On Sunday, the president of the Sicilian regional government, Nello Musumeci, issued a new emergency law, declaring that all migrant centers must be evacuated within twenty-four hours. In this sweeping diktat, he included both the “hot spots” to which new arrivals are taken — such as the infamous, perennially overcrowded center in Lampedusa — and the outsourced, underfunded hostels for asylum seekers spread across the island.

With a Trumpian flourish of knowing arrogance and rhetorical falsification, the declaration went well beyond the Sicilian president’s legal powers — throwing down the gauntlet to the national government in Rome. The technocratic interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, quickly retorted that the decree is “worth nothing,” and indeed, the twenty-four-hour deadline soon became meaningless.

But President Musumeci — in his youth, a representative for a neofascist party — is playing a dangerous rhetorical game. Indeed, his two-faced appeal extended to the most spectacular version of “I’m not a racist but . . . ” claiming that the forced transfer of thousands of migrants from the island will be necessary “so that Sicilians, the most welcoming people in the world, don’t become racist.”