A party with neo-fascist roots, the Brothers of Italy, has won the most votes in Italy’s national elections, near-final results show.

It looks set to deliver the country’s first far-right-led government since the Second World War and make its leader, Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first woman premier.

Italian voters have rewarded a Eurosceptic party with neo-fascist roots, propelling the country towards what is likely to be its first far-right-led government since the Second World War, according to near-final election results.

The country’s lurch to the right immediately shifted Europe’s geopolitical balance, placing Giorgia Meloni’s Eurosceptic Brothers of Italy party in position to lead one of the founding members of the European Union, as well as its third-largest economy.

The shadow Northern Ireland secretary has said he would call a border poll if the circumstances were right.

Labour MP Peter Kyle said he “would not be a barrier if the circumstances emerge”.

Italians were voting on Sunday in an election that could move the country’s politics sharply to the right during a critical time for Europe, with war in Ukraine fuelling skyrocketing energy bills and testing the West’s resolve to stand united against Russian aggression.

The counting of paper ballots was expected to begin shortly after polls close at 11pm, with projections based on partial results coming early Monday.

Dozens gathered to hear the case for a British republic at a packed fringe event branded the “naughtiest” at the Labour conference.

Guests at the meeting on Saturday evening – attended by Labour MP Richard Burgon – were warned against a future with a “white, privileged male” as head of state, as the hosts argued power by “accident of birth” is “incompatible” with the party’s democratic values.

By Aurelia George Mulgan*

In Japan, the Unification Church (UC) is a religious corporation known formally as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification and for its unique interpretation of Christian theology and practices widely criticised for being similar to those of a cult.

Its founder and long-time leader, South Korean Sun Myung Moon, certainly fits the archetype of a cult leader. He was narcissistic as a self-professed messiah but also charismatic and convincing in his quest to brainwash members from whom he demanded unquestioning loyalty in order to acquire money and power as head of both a religious and business organisation. Such ‘organisational totalitarianism’ has often been harnessed for political ends, particularly as the children of believers were taught that ‘instructions from above are absolute’.

In the 1950s and 60s, the basic connection was ideological. The UC was built on anti-communist ideals, particularly the political organisation set up by Moon in 1968 called the ‘International Federation for Victory over Communism’. These ideals underpinned the close connection established between Moon and Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who facilitated the importation of the UC into Japan, as well as its offshoot political organisation.

Kishi facilitated the close historic ties between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the UC, perpetuated the connection through his son and Abe’s father, Shintaro Abe, and established the faction that Abe inherited. Once in Japan, the UC sought legitimacy and influence through political connections and building networks with national and local politicians. These connections brought legal protection as well as social and financial benefits and policy influence despite UC’s record of financially destroying families through ‘mind control’ and other ‘cult-like’ aspects.

Abe shared the ardent anti-communist ideals espoused by his grandfather and the UC, cultivating close tiesbetween himself and UC-affiliated organisations. In September 2021, he addressed a virtual forum, held under the aegis of the Moon-organised ‘Universal Peace Federation’ branch, one of the ‘friendship organisations’ of the UC. Abe called for ‘solidarity between countries sharing freedom and democracy’, demonstrating shared ideological principles with the group.

It was Abe’s video attendance at this event that convinced his killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, that Abe was connected to the UC and nurtured Yamagami’s hostility towards him.

Shared political ideology was also backed up by shared conservative values with policy implications. These include opposition to same-sex marriage, gender equality and diversity, as well as support for ‘traditional family values’ and ‘paternalistic family systems’, which both the UC and conservative politicians, including Abe, the ‘chief flag-waver of conservatism’, sought to promote and protect. The UC’s strongest connections have been with the LDP’s most conservative right-wingers.

The second and main attraction underpinning the connection between Japanese politicians and the UC was practical — daily support work by UC members as secretaries for parliamentarians — and electoral support such as votes, money, voter lists and campaign workers. The UC was particularly valuable because it could offer ‘group support’, namely ‘bloc votes’ for particular politicians, because of its persuasive powers over its members.

Indeed, UC votes were so secure that they could even be allocated to particular candidates in an organised fashion in order to maximise the number of politicians elected from a certain party — principally the LDP, almost half of whom had links with the group. The UC would tell members at gatherings or through online messengers to vote for certain candidates.

