Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

86 Twenty-First Century Populism
have sought to give exclusive voice to the mass of citizens, supposedly
neglected by indifferent and selfish elites, by concentrating on an antipolitical,
anti-party message (Bardi, 1996; Diamanti, 2004; Mastropaolo,
2000 and 2005; Poguntke, 1996). Indeed, despite the fact that they tend to
be considered together as populist parties, we can in fact distinguish clearly
between the Lega and Forza Italia. Whilst the Lega Nord, whose actions are
patently inspired by the populist mentality, merits the ‘populist’ label, the
party created by Berlusconi is much more similar, in its organization and
behaviour, to the other Italian parties as, within Forza Italia, the expression
of this antipolitical populism is entirely delegated to the leader, who has
made it a trademark of his political style, but not a source of ideological
inspiration.
The factors behind the spread of Italian populism
in the 1990s
To understand the underlying causes of the populist wave that inundated
Italian politics in the 1990s, we need to take a long-term perspective in
order to identify the contribution of (a) the particular structural factors
facilitating this sudden growth, such as the widespread and deep distrust of
the political class and (b) the actions of individuals who have deployed populist
arguments and stereotypes, with the aim of building a new electoral
space or extending an already-existing one.
Even if we leave aside the considerable legacy of over twenty years of
fascism − a regime which, strictly speaking, we cannot term ‘populist’
because its ideology subordinated the people (and the nation) to the state,
but whose propaganda contained various populist formulae − we should
note that, even before the end of the Second World War, the profound lack of
trust in the political class felt by many Italians was being openly expressed.
Benefiting from this were those like the Uomo Qualunque (Everyman’s Front)
(Setta, 2005), a prototypical European populist movement and direct precursor
of French Poujadism, which, in the South of Italy, competed with the
Christian Democrats for the moderate-conservative vote in 1946−7. With
the disappearance of Uomo Qualunque and the fleeting success of those, such
as Neapolitan shipping magnate Achille Lauro’s National Monarchy Party,
who attempted to profit from its legacy, hostility towards the political class
and parties, considered as parasites and enemies of the collective interest
engaged solely in the defence of their own privileges, remained strong in
Italian society for decades, generating chronic dissatisfaction with the functioning
of democracy. As the regular Eurobarometer surveys testify, from
1972 to 1994 this discontent reached a percentage of the population almost
double that of other European Community countries, never falling below
70 per cent and on some occasions approaching 90 per cent (Morlino and
Tarchi, 1996). When, beginning in 1992, the investigations of Milanese