January 26 could mark the first time, since Mussolini’s regime, that the far-right score a victory in Italy’s left-wing stronghold of Emilia-Romagna. Its capital city, Bologna, has a proud, anti-fascist history. Yet Matteo Salvini’s far-right party, The Northern League, is currently polling only 2% behind the region’s incumbent Democratic Party (PD) president. A win for the League would be a remarkable shift, tantamount to the UK Conservatives winning a majority in Hackney. Italy, like the US and UK, is seeing tectonic transformations in its electoral landscape and consequently the emergence of a new political playing-field.
Who are the Sardines?
In November 2019, four Bologna flatmates in their early 30s urgently set up a Facebook event called ‘6,000 sardines against Salvini’. The far-right leader was due to host a rally in the Red City and Mattia Santori, a 32-year old political science graduate, ‘couldn’t sleep’ at the thought. He started organising. The aim was to encourage the reticent centre-left - ‘Italy’s other half’ - to turn up on Bologna’s Piazza Maggiore on November 14 to outnumber the attendance of Salvini’s election rally taking place just a ten minute walk-away in the city’s Paladozza Stadium. The organisers encouraged people to arrive with their own cardboard costumes as part of a creative, non-violent ‘flash mob’. The metaphor of the fish, packed together like ‘jumping sardines in a shoal’, sought to promote peaceful unity against Salvini’s divisive anti-migrant rhetoric.
The metaphor of the fish, packed together like ‘jumping sardines in a shoal’, sought to promote peaceful unity against Salvini’s divisive anti-migrant rhetoric.
The turnout far exceeded expectations, with between 12-15,000 people of all ages presenting themselves. ‘Bologna non si lega!’ (‘we will not be bound’), was one of the chants, a pun on the party’s name ‘Lega Nord’ and the verb ‘legarsi’. The crowd would jump in waves, calling ‘chi non salta un fascista è!’ (who doesn’t jump is a fascist), a cry borrowed from Italy’s tribal football culture. This vibrated across the city, the protest eventually developing into student street parties around via del Pratello and Piazza San Francesco, the historically anarchist district. The anti-fascist anthem ‘Bella Ciao’ could be heard from a crowd that from time to time ignited red flares as the police kept careful watch. Over by Salvini’s high-security rally, fire brigades hosed down protestors congregating outside, pre-empting violence as Salvini and his supporters left the stadium.
