Italy’s hard-right government is starting to look more radical

ADMIRers of Giorgia MeloniFI and her Brothers of Italy (d) party like to describe them as “Latin conservatives”—no more radical than, say, Britain’s Tories. For the most part, the Italian prime minister has indeed been reassuringly pragmatic since coming into office last year. But the comparison ignores two significant differences: a widespread hostility among the Brothers to social diversity, be it ethnic or sexual; and a deep distrust of free markets and enthusiasm for vigorous state intervention. Both differences have burst to the surface in recent weeks, prompting open splits in the governing coalition, which also includes the populist Northern League and the more liberal Forza Italia party.The latest row erupted after Roberto Vannacci, a serving army general and a former commander of Italy’s elite parachute brigade, self-published a polemical book inveighing against “the dictatorship of the minorities”. In the general’s view this includes feminists, environmentalists and even animal-rights groups. His book is offensively homophobic (he laments no longer being able to use terms such as the Italian equivalents of “faggot” and “poofter”) and profoundly racist (he writes of Paola Egonu, an Italian-born black volleyball star, that “her physical features do not represent Italian-ness”). Some of the general’s warmest words are reserved for Vladimir Putin’s Russia, where he served in the Italian embassy.