Constructing identity through conflict as a discursive strategy of the Italian Right

Okhotnikov Daniil Igorevich ORCID: 0009-0000-7311-6109 Postgraduate student; Department of Philosophy of Russian History; Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences 109240, Russia, Moscow, Goncharnaya str., 12 building 1 danoxot@gmail.com Other publications by this author

In recent years, the interest of domestic and foreign researchers in the Italian right-wing parties and their discourse has been steadily growing, which can be logically explained both by the general "deterioration" of the European political landscape and by national specifics, namely the fact that the coalition of right-wing and center-right parties created in the early 1990s under the leadership of S. Berlusconi in the fall of 2022 G. was able to confidently win the elections and regain power. At the same time, the internal balance of power in the coalition had changed significantly by that time ^[1], as a result of which the government of the country for the first time in the republican history of Italy was headed by the far-right party "Brothers of Italy" (BI) led by Giorgia Meloni. This party itself was considered an outsider a few years ago and did not receive much attention from the scientific community ^[2]. Nevertheless, it can be noted that by now BI has already appeared in dozens of diverse studies not only in Europe ^{[3, 4]}, but also in Russia ^{[5, 6, 7, 8]}.

At the same time, a detailed analysis of the discursive strategies of the Italian right in the 2020s, an era of extreme turbulence that seems to observers to be a series of diverse crises and challenges, is of undoubted theoretical and practical interest. The constantly changing challenges force populist parties and their leaders – namely, the Italian right–wing - to continuously transform the discourse, sometimes quite radically.

By the end of the twentieth century, after the 1990s seemed to have permanently removed the existential ideological confrontation between "two worlds – two systems," the party systems of Western European liberal democracies, including Italy, gradually occupied parties and movements without a clear ideological foundation. On the one hand, the erosion of the ideological core helped them attract new voters who were not ready to support the bankrupt ideological projects of the First Republic. On the other hand, the ideological amorphousness ^[9] of the political actors who came to the fore made it almost impossible to conduct a political struggle in the traditional format of the struggle of ideas, as a result of which they faced the question of finding new grounds for attracting and retaining the electorate. One of the answers to this question was the personalization of political movements, in which the main motivation for voter support in elections was the personality of the leader, his charisma, impressive qualities of appearance and character, and oratorical skills. In this regard, it is impossible to ignore the fact that it was among the Italian right that one of the first and key examples of a populist leader emerged for European politics at the head of the personalist-type party "Forward Italy!" created by him.

However, as the experience of Western democracies shows, the personal qualities of a leader rarely make it possible to maintain the popularity of a party in the long term. Moreover, if a party has moved from opposition to power, is faced with a sharply increased responsibility for government policy and, having multiplied the number of supporters, is trying to meet the demands of a large and no longer monolithic electorate. Even if the leader repeatedly confirms his charisma, the general voter fatigue, the unresolved issues of fundamental importance (to which populists previously gave simple answers when in opposition), professional incompetence and scandals involving politicians representing the party at the national and regional levels pose a real threat to the party's rating. In this case, parties in power who have problems demonstrating real results or who are not sure that the voter interprets these results in a positive way are forced to resort to various tactics to shift public attention to other subjects.

The subject of the study

More important for consideration, however, is not a set of short–term tactics, but a comprehensive strategy, the process of developing new ideological foundations, ideas about oneself, about one's place and tasks by a political force - ideas that, when systematized, can to some extent replace the coherent ideologies of the past, just as over time the system The views of D. Trump and his supporters have taken shape in the so-called "Trumpism", which claims to be a (quasi-)ideology ^[10]. I must say that of all the Italian right-wing parties, it is the BI, for whose self-determination continuity with the Italian Social Movement (ISM), the main right-wing force during the years of the First Republic, is fundamentally important, demonstrates an obvious interest in the ideological trends of the past and present. The party regularly participates in conferences of American and European conservatives, organizes thematic discussions at the annual Atreju party event, and oversees the work of two think tanks, the Tatarella Foundation and the Future Nation, which deal in depth with the history of European conservatism ^[11]. But in this article we will be mainly interested in the discursive strategy of intentionally creating direct or indirect conflict, as one of the simplest, most effective and widespread ways of self-determination of a political force without a clearly built ideological base, which will also be true for the ultra-right League, BI's closest competitor in the coalition. We will see that against the background of the absence of a real ideological confrontation and, as a result, the progressive decline in voters' interest in domestic politics, the survival strategy of political actors consists in constantly constructing and artificially maintaining a conflict with an appointed opponent or, more precisely, opponents.

