Italy Beats France

The British press has been much more thorough in its coverage of the flourishing conflict between the governments of Italy and France. Last week, in what is being called an "unprecedented" move, France recalled its ambassador to Italy. Why? Because Italian deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio traveled to France to meet with leaders of the Yellow Vest (gilets jaunes) insurgency (a suitable analogy would be if the Canadian prime minister had traveled to Zuccotti Park to meet with the Occupy Wall Street protesters). Reuters explains that

Di Maio's decision . . . to visit France and meet several representatives of the "yellow vest" movement, which for months has waged a sometimes violent campaign against Macron and his policies, was deemed a bridge too far.

"The idea that a (deputy) prime minister of an EU country would come to France without letting France know in advance ... It's not some harmless thing," said a French diplomatic source. "It's just not acceptable behavior within the EU ...

"One hopes (withdrawing the ambassador) will force some reflection among the political parties and Italian institutions. It cannot help but underline how serious the situation is."

Officials say the ambassador will probably be sent back soon, but tensions are likely to persist.

For the most part, the mainstream media rushed to defend French president Emmanuel Macron. Di Maio and his fellow deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini are routinely dismissed as anti-immigrant populists working to undermine European unity. Italy's torpedoing an EU statement endorsing the U.S.-led coup underway in Venezuela is more grist for the mainstream mill.

The principal bulwark erected around the enfeebled Macron is a demonization of the Yellow Vests as a violent mob. The Reuters headline for yesterday's protest has been the standard messaging for the last month-plus: "More violence in Paris as 'yellow vests' keep marching."

The Saturday gilets jaunes protests, ongoing since November, have maintained their robust size. But the mainstream media, originally balanced in its reporting, has pivoted to emphasizing the violent, destructive nature of the protests. Macron has been lauded, albeit backhandedly, for making concessions to the working class, as well as for launching his "Great National Debate" public relations campaign.

Now the spin, on display in The Guardian, is that Macron has turned things around. The frame here is EU parliamentary elections in May:

Opinion polls in France have suggested that the main impact of one or more gilets jaunes parties running in the European elections would be to reduce support for the far-right party of Marine Le Pen and the far left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

A survey last month by Elabé showed 13% of voters could vote for a gilets jaunes party, knocking three points off the score of Le Pen’s National Rally and 1.5 off that of Mélenchon’s France Unbowed, and extending the lead of Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM).

“A gilets jaunes party would likely mobilise people who do not usually vote, but also take votes from the National Rally and France Unbowed,” Emmanuel Rivière of he pollsters Kantar Public France told Le Monde. “Paradoxically, the principal beneficiary would be the party of the president.”

An Ifop opinion poll published on Wednesday showed Macron’s approval rating surging from 23% in December to 34% in February.

Macron is important to the neoliberal consensus because his victory in 2017 is the last great electoral achievement for the market orthodoxy camp. It took the Jiffy Popping of a brand new political party and a massive"Russian bogeyman" psyop, but a win is a win.

The crisis for the neoliberal elites who govern the globe is that TINA ("There Is No Alternative") no longer holds sway among voters. The Russia bogeyman only works on people already committed to TINA.

There is a very good think piece in The Independent by Kim Sengupta that looks at the diplomatic row between Italy and France through the lens of Libya:

There is a feeling in Italy, not just among the supporters of the current government, and not unjustified, that the country has borne a disproportionate number of refugees while other northern European states are not taking their fair share.

France is a particular target on this count, not just because it has sent refugees back to Italy but also because of its part in getting Nato to carry out the bombing campaign which led to the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, and the state of semi-anarchy in the country which made it a haven for people-smugglers. It is worth recalling that the European Union used to pay Col Gaddafi to ensure that his country was not a major conduit for the trade, and he had broadly kept his side of the bargain.

This is a rare mention of the role of perpetual war in creating the immigration crisis that has led to the growth of populism in Europe.

Salvini, painted as a anti-African racist in the prestige press, a Mussolini wannabe, has scored major points in the dust-up with Macron. Never before, at least to my recollection, has such a balanced synopsis of Italy's position on immigration vis-a-vis France appeared in The New York Times:

On Thursday, Mr. Salvini responded to the French ambassador’s recall with a series of complaints, including France’s closing of its border to stop illegal migrants passing through Italy.

‘‘Stop with pushbacks at the borders,’’ said Mr. Salvini, who leads the anti-immigrant League party, the Italian government’s coalition partner. ‘‘There have been about 60,000 since 2017, and those include children and women abandoned in the forest.’’

[snip] 

The dispute came to a boil last summer over the migrant issue. The Italians, having borne the brunt of the migrant wave since 2015, were outraged last year when Mr. Macron denounced the new Italian government for failing to take in hundreds of migrants aboard the Aquarius humanitarian rescue boat.

The Italian prime minister’s office reacted with fury, saying it could not “accept hypocritical lessons from a country that, on migration, has always preferred to turn its back on its partners.” And it was true that France has made a regular practice of blocking migrants crossing the Italian border.

“The Italians have been justified — a lot of Italians feel that France’s behavior, with its grand speeches but refusal to welcome migrants, is unacceptable,” Mr. Lazar said.

For this reason alone -- clarifying the dispute on immigration between Italy and France -- Salvini and Di Maio have come out ahead of Macron in this kerfuffle.