Police raids, seizures of phones and laptops, ships impounded. Extensive wiretappings of activists, lawyers, journalists, and campaigners. Criminal investigations threatening decades of prison sentences. Italy’s government is deadly serious about stopping people from acting as if Black Lives Matter.

Since the pandemic took over the world, governments have fallen, risen, and fallen again. When contagion struck Italy one year ago, the new center-left coalition was already treading on thin ice. In February, the ice cracked and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte was deposed. In his place, former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi was installed at the head of a new administration, promising over €10 billion in giveaways to businesses but little in the way of direct support to workers.

Ostensibly this is a “technical” government, transcending party-political divides and marshaled by an elder statesman of the supposedly liberal EU. In reality Draghi’s cross-party coalition heralds the return of the Right to high office: the Islamophobic, racist, right-wing Lega has been brought back into the fold, legitimized by the emergency. While Trump has been dethroned on one side of the Atlantic, in Europe the Right has gained strength from the health crisis. The one major party that has not joined Draghi’s government, the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia, is now gaining speedily in the polls, on a dangerous mix of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, lobbying for small business owners and xenophobic delirium.