As the campaign for the 2024 European elections approaches, the path to "normalization" sought by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni continues to be battered by headwinds from within her own camp. Her party, Fratelli d'Italia (FdI), was in disarray on Monday, August 21, following the suspension of a serving military officer, General Roberto Vannacci. The general in question is the author of a controversial book that outlines his racist and homophobic views. He has been disavowed by Italy's Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, although some Meloni supporters support the book's content.

Il mondo al contrario ("the world upside down"), which was self-published on August 10, has topped the Amazon sales charts in Italy. It is a compendium of attacks against what General Vannacci calls "the international gay lobby," as well as perpetrators of alleged "brainwashing" to "eliminate all differences, including between ethnic groups, not to say races." This rhetoric is accompanied by reactionary positions on gender issues and the environment.

In a country where the executive branch is dominated by the far right, the officer drapes himself in a posture intended to blend provocative wit and popular common sense, to complain about "rules of inclusion and tolerance imposed by minorities." He also attacked Italian volleyball champion Paola Egonu, who has been the target of vicious and persistent racist attacks because of her Nigerian origins, regularly finding herself at the heart of the country's cyclical identity crises. Vannacci returns to her case to detail his views on the matter, asserting that while she may be "Italian by citizenship," it is "obvious that her somatic features do not represent Italianness."

While there is nothing original about this content, which takes up the themes of right-wing populism with which Meloni has somewhat distanced herself, the profile of its author has forced the government to react. On Thursday, August 17, a week after the book's publication, Guido Crosetto (FdI) posted on X (formerly Twitter) that "General Vannacci has expressed opinions that discredit the army, national defense and the Constitution" before announcing a "disciplinary review" against him. The officer's suspension from his post as the head of the Military Geographic Institute was announced on Friday, August 18, forcing a right-wing group accustomed to making censorship accusations against "political correctness" advocates to engage in painful exercise.

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