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David Broder is Jacobin’s Europe editor and a historian of French and Italian communism.
Yesterday’s Italian election brought victory for Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia — and record-low turnout. The opposition between technocrats and the far right is the symptom of a deeper decline.
Postwar Italy’s “escalator” system kept wages ahead of price hikes. In the 1980s, a socialist government brought it grinding to a halt — sending workers’ incomes on a decades-long downward trend.
Hillary Clinton has claimed that Giorgia Meloni becoming Italy’s first woman prime minister will “open doors” for women. Yet Meloni’s far-right agenda closes doors for women who want well-paid jobs, sexual autonomy, and reproductive rights.
For three decades, revisionists have systematically turned Italy’s discussion of World War II away from Fascist crimes and toward the Italians killed by anti-fascist partisans. The effect has been to trivialize the Fascist past — and legitimize a new far right.
Giorgia Meloni’s far-right party is on course to victory in next month’s Italian election. She’s benefiting from indulgent media — and the center left’s failure to explain how it can break Italy out of its long stagnation.
Leading polls for September’s general election, Giorgia Meloni has again distanced her party from the Mussolini era. Yet its politics remain based on ethnonationalism, anti-communism, and the rejection of Enlightenment values.
Mario Fiorentini was the last surviving militant of Rome’s Communist-led Gruppi d’Azione Patriottica partisan units. With his passing last night, we lost a powerful witness to the fight against Italian Fascism and German occupation.
In 1945, Italian fascists saw US forces as occupiers, not liberators. Yet in postwar decades, neofascists sought to insert themselves into the Western anti-communist alliance: an “Atlanticism” that continues to inspire the far right today.
Former central banker Mario Draghi has resigned as Italian prime minister, pushing the country into snap elections. Best-placed to benefit is the only major force that opposed his government: Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Fratelli d’Italia.
Boris Johnson has been brought down by Tory ministers who damn his lack of integrity. But the obsessive focus on his personal conduct obscures his disastrous political record — one that Keir Starmer’s Labour also isn’t challenging.
Neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron has lost his majority in the French parliament. The mass of newly elected left-wing MPs can disrupt his attacks on France’s welfare model — but it also needs to help rebuild resistance in wider society.
For years, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has faced endless accusations of “divisiveness” and “extremism.” Today, his left-wing movement is more popular than ever — and it’s because it didn’t shy away from taking on French elites.
France’s Greens, Socialists, and Communists have joined a coalition supporting Jean-Luc Mélenchon for prime minister. He has proven that a transformative program is the best way to inspire millions — and to deny Emmanuel Macron a majority in parliament.
After years of media attempts to cast him as “divisive” and “soft on Islamism,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon took a historic high vote in France’s election. Leftist MP Danièle Obono told Jacobin how his campaign defied the smears — and saved the Left from collapse.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon narrowly failed to make the runoff in France’s presidential election. But there are signs that the French left can come back stronger than ever.
Rising poll scores bring Jean-Luc Mélenchon ever closer to making the runoff in April’s presidential election. France Insoumise’s Manon Aubry tells Jacobin how the Left is challenging the neoliberal and far-right stranglehold over the country’s politics.
Talk of a great technological replacement suggests that automation is rendering most workers obsolete. But innovation isn’t simply replacing human workers — rather, it’s created a battle over whose interests the new technologies will serve.
At the turn of the last century, Ukraine’s labor movement was subject to tsarist domination and divided along linguistic lines. The revolutions of 1917 inspired calls for self-determination and the formation of a common Ukrainian identity.
The Donbas is at the heart of Vladimir Putin’s claim that Lenin divided Russia to create Ukraine. Yet the region’s real history shows how much the Bolsheviks struggled with demands for national autonomy amid the collapse of the tsarist empire.
On Sunday, Palestinian lawyer Salah Hamouri published a Jacobin op-ed about the harassment he has suffered at the hands of Israeli authorities. On Monday morning, they raided his home and jailed him.