Luigi Di Maio, Five Star Movement (M5S) leader, attends the presentation of the political program for the upcoming general elections in Rome on January 30, 2018. The Italian general election will be held March 4, 2018. Giuseppe Ciccia/Press Association. All rights reserved.In the run-up to the general elections on March 4, Italy has seen a rise of right-wing parties in the polls: the anti-immigrant Northern League, Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the far-right Brothers of Italy are now heading into the poll with the winds at their backs. As these forces share a more or less pronounced anti-immigration stance, it shouldn’t be any surprise that immigration has been one of the most debated issues in the electoral campaign.
Recent events have contributed as well to make the issue of immigration even more prominent. For about three weeks now, the usually quiet town of Macerata has found itself at the heart of a heated – yet bitter – national debate about immigration. On January 31 a Nigerian man – Innocent Oseghale, whose residence permit had expired – was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Pamela Mastropietro, an 18-year-old Italian girl whose dismembered body was found in two suitcases in the environs of Macerata. On the morning of 3 February, Luca Traini – a far right extremist and onetime candidate for the Northern League – was arrested after wounding six African immigrants in a two-hour shooting rampage in the streets of the central Italian town. At the moment of the arrest, Traini wrapped himself in an Italian flag and gave a fascist salute. Italian authorities claim to have seized a Celtic cross flag (a symbol usually linked to neo-Nazism and white supremacism) and right-wing literature including Hitler’s Mein Kampf from Traini’s home.
Such a sequence of events turned up the heat of an already intense electoral debate. Northern League’s leader Matteo Salvini condemned the shooting, but accused the center-left of “flooding Italy with immigrants” and transforming the country “into a refugee camp”. Silvio Berlusconi – whose party Forza Italia is a major ally of Salvini’s League – referred to immigration as to a “social bomb”. Meanwhile, the center-left Democrats – the main incumbent party – are having a hard time finding a balance between firmly condemning the rising tide of xenophobia and reassuring citizens’ fears about immigration.
