Matteo Salvini, former Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, made his political career out of denouncing the “threat” that immigration represents to the identity of white, Christian, Europeans. In small towns across the country, his message is resonating with an entire generation of young people who seem to know more about what they are against (immigrants, secularism, abortion) than what they are for. They call themselves “identitarians.”
GroundTruth Fellows Alessia Cerantola and Lorenzo Bagnoli traveled to the small Italian towns where Salvini’s ideas are being propagated by a new crop of politicians and visited Pontida, the biggest festival of the nationalist Lega party, where their leaders are anointed.
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Follow the entire series
- Overview
- Episode 1: Weaponize Fear – Brazil
- Dispatch: Meet the intellectual founder of Brazil’s far right
- Episode 2: Target Outsiders – Italy
- Dispatch: Europe’s ‘identitarians’ insist they aren’t part of the far right
- Episode 3: Undermine Institutions – Colombia
- Dispatch: The Slow Death of Colombia’s Peace Movement
- Episode 4: Rewrite History – Hungary
- Dispatch: Europe’s failure to protect liberty in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary
- Episode 5: Exploit Religion – India
- Dispatch: Not everyone has a vote in the world’s largest democracy
- Episode 6: Divide and Conquer – Poland
- Dispatch: Poland’s Law and Justice Party mixes victimhood and strength in its messaging
- Episode 7: Erode Truth – United States
- Dispatch: How Trump sells his war on truth