Financial support for election candidates was also secured by UC members’ buying tickets to politicians’ fund-raising parties and through donations from UC-affiliated organisations, although the amounts that individual politicians admitted they received were not huge. Still, UC members and their friends were particularly useful as ‘volunteers’ on the campaign trail, a boon for individual candidates as the cost of hiring the required number of election workers is very expensive.

Abe himself is believed to have funnelled UC followers’ votes to his former executive secretary, Yoshiyuki Inoue, as a UC ‘supporting member’ in the July 2022 Upper House election. These group votes almost doubled the number of votes that Inoue received in the 2019 election from 88,000 to 165,000. Abe reportedly ‘managed the allocation of the Unification Church’s votes and volunteer work’ among the LDP’s candidates in election campaigns while his brother, former Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi, admitted to receiving various kinds of assistance from individual UC volunteers during election campaigns. The Abe faction also had the highest number of members (37) with connections to the UC.

Taking advantage of the strong familial, ideological and historical connections, both Abe brothers continued to cultivate ties with the UC primarily for electoral reasons. Abe encouraged this by actively appearing at UC-sponsored events and by addressing various fora organised by the group. The Kishi/Abe faction, as a non-mainstream conservative faction, was more dependent on UC votes than other LDP factions, such as the Tanaka and Ohira (now Kishida) factions, which gained strong support from the construction and transport industriesand business leaders.

Not surprisingly, the Abe faction has been confirmed as having the largest number of members with UC links and the highest number of state ministers and parliamentary vice-ministers with connections to the group in Kishida’s recently reshuffled cabinet. Abe exemplified the way in which politicians could harness members’ loyalty and devotion to the church and the dictates of its leaders for political purposes. In return, the group gained credibility, political access and the ability to ‘show off’ its influence over particular politicians to its advantage through their speeches and interviews for group media outlets.

So while the connections between politicians and the group have been revealed as commonplace, those with the Abe–Kishi family were ‘special’. Abe was the key figure who connected the party to the church. The political utility of such groups was more broadly underpinned by their ability to attract the ‘unorganised’ — the social and economic ‘have-nots’ who were not grouped through economic organisations or strong employment connections.

Links to such organisations thus provided a mechanism for politicians to reach voters who were not members of established interest groups but who could be useful for those candidates who might need extra support if organised interest group support was insufficient for victory.

*About the author: Aurelia George Mulgan is Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of New South Wales, Canberra.

Source: This article was published by East Asia Monitor

Just ten weeks from polling day and we are left to ask, could the political outlook for Victorian voters be any more dispiriting?

For those voters actually engaged in the state’s democratic process – things are looking grim.

Very grim.

Neither the Government nor the Opposition presents voters with a credible (let alone compelling) case for governing what is now a state drowning in debt. Labor debt.

Consider this…

Victoria’s projected debt of an astounding $170+ billion is greater than the combined debt levels of New South Wales, Queensland, and Tasmania. Identifying an Australian state government more fiscally profligate than the incumbent Victorian Labor government is a challenge. There isn’t one.

Most eligible voters are, in all likelihood, blissfully unaware of the proximity of the election – on Saturday 26 November – in which they must cast a vote.

The sorry truth is that many first-time voters are clueless that Victoria is home to a State Parliament. They are so uninterested in ‘domestic politics’ that most would be unable to locate their Victorian Parliament building.

Worse, many long-time voters appear dismissive of the looming November poll.

Numerous voters do not appear to appreciate that state governments have a statutory four-year term, while the federal government has only three years in which to convince voters they ought to be re-elected.

Labor’s second four-year term is up and they must ‘face the people’ in November.

Setting to one side the alarming truths about the ramshackle state of the political scaffolding in Victoria – let us focus on the appalling choice confronting voters.

For those wishing to vote for an administration likely to take its fiduciary and democratic responsibilities seriously, they have a double dilemma.

Neither the incumbent (eight-year-old) Labor government nor the Liberal-National Opposition instil the slightest confidence, capacity, or inclination to govern in the voters’ interests as opposed to their party-political interests.

