Italy Dodges a Bullet, Leftists Cry About It

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On June 8-9, Italy held a referendum, the results of which might have significant implications for Italy’s future. What is most certain is that the results confirmed that Italy’s liberal-communist left is a political shambles and a moral void, and that the Italian people are sick to the back teeth with third world immigration.

The referendum, payed for at Italians’ expense, was pushed ahead by a rogues’ gallery of Italy’s spiteful mutants: the Partito Socialista Italiano (Italian Socialist Party), Più Europa (More Europe, a pro-EU party), Radicali Italiani (Italian Radicals, a leftist-libertarian party), and Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation Party).

Five propositions or quesiti were on the ballot, four of which appealed for the abolition of labor laws that the leftists themselves had established when they were in government, a succulent irony that was lost on no one. The fifth quesito, however, was the most eye-catching. Of course it was. It involved the one topic that hangs over our every waking moment; the one topic that, paradoxically, we can never shut up about but are also not allowed to talk about in an honest way: immigration.

The fifth proposition sought to facilitate non-European migrants’ ability to obtain Italian citizenship by reducing the required naturalization period from 10 years to 5 years. Despite the fact that the proposed citizenship policy would effect “non-EU adult foreigners”, the leftists chose a “won’t someone think of the children?” strategy and made it seem like the referendum was about giving Italian citizenship to poor, innocent, little ones who were born in Italy but have to endure the cruelty of waiting until adulthood to receive Italian citizenship. This wasn’t exactly the best idea, given that those very non-European second or third generation migrant youths born in Italy are ravaging the country.

Partito Democratico leader, Elly Schlein (left). If you’re wondering, yes, she is.

Hoping that no one would notice the carnage, the leftist coalition created propaganda material depicting the beneficiaries of their citizenship reforms as cute, smiling, seemingly white children (the kinky hair causes a bit of confusion). But of course, people do notice the carnage. They do notice that not a day goes by in Italy without some story (often obfuscated) of a so-called refugee raping a girl, an immivader from North Africa stabbing someone, a gang of migrant youths mugging some hapless pedestrian, and on and on. They notice and they ask, “These are the people the leftists want to give citizenship to?”

And so, on June 8 and 9, the leftists stepped on a rake and got a nice smack in the face for their troubles. In Italy, referendums must reach a quorum of 50% voter participation for the results to be binding. It’s a nice way to prevent the tyranny of the minority. It was almost immediately obvious that this referendum would reach nowhere near 50%, as during the first day of voting the percentage hobbled around 12%-15%. When polls finally closed on June 9, the national voter turnout was around 30% with some regions having participation as low as 22%. Essentially, only leftists and people with a migrant background voted in the referendum. Everyone else either went to the beach, to the mountains, or stayed home. A real treat is that even the voters the left could depend on rejected its citizenship reforms, with several provinces reporting 40% “no” votes on the fifth quesito. This isn’t really a surprise. Talk with old-fashioned Italian leftists, people who remember when workers’ unions represented workers, who remember when to be on the left was to stand for the Italian working class. They will tell you that they are tired of seeing Maghrebis and sub-Saharans all over their country.

Interestingly, some of the lowest voter turnout came from Italians living abroad in other European countries, and some of the highest voter turnout came from eligible voters in South America. A few months ago, Giorgia Meloni’s government made the decision to formally enshrine Italy’s ius sanguinis citizenship standard as extending only as far as one Italian grandparent. This is how almost every other country applies ius sanguinis.  Italy, as is sometimes the case, was the oddity. Prior to the government’s adjustment, there was technically no limit to how high one could climb the family tree in order to find a distant Italian ancestor and therefore claim the right of Italian citizenship through ius sanguinis. This is what people from countries like Brazil and Argentina had been doing en masse, causing stubborn backlogs in the Italian embassies and turning what should have been a straightforward process into a bureaucratic slog. Even though many South and North Americans with Italian ancestry don’t want to admit it or simply don’t understand, the government’s decision to tighten things up was necessary and justified. If the descendants of Italians living in South America or the United States really felt such a strong connection to their patria, they should have got their citizenship sorted long ago, and just because ius sanguinis has been limited to one grandparent does not mean that Argentines or New Yorkers with Italian ancestry are now totally unable to get Italian citizenship. The other avenues are still open. Stop whining. That may sound harsh, but Italy is facing a war for its very existence. Under previous governments, Italy led the entire European Union in granting the most citizenships to foreigners, and as this referendum demonstrated and as I have written about before, the citizenship issue in Italy has become utmost important. Italy’s future as the homeland and nation-state of the Italian people depends on who wins the citizenship battle. 

The immigrationists are trying to dilute Italian identity, just as they have tried to do in every European country, in order to condone and normalize the open society, the immigrant nation, the “majority minority” city. In the days leading up to the referendum, L’Espresso magazine declared that Italians must vote “yes” to the citizenship reforms and face their “biological privilege” and “whiteness” (where’s a Nordicist to tell them Italians aren’t white when you need one?). In an interview with La Repubblica, former Minister for Integration, the leftist Andrea Riccardi, proclaimed his support for the referendum saying that “new Italians are needed.” Needed for what? Needed by whom? Along with diluting Italian identity, it is clear that the left is also trying to create a reliable voting bloc by gifting citizenship to all the migrants they have let in the country. It’s the same tactic we see the left use everywhere else in the immivaded West.

Thankfully, Italians have repulsed this latest assault. Now, the Meloni government actually has a mandate to press ahead with a counter attack. The total failure of the referendum obliges the government to examine the possibility of stricter citizenship standards. Instead of reducing the time needed to naturalize, the government could very well raise the time from 10 years to 15. Even better, the government could respond to the will of the people, clearly expressed in this referendum, and draw up plans to implement remigration.

Angelo Plume is on X @poxesfoxes and also writes on his Substack page, Pox Populi.