‘Bella Ciao’ with Rolexes on their wrists.” He said he would defend Italy’s borders with his life and “liberate” this part of the country—one of the best-run and wealthiest regions in Italy—from 70 years of left-wing rule.
Officially, the Sardines were facing off with Salvini in a regional election here in Emilia-Romagna. Yet yesterday’s vote was always far more than that. It was a test of whether the left could push back the nativist tide by defeating Western Europe’s most sophisticated and politically canny far-right politician; whether the Sardines could help change Italian political discourse, tuning down Salvini’s militancy to make way for a more civil conversation; whether Salvini’s digital savvy could be countered. The result held significant ramifications for the future of the Italian government and the balance of power in Europe.
