LETTER FROM ROME

In just a few months, he has become a popular face in Italy. Since the August release of his self-published pamphlet Il Mondo a Contrario ("The World Upside Down"), General Roberto Vannacci, 55, has come to represent the role of the plain-spoken, reactionary soldier who appeals to "common sense." From public meetings throughout Italy to interviews in the national press, he claims to openly express what the silent majority in the country thinks in private.

The man is ready to get into trouble with his superiors and is open to a new career in politics after having served in the military. However, the rise of the soldier could be thwarted by legal challenges that started at the end of February.

For Vannacci, belonging to the real Italian nation excludes Black people, "ideological" ecology is a "pseudo-religion" and Benito Mussolini was a "statesman." He also considers the term femicide to be a progressive invention, no more legitimate in depicting the phenomenon's reality than the potential concept of "shopkeeper-cides" would be in describing the murder of a corner store owner.

Condemning the "inclusion and tolerance rules enforced by minorities," he believes that homosexuals are not "normal people." When expressing his views on same-sex couples adopting children, he also wrote: "If it's not in human nature to be cannibalistic, why should the right to parenthood be?"

The Italian far right has been impressed by the positions outlined in his first book, one of the biggest 2023 bestsellers with 200,000 copies sold despite the absence of a distributor or press office. His beliefs are set to be further substantiated in his highly anticipated autobiography, Il Coraggio Vince ("Courage Wins"), to be published on March 12 by Piemme.

With the European elections just four months away, and Matteo Salvini, secretary of the far-right Lega Nord, vice president of the council and infrastructure minister in Giorgia Meloni's government, repeatedly expressing his desire to see Vannacci on his party's lists, the new face of the hard right must overcome multiple obstacles.

Part of what made him so famous, the general's initial setbacks started in the summer of 2023, following his book's release and a stern reprimand from his supervising minister, Guido Crosetto, co-founder of Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia (national conservative right) party. "General Vannacci has expressed opinions that discredit the army, national defense, and the Constitution," said the defense minister on X, before calling for a "disciplinary review."

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