Brothers of Italy, the hard-right populist party led by Giorgia Meloni, outlined her plans to “transform” Italy’s arts sector ahead of the country’s general election on 25 September.
Brothers of Italy, the hard-right populist party led by Giorgia Meloni, outlined her plans to “transform” Italy’s arts sector ahead of the country’s general election on 25 September. Her proposals to dust off artefacts stored in deposits, cut bureaucracy for art loans and drive up visitor numbers won plaudits from political allies. Others, though, expressed alarm about pledges to “defend Italy’s historic memory” and to criminalise “cancel culture and iconoclasm”, likening them to the policies of some of Europe’s most hardcore nationalists.
If Brothers of Italy triumph, Meloni is expected to form a coalition government as part of a rightwing alliance comprising parties such as League and Forza Italia. The party, which is descended from the National Alliance (a successor of the post-fascist MSI party), had vowed ahead of the election to protect “Christian values” and close Italy’s ports to illegal immigrants. Bearing the title of “Culture and beauty: our Renaissance”, the Brothers’ culture programme declares that the arts will be a “cardinal strategic point” of a Meloni-led government. It proposes to introduce tougher laws against those who damage heritage such as statues as part of the party’s efforts to combat the “intolerable and widespread anti-Western ideology” of “cancel culture”; it also commits the party to the promotion of the next Catholic Jubilee, in 2025, and “the Rome of Christianity”.