The research method

To solve this problem, we considered it advisable to refer to the concepts of critical discourse analysis by R. Vodak ^[12] and N. Fairclough ^[13] in order to conduct a qualitative analysis of publicly available samples of the discourse of the Italian right-wing parties. The main focus will be on BI due to its leading position, political weight, the phenomenon of stable rating and the previously mentioned special interest in issues of ideology and identity. The analysis uses, first of all, posts and campaign materials from the party's official channels on the Telegram social network ^{[14, 15]}, as well as landmark public speeches and interviews with the party leadership in written and video format ^[16]. As for the chronological framework, it was decided to limit ourselves to the last three years, since it was during this period that the right (and especially the BI) declared themselves as the leading force ready to come to power, and then they got it, which means they were forced to abandon the discursive strategies of the opposition parties that were convenient in terms of gaining political points..

Conflict with multiple addressee

Researchers who closely follow the political process in Italy note that the rhetoric of the ultra-right populists, which traditionally included the BI and the League, has entered a period of more restrained, pragmatic attitude towards the EU by 2022 after several years of harsh euroscepticism and militant sovereignism ^[6]. The main target of criticism has also changed: the external front of the confrontation has been replaced by an internal one, the European bureaucrats have given way to the main enemy of the Italian center-left ^{[17, p. 51]}. However, you should look into this in more detail. It is important to understand that this is not just about traditional opponents in the face of the Democratic Party and the 5-Star Movement, which has settled on the left flank. As the leading party of the center-right coalition, the BI speak on behalf of all the Italian right, and they think of their opponent globally as the entire "galaxy of the left" (galassia della sinistra), giving the conflict thus defined the character of an existential confrontation. For example, the leader of the General Italian Confederation of Labor (Cgil), Italy's largest trade union association, M. Landini, is among the main enemies, second only to the heads of the aforementioned left-wing parties Ellie Schlein (Democratic Party) and Giuseppe Conte (5 Star Movement) in terms of the number of personal mentions in the party telegram channel. He regularly participates in joint protest actions. Representatives of small parties of the left and center-left of the political spectrum (A. Bonelli, N. Frato'ianni, R. Maggi, M. Renzi), public figures, writers and activists of leftist views (M. Lucano, R. Saviano, I. Salis, I. Kukki, etc.) become much less frequent targets of personal attacks. It is worth noting that in most cases In some cases, the posts take the form of direct speech, the opponent is addressed as "you" (which is not customary in official political communication), the language is deliberately rustic, the tone is emphatically sarcastic, sometimes bordering on rudeness, which corresponds to the tactics of disparaging the addressee.

Posts in which the enemy is represented not by a person, but by one of the numerous categories, whose very existence is presented as an existential threat to Italy and Italians, have a completely different style. Here, the conflict is as explicit as possible, it is a life-and-death struggle. Among them we find, in particular: accomplices of illegal migration (scafisti); mafia clans; judges passing verdicts guided by sympathies for leftist ideas (toghe rosse); groups of leftist extremists and anarchists (centri sociali, antagonisti, collettivi rossi) and, in principle, anyone who wants the defeat of the current government (cassandre rosse) and thereby betrays the interests of the nation.

No less revealing is the set - much less numerous - of categories that, in the opinion of the right, deserve regularly declared support, which, in turn, implies the existence of conflict: law enforcement forces affected by attacks by leftist extremists; entrepreneurs who are at risk of ruin due to the "insane" directives of the European bureaucracy; families driven to driven to poverty by the ill-conceived economic policies of previous center-left governments.

Memory Policy

BI differ from the partners in the right-wing coalition by their increased attention to the topic of historical memory. Such attention is certainly more than expected from a party whose name is borrowed from the national anthem, whose program and slogans are replete with the words "patriot" and "patriotism" and which in its discourse refers to Italy only as a "Nation" with a capital letter (Nazione). Of course, BI does not forget to celebrate holidays related to the official symbols of the state, as well as the armed forces and law enforcement agencies of the country: National Flag Day, the anniversary of the creation of the police, National Unity Day and the Armed Forces. Similarly, the days of remembrance of victims of earthquakes and major man-made disasters are not ignored. These dates are more or less recognized as significant for the nation by the majority of Italian parties. Nevertheless, memory politics, being one of the varieties of symbolic politics ^[18], demonstrates a natural predisposition to conflict, competition of events and their representative names for the right to remain in the national memory. An analysis of memorial posts on BI's official social media pages provides evidence of this, revealing a very special, bordering on cult, attitude towards a separate category of names – undeservedly forgotten, according to the right, victims of leftist extremist groups and communist regimes.

