(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- For years, Italy’s Northern League has derided residents of the country’s south as beggars, thieves and good-for-nothing rednecks. The party has long advocated secession of more affluent northern provinces, and leader Matteo Salvini once sang in a video, “Can you smell the stench? Even the dogs are fleeing. The Neapolitans are coming.”
Now, Salvini is asking southerners to vote for him.
“I’m here because I answered a call, and I want to give something to the people,” Salvini said on a campaign stop in Matera, a town of 60,000 in the mountains of Basilicata, a five-hour drive south of Rome. “The League’s battles on immigration, security, and good government should be fought here too, and not just in the north.”
To broaden his party’s appeal in the March 4 national election, Salvini has dropped “Northern” from its name, using simply “The League.” And he’s appealing to concerns of poorer ethnic Italians with a populist program that’s strongly anti-immigrant, anti-globalization, and Euroskeptic. The party platform no longer explicitly advocates secession, but it pledges more autonomy for regions that want it.
“We can’t turn Italy into a refugee camp,” Salvini told an all-white audience of some 200 people, mostly middle-aged men, as he presented League candidates. In a Matera hotel conference room, decorated with posters proclaiming “Italians First” and “More Justice,” he drew enthusiastic applause with attacks on migrants.
“The issues Salvini focuses on could have resonance in the south: migration, taxes, bureaucracy, defending a depressed area against the ills of globalization,” said Giovanni Orsina, professor of government at Luiss University in Rome. Though the anti-establishment Five Star Movement is surging in the south, Salvini “may be able to put down some roots.”
Salvini, 44, has joined a fractious center-right coalition with the party of ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi. Polls taken before a Feb. 17 blackout suggest the alliance is the only group with a chance of winning a parliamentary majority. While Salvini has made no secret of his ambition to be named premier, he and Berlusconi have repeatedly clashed over issues ranging from pension reform to use of the euro.
Perched on the edge of a narrow ravine, Matera is famous for ancient cave-dwellings that served as the backdrop to Mel Gibson’s 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. The surrounding region of Basilicata is growing in popularity with tourists for its ancient towns and long, sandy beaches, but remains one of the least developed parts of the country.
Sitting on the gulf between the Italian boot’s heel and toe, Basilicata—like other southern areas—has seen an influx of poor migrants fleeing turmoil across the Mediterranean. With almost 120,000 migrants arriving last year, Salvini has gotten plenty of support with his calls for creating immigration centers in north Africa, criminalizing undocumented arrivals, and cracking down on aid groups that help migrants coming in by sea.
“Salvini is the only hope we have to stop this invasion of immigrants,” said Adriana Domeniconi, 62, a Senate candidate for the League from the area. “We’ve become the EU’s rubbish dump.”
Salvini’s message of “Italy First” echoes Donald Trump’s campaign, and he invokes the U.S. president when asked about a potential League government’s economic policies.
“Investors should hope that we govern,” Salvini said, pulling on a cigarette in Matera’s central piazza. “We’ll do an enormous tax reduction like Trump, and we’ll reform the judicial system so they can be certain about their investments.”
Salvini advocates a 15-percent flat tax, has threatened to drop the euro, and says he would even consider leaving the European Union.
“We need to review treaties to make them reflect our national interest,” Salvini said. “The national interest is the priority. If not, what’s the point in continuing to give money to the EU?”
Those views appeal to Mario Scarano, 38, who runs a nearby café and says high taxes make it almost impossible for him to operate his business at a profit.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel “is running the show, there’s too much austerity,” Scarano said after hearing Salvini speak. “We need to make our voice heard.”
Abo Alhaija Asaadahed was less impressed with Salvini, who stopped into the bakery where he works for a slice of focaccia topped with cherry tomatoes. Asaadahed, 40, was born in Baghdad and fled the war in Iraq, where two of his brothers were killed. After escaping Syria, Asaadahed fled to Italy in 2010.
“Salvini should look at us as individuals,” he said as he wiped down the steel countertop in the bakery’s small back room. “We’re not all the same.”
To contact the author of this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Rocks at drocks1@bloomberg.net.
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