From a solid man who operated in delicate international contexts to a traitor and even an “idiot”. The picture of General Roberto Vannacci was immediately removed from the center-right’s family album. He was the joker of the League, now he is the reprobate, the outcast, ready to be praised by the left. The area newspapers have already taken away more than one military star from him and are criticizing his strength: “Soumahoro is worth it in the polls”, writes for example “Il Giornale”. Is there a more ungenerous comparison for general Italian? Who knows if his long experience in the special forces will be useful to him in countering friendly fire.

Reading newspapers

Libero, the day after Vannaccia’s announcement, accuses him of “High Treason” on the front page, the greatest infamy for a soldier. Then, referring to his possible followers, he talks about “Strurmtruppen”. The first disciples would be Mario Borghezio, Mario Adinolfi, Emanuele Pozzolo. The latter was promptly defined as “the gun”, in reference to the famous New Year’s Eve shot. His involvement is a warning to the entire electorate.

“The general is already complaining. He talks about mud, attacks Salvini and enlists the gunslinger Pozzolo.” It is not a title from the “Manifesto”, but rather “Il Tempo” by Daniele Capezzone. Almost all the newspapers point out the general’s cynicism: with hell he will return the seat in Brussels (and Strasbourg) to the Northern League.

Not only that, the general is “in arrears” towards the movement that welcomed him with open arms: he has practically never contributed to the support of the party coffers, behavior that one would expect from elected representatives. Furthermore, the publisher and commentator Francesco Giulibei intends to stop the symbol of “Futuro Nazionale”, which is somewhat reminiscent of that of his conservative think tank, “Nazione Futura”. Nobody is available to roll out the carpet for him, on the contrary.

Feltri also mocks his latest book

“Il Giornale” sees Vannacci as “confused” and, looking at the polls and the first comments, he is already “faltering”. He is accused of having “the affair” with the communist Marco Rizzo, the “flirting” with Matteo Renzi (denied by Vannacci, who announces complaints about this indiscretion), the “tweeting” with Alessandro Zan of the Democratic Party, the symbol of LGBT policies ridiculed in the famous bestseller “The world upside down”. Filippo Facci, in light of his exit, reviews the “betrayals” of the past, from Gianfranco Fini to Angelino Alfano via Pino Rauti.

Vittorio Feltri, in his editorial, goes down hard: “conformist”, “he makes a about-face”, “amateurism”, “he thinks about his personal career”, “he had begun this crayfish journey with the second book, which no one got around to”. Not even a more brilliant writer: “a self-aggrandizing, inconsistent, unrealistic text.” And his escape: “ridiculous and unrealistic maneuver” (again!).

Feltri also demotes him to “corporal” and wishes him to “retire peacefully to the retired officers’ club”. There would also be, in his editorial, the definition of “idiot”, “but I don’t say this to insult. I say it for clarity”.

Paragone gives him advice: “You’re going to crash”

“La Verità” also has an exceptional testimonial against his unfortunate gesture. “Dear general, I’ve been there: 90% of the time it will crash”. This is warned by Gianluigi Paragone, former leader of “Italexit”, a movement whose founding element was Italy’s exit from the EU and the euro. After the failure, he left active politics and returned to journalism.

“For all the pollsters – this is the story of the former presenter of “La Gabbia” – we were there, in the range between 2 and 4.5%. I too began to wonder whether those numbers were true or not”. Italexit in 2022 went a long way from entering Parliament. So, is he a goner? “Almost certainly yes”, specifies Paragone, a former five-star member, who identifies the difficulty of building a party from scratch, or rather, finding the right traveling companions: “he will find himself with the immaturity (and sometimes stupidity) of those who believe they are ruling class and instead only try to enter Parliament on the shoulders of the general”. Those who follow Vannacci would only do so for a personal ambition that does not find a home in the traditional centre-right parties.

Many area commentators now expect a hairy courtship from the left. At the moment this has not happened: no one in the opposing camp is using the general to turn him against the government majority. The issue is entirely internal to the centre-right. And the most contemptuous portrait of these hours, on the leader of “Futuro Nazionale”, comes from Luigi Manconi in Repubblica: Vannacci “is Alberto Sordi, the most significant mask of the national character. Who, even before being a personality, is a temperament, a physical-moral attitude, an anthropological imprint. Perhaps a vocation. Deafness is that oscillation between boastfulness and sloth, between dodging and opportunism, between Tengofamiglia and Leinonsachisonoio”. Nothing more.