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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   35361 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 26, 2022

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Wait, wasn't Matteo Salvini of Lega (which, iirc, used to promote Northern Italy seceding from the dysfunctional south) basically in control of the Italian government for a while during the last few years? Wasn't the other major party involved in that government the M5S, which I've heard described as "Italian Bernie-bros, but led by Italian!Jon Stewart"? Seems like antiestablishment populism of both the left and right has been the name of the game in Italian politics for a while, no? Why would Meloni be a significant departure? Is there some reason to think she's going to better at marshalling the Italian state to actually get right wing things done? Will she prosecute or sink the migrant flotillas/NGOs helping them? Will she engage in mass-deportations? Does she have some particularly-populist financial plan to boost native TFR? Is she going to stage mass weddings like Alexander with his generals and the Persians? What?

I don't think <Foreign> <American thing> is a useful way to talk about basically anything.

It is if your audience is American, and needs a translation and/or some context-by-analogy. It's definitely vulnerable to bad-faith mischaracterizing or misunderstanding, but it beats just throwing out a random name that no-one knows much about and providing nothing...

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