A ‘politically useful’ mix of voter ignorance and apathy is more likely than not to get the Andrews Labor government over the line for an undeserved third term – albeit with a reduced majority.

For two of the last four years under the iron grip of Daniel Andrews, voters and their families have been subject to Covid-related laws, restrictions, and impositions which have been amongst the most heavy-handed anywhere in the world. The impact on lives, livelihoods, businesses, and especially on the lonely, poor, and those in aged care has proven to be catastrophic. The consequential decline in our collective mental health will take years to correct and manage.

Andrews’ panicked handling of the early stages of Covid by mandating the harshest of lockdowns seemed, ironically, to provide many voters a sense of security that government was acting in their interests.

This sentiment rapidly proved to be a mirage, like so much else this government claims to have achieved during its long occupation of the government benches. In Victoria, it is evident that all is not what it seems.

When it comes to ‘state craft’ within Victoria, there has never been such a comprehensive and invasive operation to mislead and deceive the electorate about the true state of affairs confronting taxpayers. On top of this, chronic ALP rorting and branch stacking were identified in IBAC hearings during the last year. These have left a stain on Andrews personally, along with others in the ALP hierarchy.

This government has no peer when it comes to the employment of what feels like propaganda. A sizeable team of taxpayer-funded operatives assist the Premier’s Office in this task.

It is relentless. Bad news is smothered by puerile ‘good news’ stories from Spring Street or by careful management around the timing of their press releases. Take the 000 Report into Emergency Ambulance Services as an example – released in the early hours of a Saturday morning during the AFL football finals.

Andrews is well known within Labor circles as a communicator ‘par excellence’. This assessment takes no account however of basics such as honesty, truth, or the public’s right to know. All too often with difficult issues – Andrews dismissively refuses to answer questions or claims he won’t comment because inquiries are ‘in play’ or pending. He is one of the nation’s most accomplished political spinners. He is also fond of putting his political survival well above that of the public interest.

While the same cannot be said for Opposition Leader, Matthew Guy, his party has had some small successes in highlighting the appalling shortcomings in public health, mental health, aged care, and emergency service 000 failures leading to more than thirty deaths – especially in the last year.

Sadly for those voters looking for an alternative to Andrews, the pickings are lean. Guy – a second time Opposition leader – has failed to ignite the public imagination and voters are struggling to identify what positive alternative he and his colourless MPs offer the electorate. Getting ‘cut-through’ in Opposition is tough, particularly when the media tends to favour the incumbent and voters are simply not listening.

Against the horrors of what occurred during the Covid lockdowns and the evident shambles in the state’s public health system – no single failure of the Andrews Cabinet comes close to the grotesque level of debt to which young, and as yet unborn Victorians have been assigned.

Weak political leaders make unfunded promises to deliver infrastructure and services. Strong leaders establish robust financial parameters for all public spending and stick to them. The Andrews government has failed miserably to adhere to this doctrine.

For the Opposition, the challenge is to commit to a political agenda that is forward-looking and fiscally responsible while also reducing the obscene debt created by Andrews over his eight years in office.

As is so frequently the case with profligate governments they unleash a swag of surreptitious taxes, fees, charges, levies – call them whatever you like – in order to plug fiscal holes of their making. Backed by a bloated public service (in excess of 300,000 people) Andrews is content to tax virtually everything Victorians do – even bushwalking, rock climbing, and just being in state and national parks.

Voters will go to the polls with a terrible choice before them: to re-elect a Labor government that is mired in debt and deceit, or to opt for an Opposition that has manifestly failed to project a fresh, innovative, and positive agenda for the next four years.

Such is the desolation of the political landscape here that it may be time to join the 50,000 Victorians who quit the state last year and wisely moved elsewhere.

Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.

After two monthly federal polls, the Age/Herald Resolve Strategic series has followed its pre-federal election practice of combining two polling samples to produce a state voting intention result for Victoria, which hopefully indicates a return to regular monthly federal and bi-monthly New South Wales and Victorian state polling. Consistent with the recent Newspoll, these numbers suggest another emphatic win for Daniel Andrews’ Labor government, which is up five points since the last such poll back in April to 42% and down only one point on its 2018 result. The Coalition has slumped five points since the last poll to 28%, down seven on the election result, while the Greens are up two to 12%, up more than a point on 2018. Of the remainder, 12% opted for an unspecificied independent and 8% went for minor parties.

