Rome: Italian sensation Matteo Salvini failed to win mass support from right-wing voters in European Parliament elections after a botched campaign marked by reactionary generics and low-quality AI.
The anti-immigration League of Deputy Prime Minister Salvini, the junior member of the coalition government, won just nine percent, with more than 99.5 percent of the vote registered on Monday morning.
Salvini sought to alienate voters from his main ally and rival, far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who won 28.8 percent of the Italian fraternity’s vote.
While Meloni portrayed Europe as a respected international leader with the power to transform Europe from within, Salvini left after the vote with the slogan “More Italy, Less Europe”.
He chose Army general Roberto Wannacci as the league’s star candidate, despite the fact that some senior members of the party, including founder Umberto Bossi, voted for the populist leader of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party.
Vannacci became famous earlier this year after the publication of a book appealing to gays, women and black people.
The 55-year-old general was sacked by Italy’s Defense Ministry in February and cut his salary for undermining the army’s neutrality with a book condemning “neutral dictators” and declaring gay people “normal”.
Salvini sees Wannacci as a scribe of the radical right and a way to restore the image of the League lost after Maloney’s star came to power.
In the last European elections in 2019, the League received 34 percent of the vote, compared to just 6.4 percent for its Italian brethren.
Three years later, the tables were turned when Italians went to the polls in national elections.
Although the League won only 8.9 percent, the Italian Brotherhood took 26 percent and formed a coalition government with the winning League of Meloni Salvini and Forza Italia.
Many voters who voted for the League in 2019 supported the Italian brothers in 2022 – and Salvini, who is suspicious of the party’s leadership, wants them back.
As a member of the same ruling coalition, Meloni could not attack directly.
On the contrary, some voters in 2022 were put off by the rapprochement with Brussels and his more moderate position since becoming prime minister.
Salvini mixed anti-EU rhetoric with efforts to make the League a natural ally of the European radical right.
On social media, he railed against “persecution” such as the EU’s environmental policy, which targets immigrants and “awaken” their behavior.
His posts feature AI-generated images like bearded pregnant men, EU-issued insect-eating women, and Muslims from Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy” instead of Italian fare.
A new EU law requiring plastic caps to be fitted after opening reads, “Surreal eco-rules that Brussels is looking for,” above a photo of a man trying to drink from a water bottle but blowing his nose with the cap.
A video of rival politician Carlo Calenda Salvini showing how drinking from a bottle can be painless has gone viral.
Vannacci was elected MEP this weekend with just over half a million votes, but failed to be the catalyst Salvini had hoped for.
“Everything he did was wrong,” Daniele Albertazzi, joint director of the UK-Europe Centre, told AFP, arguing with Wannachi that he was “very radical, very extreme”.
“Voters stuck with Meloni because of their credibility. (Salvini) did not get all the voters from the Brothers of Italy and seems to be isolated.”
“I will be surprised if he is not challenged (as party leader) because he is destroying the party.” “I think he completely lost it.” APPLICATIONS
Eccentric campaign by Italy’s Salvini falls flat
