Jacopo Custodi is a research fellow in political science at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Italy and an instructor at Stanford University and Georgetown University. His most recent books are Un’idea di Paese: La nazione nel pensiero di sinistra and Radical Left Parties and National Identity in Spain, Italy, and Portugal: Rejecting or Reclaiming the Nation.
In Italy, blue-collar industrial workers are abandoning the Left. As in other countries, they don’t represent the entire working class, but their loss of support should still deeply trouble the Italian left.
Instead of allowing the Right to dominate discussions of patriotism, socialists should emulate past successful left projects that wed national belonging to an inclusive, progressive politics.
Upon its creation ten years ago, Podemos promised to rally the masses against the establishment parties. But it soon became dominated by highly educated progressives, confining its appeal to just part of the working class.
On this day in 1882, Giuseppe Garibaldi died after a lifetime fighting for a united Italy. He combined his patriotism with a proud internationalism — and a thirst for freedom that inspired working-class struggles throughout the twentieth century.
The once mighty Italian left failed to enter parliament in any of the last three general elections. As the far right makes yet another breakthrough, it’s high time the Left organized around working-class Italians’ deep economic malaise.
Xenophobic nationalism has assumed a central role in Italian political life in recent decades. But calls for the country’s Left to “reject Italian identity” are a dead end — and risk distancing it from its own popular traditions.