Apparently, this cult was formed and further developed in post–war Italy among right-wing sympathizers, largely illegally after the dissolution and official ban of the fascist party, and then was inherited by its predecessors, the ISD and the National Alliance. In a kind of "black martyrology", two large groups can be distinguished. The first in chronology and in total number are Italians who lived during the Second World War in the northeastern regions of the country, as well as in Istria and Dalmatia, where they were subjected to repression by Tito's Yugoslav partisans in 1943 and in 1945. Several thousand were killed and their bodies dumped into karst caves ("the lobby") ^[19]. Hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes after the territories of Istria and Dalmatia came under the control of Yugoslavia ^[20]. These are generalized categories - in most cases, we do not know the personal names of all the victims, nor the exact number of them. Nevertheless, in BI's memorial discourse, these tragic events are symbolically personalized by the names of Norma Cossetto (foiba) ^[21] and Ejea Haffner (exodus from Istria and Dalmatia) ^[22]. The second group, on the contrary, is small and carefully documented ^[23]. It consists of activists of the post-fascist ISD party and its youth branch, the Youth Front, who died at the hands of members of left-wing radical groups during the period of fierce political confrontation, traditionally called the "lead 70s." The symbol most often mentioned in BI's propaganda materials was Sergio Ramelli, a young ISD activist ^[24], who was killed by leftist extremists in 1975.

It is obvious that the return of the "second pole" to the agenda – without denying recognition to the first, canonical one, which includes members of the partisan movement and left–wing politicians who made an indisputable contribution to the creation of the Italian Republic and its emphatically anti-fascist Constitution - is a program, because it is regularly reflected in posts dedicated to memorial days, annual participation The party's top officials participated in memorial events, the organization of thematic museums and exhibitions, the renaming of streets and the issuance of commemorative coins and stamps. It should be noted that the return of these names and the events behind them to the national discourse began immediately after the formation of the center-right coalition led by S. Berlusconi, who first headed the government of the republic in 1994, which caused a sharply negative reaction and accusations of revisionism from leftist parties ^[25]. Insisting on the return of "their" heroes to the collective memory, the right does not seek to replace the heroes of the left who have long found a place in the national pantheon, but to legitimize their past under the slogan of historical reconciliation. At the same time, the facts of vandalism that desecrate their memory are carefully recorded with the help of angry posts on social networks, which in turn become both real signs confirming the existence of a conflict and an additional catalyst for it.

Conclusions

As can be seen from the above examples, in the absence of a real ideological conflict^[26], populist parties are forced to "construct" a conflict in order to consolidate and mobilize supporters, as can be seen from the example of the Italian right. First, they identify a set of enemies – certain professional, social, and political groups, and less often individuals with symbolic significance (leaders of opposition parties, political activists, and public figures). Face-to-face and correspondence polemics with them fill the media space, setting the coordinates of discourse. Secondly, in public declarations and campaign materials on social networks, a set of categories has been formed that, in their opinion, need explicit protection as victims of the actions of political antagonists of the right. Thirdly, conflict is also an organizing principle in the field of memory politics: through the efforts of the right, the "undeservedly forgotten heroes" of the past, victims of Italian leftist extremist groups and the Tito communist regime, who had been forgotten for all previous decades due to the total dominance of leftist views among Italian intellectuals who shaped the cultural agenda, return to the national pantheon.

Maintaining the illusion of multiple conflicts allows the party to solve several tasks at once: to mobilize voters, following the strategy of polarization of society; to acquire the image of an active political force, responding to the demand for change; to saturate the information space with its own information channels, gaining control over the agenda. The results that the right-wing coalition and, above all, Giorgi Meloni's party continue to demonstrate not only in polls, but also in the elections to the European Parliament, as well as to regional and municipal authorities, give no reason to doubt the effectiveness of the chosen strategy.