Resolve Strategic does not provide two-party preferred results, but the primary vote numbers suggest a Labor lead of as much as 60-40, compared with 57.3-42.7 in the 2018 landslide. Approval and disapproval are not featured, but Daniel Andrews holds a 46-28 lead over Matthew Guy as preferred premier, out from 48-31. The poll was conducted, I presume, both last week and around a month previously from a total sample of 1107.

In other Victorian poll news, The Guardian reported last week on a RedBridge Group poll of the Mornington electorate for Climate 200, which is supporting independent candidate Kate Lardner. The seat will be left vacated after Liberal incumbent David Morris lost preselection to Chris Crewther, former federal member for Dunkley. The headline voting intention result suggested a win for Crewther with 43.2% of the primary vote, with Labor on 28.9% for Labor, 11.4% for a generic independent and 5.9% for the Greens, which much or all of the remainder uncommitted.

When it was put to respondents that the field would include an “independent candidate like Monique Ryan”, 20.3% said they would support that candidate compared with 39.3% for the Liberals, 19.2% for Labor and 6.5% for the Greens, which pollster Kos Samaras projects to a 53-47 win for the independent. The poll was conducted from a sample of 797 shortly after Lardner’s campaign was announced in August.

Highlights

• Italy goes to the polls to elect a new parliament on 25 September
• Eligible Italian voters living overseas to vote by postal ballot
• This is a snap election, caused by a government crisis resulting in dissolution of parliament in July

Italian voters overseas

Votes cast in North America and Africa-Asia-Oceania-Antarctica will be counted in Naples.

Australia’s Italian voters

“During these 22 years I’ve been in Australia I’ve always voted. I did it for my friends, for the people I care about who still live in Italy. But I decided that from now on I will vote only if there is a party that I believe in,” he said.

He didn’t even know that there was an election in Italy.

She says representatives elected by Italians abroad play an important role.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia, FDI, a party with a post-fascist origin, is witnessing a very quick rise, from 4 per cent voter support in 2018 to a projected 25 per cent this year.

“I’ve lived in Australia for 15 years. How am I supposed to really know about what’s happening in Italy right now? I voted just because I have a civil duty to vote,” she said.

A smaller Parliament

Seats in the lower house have been cut from 630 to 400, while those in the senate have been brought from 315 to 200.

New election system

The winning alliance will need a majority in both houses of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate.

Parties and candidates

The conservative side of politics may have Australia’s mainstream media on its side but the Andrews Government’s secret weapon is the Victorian Liberal Party Opposition.

This is not to take away from Victorian Premier Dan Andrews’ performance, who – in the face of a pandemic, an undermining Federal Government and a sustained antagonistic media campaign not seen since … well, since the hate crusade against the Gillard Government – has maintained a calm, measured and proactive approach to governance. Indeed, the Victorian Premier has achieved much during his term, which was also marred by a protracted absence due to injury.

But while the public response to the Andrews Government has been strong throughout – as evinced by its sizable and unbroken lead in the polls – we cannot underestimate the extent to which the bungling, sniping and predominantly ridiculous Liberal Opposition has further cemented support for the Victorian Labor Government.

And for the doubters, this week drove home this fact when Opposition Leader Matt Guy chose the Parliament Chamber to illustrate his ignorance.

Guy got up and, speaking in suitably mournful tones about the death of Queen Elizabeth, included a fabled storybook character in his tribute to royals past (IA emphasis):

“In all those times, in all those monarchs from figures well known, King Arthur, Henry the Eighth and so on, the longest reigning of them all was Queen Elizabeth.”

It would have been hilarious had it been intended as parody. Unfortunately for Guy, it was just cringe-worthy and reminded everyone that since he leads an Opposition mired in the past – and a disconnected, fictitious past at that – he is just not leadership material.

Bizarrely, in the lead-up to the November Victorian State Election, his relationship with reality is probably the least of Guy’s problems, as we will see.

