Italy knows better than almost any European country what can happen when extreme nationalism stops being a fringe phenomenon and becomes respectable politics. Benito Mussolini did not begin with a fully consolidated dictatorship. Fascism first had to acquire supporters, allies, institutional legitimacy and acceptance among parts of Italy’s establishment.
A century later, Italy is obviously not Fascist Italy. Elections remain competitive, opposition parties operate freely, and historical analogies must not erase enormous differences between the two periods.
Yet something politically significant is happening. The radical right is not merely surviving in modern Italy. It is increasingly being welcomed into places where political, financial and business power meet.
Former general Roberto Vannacci, leader of the far-right Futuro Nazionale, is scheduled to appear at the prestigious TEHA Forum in Cernobbio on Lake Como, one of Italy’s most influential annual gatherings of political and business leaders. Government representatives, European officials and leading executives attend the event. Vannacci will participate in a discussion about European integration alongside former prime minister Mario Monti.
Mussolini would have been proud—not because modern Italy has somehow returned to fascism, but because political ideas once considered beyond the acceptable limits of mainstream politics are finding their way into respectable institutions.
From general to political force
Vannacci is no marginal internet provocateur. He is a former army general and military attaché in Moscow who became nationally famous after publishing a book attacking what he regarded as excessive attention and rights given to minorities and LGBT people.
He later entered electoral politics through the League before breaking away and founding Futuro Nazionale in February 2026.
Seven months later, his party has become Italy’s fourth-most-popular political force. An SWG poll put Futuro Nazionale at 7.5 percent, ahead of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia at 7.1 percent and the League at 5.7 percent. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy remained far ahead at 26.8 percent, but Vannacci is increasingly competing for voters on the right.
This is an extraordinary rise for a political movement that did not exist at the beginning of the year.
What Vannacci actually wants
The substance matters more than the label “far right.”
Vannacci has built his movement around fierce opposition to mass immigration and the defense of what he calls traditional values. He has proposed abolishing Italy’s same-sex civil unions and doubling the period of legal residence required for citizenship from 10 to 20 years. He also wants immigrants who fail to assimilate into what he calls the “values of our civilisation” to be expelled.
His foreign-policy positions are equally controversial. Vannacci opposes sending weapons to Ukraine and favors restoring business relations with Russia. His previous posting as a military attaché in Moscow has attracted additional scrutiny as Russia’s war against Ukraine continues.
None of these positions makes Vannacci another Mussolini. That would be historically careless. But neither should the word “democracy” make every political development occurring through elections harmless.
Democracies can normalize authoritarianism, xenophobia and attacks on minority rights long before democratic institutions themselves disappear.
The establishment opens its doors
That is why Vannacci’s invitation to Cernobbio matters.
The TEHA Forum is not an extremist conference. It is a prestigious meeting place for political and economic elites. Representatives of seven governments, senior EU officials and major corporate figures are expected at this year’s gathering.
Putting Vannacci on its stage therefore does something that another percentage point in an opinion poll cannot: it treats him as someone whose ideas belong inside elite political conversation.
The organizers defend the decision on precisely those grounds. TEHA chief executive Valerio De Molli has said the forum exists to create dialogue between people holding different views. Former prime minister Mario Monti has also defended participating, arguing that nationalist politicians such as Vannacci and France’s Jordan Bardella could eventually enter government and that understanding their potential impact on Europe is therefore valuable.
There is a legitimate democratic argument here. Refusing to debate extremists does not make them disappear, and confronting their ideas publicly can be preferable to pretending millions of their voters do not exist.
But normalization carries its own danger.
When extremism becomes respectable
Centrist politician Carlo Calenda decided to boycott the forum. He accused Italy’s business establishment of effectively bowing to the latest populist and described Vannacci as a “neofascist, racist and pro-Russian.” The organizers rejected the accusation that they were giving him preferential treatment.
The dispute exposes a much larger question confronting European democracies.
At what point does engaging with the extreme right become legitimizing it?
A radical politician initially attracts outrage. Then television programs invite him because he attracts viewers. Poll numbers rise. Business leaders decide they must understand him. Established politicians debate him. Newspapers treat his movement as another electoral constituency. Eventually, ideas once considered politically toxic become merely another position on the political spectrum.
Nothing illegal needs to happen during this process. That is precisely why it can be so difficult to recognize.
Italy’s uncomfortable historical shadow
Italy has particular reasons to understand this mechanism.
Mussolini did not seize complete power in a single revolutionary moment. Fascism benefited from political violence and intimidation, but also from accommodation by conservative politicians, business interests, elites and King Victor Emmanuel III. Mussolini became prime minister in 1922 within the existing constitutional framework before progressively dismantling Italian democracy.
Modern Italy is separated from that world by a democratic constitution, strong institutions and eight decades of republican government. Vannacci is not Mussolini, and contemporary far-right politics should not simply be equated with historical fascism.
The useful historical lesson is subtler.
Extremism does not always arrive announcing the destruction of democracy. Sometimes it becomes familiar first.
It becomes electable. Then debatable. Then respectable. Eventually, society can forget why certain ideas were considered extreme in the first place.
A challenge even for Meloni
The rise of Futuro Nazionale is also creating an unusual problem for Giorgia Meloni.
Meloni herself emerged from Italy’s post-fascist political tradition and leads a nationalist conservative government. Yet Vannacci can now attack her from even further to the right.
His new party is drawing support away from Meloni’s governing bloc ahead of elections expected next year. It remains uncertain whether Futuro Nazionale will ultimately join her coalition, but its electoral strength means Italy’s established right can no longer simply ignore it.
That creates a familiar political temptation: when a more radical competitor gains voters, mainstream parties can either confront it or adopt parts of its language and policies in an attempt to win those voters back.
The second strategy may defeat the radical party. It can also allow the radical party to win the ideological argument without ever taking power.
Mussolini would have been proud
The headline is deliberately provocative. Italy is not returning to 1922, and Roberto Vannacci is not Benito Mussolini.
But history does not need to repeat itself perfectly to provide a warning.
A far-right movement created only seven months ago has already overtaken two established governing parties in the polls. Its leader advocates sweeping restrictions on immigration and minority rights, attacks same-sex civil unions, promotes an aggressively traditionalist vision of society and wants renewed economic relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Now he is being welcomed onto one of Italy’s most prestigious stages alongside former prime ministers, government representatives, EU officials and business leaders.
That does not mean fascism has returned.
It means the boundary between the political fringe and the political establishment is moving.
And in the country that gave the world the word “fascism,” that boundary deserves particularly close attention.
