When a serving Italian general published a far-right tract in 2023 entitled The World Turned Upside Down, a disciplinary inquiry swiftly followed. Roberto Vannacci’s text was a sustained exercise in bile and bigotry, attacking among other things the “normalisation” of homosexuality, and questioning whether a high-profile black volleyball star could really be considered Italian. The controversy sent the book into the bestseller charts, and its author was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute.

A year out from Italy’s next general election, Mr Vannacci is a problem not for the military but for the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Now a member of the European parliament, in February he exploited his notoriety to found National Future, a political party which argues that Ms Meloni’s coalition government has sold out its far-right supporters through not being extreme enough. The “true right”, according to the former paratrooper – who once........

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