Victorian Liberal Opposition Leader Matt Guy, for those who may not be familiar, is the person formerly known as Matthew “The Lobster Mobster” Guy. He first came to notoriety following revelations about his alleged ties with colourful mob figures.

As Dave Donovan wrote back in 2017:

‘The Liberal Party’s close links with Tony Madafferi and his Calabrian friends are, in fact, simply part of its sincere longstanding commitment to multiculturalism. Indeed, the Liberal Party and the Calabrian business community are natural friends and allies. They have so much in common!‘

While his questionable associations cast a shadow over the Victorian Liberal Party, they did not see him ousted as Leader — Guy resigned after his humiliating loss at the last Victorian State Election. His spectacular loss to Dan Andrews in 2018 reduced the Liberal National Coalition total by 11 seats to just 27, to Labor’s 55.

But at least Guy had a profile, while, unfortunately, most Victorians would still struggle to remember the name of his temporary replacement, Michael O’Brien. And with the talent pool dominated by figures such as the constantly undermining Tim Smith, who spent the entire pandemic hurling toxic abuse at the Victorian Premier, it wasn’t long before the better-connected Matt Guy was reinstated. 

Guy’s previous career highlights included record approvals for high-rise developments and staunch opposition to windfarms, as Planning Minister in the Napthine Government. Guy has also been a vocal opponent of abortion law reform.

Perhaps the most famous planning determination was Guy’s unpopular overruling of the Bass Council’s decision to oppose the rezoning of a swathe of farmland at Phillip Island. The proposal to open the area for subdivision was vehemently opposed by the community, as expressed in 100 submissions against the proposal and just one – from the developer – in favour. The ever-responsive Guy didn’t let a little thing like community opposition deter his “kitchen table” promise made to the developer, however, and overturned the council decision, anyway.

It wasn’t until American performer Miley Cyrus drew attention to the ill-conceived move by alerting her 2.5 million fans on Twitter that Guy capitulated. However, while the land was saved from inappropriate development, the developer sued the Napthine Government and an 11th-hour $2.5 million settlement with developers (plus legal costs) over Guy’s botched handling was struck.

Today, the whiff of shady dealings still lingers wherever Guy goes, it seems, and he was referred to IBAC over fresh allegations of corruption just last month.

But Guy’s anti-environment and anti-women’s rights stances, his questionable alliances and dismal performance at the last State Election did not seem to deter his party colleagues since he is, once again, Opposition Leader. How little they have learned from the public wave of discontent that has demanded action on climate, gender equality and integrity, nationwide.

These trends have not escaped the New South Wales Liberal Party Premier, however. Dominic Perrottet, who may be facing questions over his own conduct at the NSW ICAC, has distanced himself from the Liberal Opposition Leader. Perrottet has chosen, to project a small ‘l’ Liberal image, working cooperatively and openly with Dan Andrews, rather than joining his Victorian counterpart’s anti-Dan club. 

Meanwhile, the National Liberal Party, decimated after the last election and similarly choosing a Far-Right Draconian leader in Peter Dutton, has at least recognised that Guy can use all the help he can get. This week, a report which outlines the extent of the damage suffered by the party at the last Federal Election will be kept under wraps by the party until after the Victorian State Election in November. Of course, the extent of said destruction is already apparent in the fact that Dutton and Sussan Ley could be considered its most worthy leaders, as well as to anyone that can count the number ofseats lost. 

It won’t help the Victorian Liberal Leader at the next election that the Victorian economy, under Andrews, has bounced back from the pandemic and now boasts the lowest unemployment rate, the best-performing economy in Australia and a higher proportion of female to male Labor candidates contesting the next election. 

The only thing that can help Guy, his own public utterances of idiocy notwithstanding, may be the ever-willing, predominantly right-wing media chorus, which has attacked Andrews at every turn, throughout the pandemic, his back injury and everything in between. However, while we cannot underestimate the power of the Australian mainstream media’s stranglehold, Victorians at least, appear to be over it.

This editorial was originally published as part of the Independent Australia weekly newsletter. These editorials are usually only available to subscribers and may be read online in the IA members-only area.

Follow IA managing editor Michelle Pini on Twitter @vmp9. Follow Independent Australia on Twitter @independentaus and on Facebook HERE.

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