Analysts warn of inflammatory rhetoric following Italy migrant attack
Analysts in Italy warned against fear-mongering and inflammatory tones in the ongoing electoral campaign after the country was shaken by an unprecedented racist attack on migrants.
Six African citizens were randomly shot and injured in Macerata, central Italy, on Saturday last week. The culprit was a 28-year-old Italian man, Luca Traini, who was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the attack and admitted to carrying out the shooting.
Before being detained, he drove to a war memorial, wrapped himself in the Italian flag and gave a Fascist salute.
According to police, the man showed no remorse, but explained his attack as a “revenge” for the recent case of death of an 18-year-old Italian girl in Macerata – in which a Nigerian failed asylum-seeker was arrested, but not charged with murder.
Yet, the attack prompted intense soul-searching in the country on the real scale of far-right sentiments and the spread of racism, as well as on the increase of hate speech on social media.
Many analysts specifically pointed at the harsh language of the campaign for the upcoming elections on March 4, and the role of immigration by some political forces. In an editorial titled “The risks of words, and the power of facts,” leading business daily Il Sole 24 Ore appealed to public figures to “go easy with words.”
“The awful events in Macerata result from words that have been badly spoken before [the event], and continue to exert their harmful effects in the aftermath,” wrote Paolo Pombeni, professor of modern history with Bologna University. Pombeni called on politicians to be more responsible because Italy was still “in the presence of social pathologies that have never been defeated once and for all.”
Indeed, center-right and far-right parties have long depicted immigration as the top emergency for the country and increased their tones as soon as the campaign kicked off.
The leader of right-wing, anti-immigrant Northern League, Matteo Salvini, condemned the shooting in Macerata, but added that violence was “the straight result of mass immigration in recent years.”
Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is the Northern League's senior ally in the center-right coalition, pledged to expel up to 600,000 people, which was roughly the number of migrants and asylum-seekers reaching the country since 2014.
“The link between immigration and security is traditionally a center-right topic and has been used by center-right forces since at least 2011,” Edoardo Novelli, sociologist and professor of Political Communication at University of Rome III, told Xinhua.
“We have to remember that in every campaign words are used in a way that is particularly exploitative and strategic for each party's electoral goals,” Novelli said.
“Having said that, I agree the attack in Macerata can be linked to these inflammatory tones,” he added.
Deceptive rhetoric works well with strong topics, which are able to stir passions but do not necessarily coincide with a country's real priorities such as employment or education, according to the sociologist.
The issue might change with time and country: it can be immigration, the risk of war or the threat of a domestic enemy. But it would always be something able to “play” on the people's emotions rather than on their rationality, he added.
In Italy's case, anti-immigrant slogans have been used for years and with the vote approaching, they went as far as becoming openly racist comments.
Some Italian media were also to blame for the rise in hate speech and racism in public debate, Novelli warned.