Version imprimableThis is a political development of enormous gravity. It is not a marginal fringe obsession, nor another social media provocation by the far right, but a formal, concrete and disturbing turn of events. Trumpian fascism is attempting to become law in Italy too.
Let’s say it bluntly: remigration is a project of deportation on ethnic and cultural grounds. It affects not only those without documents, but also people who are legally present, guilty of not being considered “assimilated”. It is ethnic cleansing disguised as public policy. It is state racism. It is unconstitutional. And it is already strong enough to be knocking on the doors of the state institutions.
Outside parliament – for now – the RER (Remigration and Reconquest) Committee, which brings together CasaPound, Veneto Fronte Skinheads, Rete dei Patrioti with former militants of Forza Nuova, were prevented from holding a press conference in the Chamber of Deputies on the mass deportation project. Good. But it would be a fatal mistake to read this day as a definitive victory.
That scenario – the closed doors of Montecitorio [1] – is only a tactical truce, not the end of the offensive. Because those fringe groups are not isolated. They are courted and normalised, . By former general Roberto Vannacci, but also by the Lega, which, not surprisingly, has just publicly legitimised the British racist and supremacist Tommy Robinson, who was received by Matteo Salvini.
Fratelli d’Italia has been pretending to keep its institutional distance since it came to power, but its ideological foundations remain compatible with this approach. The skinheads’ “day of the lions” also highlighted the internal divisions within the majority: between those who want to appear presentable and those who are pushing for a head-on confrontation. But the direction of travel is the same.
The script has now been tried and tested throughout Europe.
Openly neo-fascist groups stir up the issue with flash mobs, banners, rallies and petitions, while sovereignist and national-populist parties – often nothing more than extremists who have made it – gather support and institutionalise it. This happened in Austria, with the Identitarian Movement leading the way and the FPÖ providing political support. It happened in Germany, where the link between neo-Nazism and AfD on remigration led to huge anti-racist demonstrations. It is happening in Northern Europe, with the Swedish Democrats, in Denmark with the Danish People’s Party, in the Netherlands with Geert Wilders, in Belgium with Vlaams Belang, in Spain with Vox, and in Portugal with Chega.
In France, the leadership of the Rassemblement National distances itself in words, but identitarian ideas remain strong, especially among young people. This is no coincidence: it was in France in the 1990s that the paranoid obsession with ‘Great Replacement’ theory, the common ideological matrix of these projects, took shape. Europe is imagined as an ethnic body to be “cleansed”, culture as a substitute for race, and today – without shame – race is back in the spotlight.
Globally, there is only one model: Donald Trump. His project of mass deportations, a return to a pre-civil rights America, and the structural criminalisation of migrants is the completed model of remigration.
An administered ethnic cleansing. This is what they are looking at. This is what they want to import.
One hundred and five years ago, as Emilio Lussu recalled, the first armed fascist MPs entered parliament and dragged their opponents out. Yesterday, those doors remained closed to the neo-fascists. Good. But the threat will not remain outside for long. It is already inside: when a minister like Francesco Lollobrigida talks about “ethnic replacement”, he is legitimising the theoretical framework of remigration. When a proposal to expel regularised migrants becomes “debatable”, the dam has already broken.
Giorgia Meloni’s political and ideological closeness to Trump is an affinity for these policies. The march that was stopped yesterday at Montecitorio (Parliament) was, to all intents and purposes, a Trumpian march. Perhaps there is embarrassment about the most unpresentable characters, but there are no real differences when it comes to anti-migrant hatred.
The most dangerous point is this: without any constitutional safeguards, this bill is now part of the government’s platform. In just a few hours, it has already gathered a large number of signatures. Thanks to online petitions – belated and poorly designed – a racist and unconstitutional proposal can become the subject of legitimate debate and perhaps achieve an unexpected consensus.
Those who think that closing a door is enough are mistaken. We need to open our eyes. We need to organise ourselves, socially and politically. We need to counter this wind before it becomes a storm. Because remigration is not a bad idea to be refuted: it is fascism, and fascism is not up for discussion. It must be stopped.
31 January 2026
Translated by Dave Kellaway for International Viewpoint from Osservatorio Repressione.
