Over 57,000 digital signatures in 24 hours. The bill submitted on the Ministry of Justice website in the “Referendums and popular initiatives” section by the Remigration & Reconquest (Remigrazione & Riconquista, ReR) committee broke the threshold of supporters required by law in record time.
What is this bill?
A popular initiative bill is an instrument of direct democracy enshrined in Article 71 of the Italian Constitution, which allows a group of at least 50,000 voters to submit a draft bill to Parliament, promoting civic participation in political life. Signatures can be collected in both paper and digital format (via SPID/CIE on the Ministry of Justice portal). Once submitted, the proposal follows the ordinary parliamentary procedure (assignment to the relevant standing committee for preliminary investigation, discussion, and vote in the Assembly).
The proposal in question provides for a crackdown on immigration and related crimes, incentives for the remigration of foreigners, using funds currently allocated to reception for their return to their countries of origin, a restrictive revision of the rules on family reunification and the abolition of special protection, and finally the strengthening of measures for the return to Italy of Italian descendants and the establishment of a birth fund.
The presentation of this project, developed and promoted by the Remigration & Reconquest Committee, was scheduled to take place in the Chamber of Deputies on Friday, January 30, under the patronage of Lega deputy Domenico Furgiuele. However, the initiative was canceled due to opposition from several left-wing parliamentarians—who physically occupied the Chamber’s press room—prompting the authorities to cancel the conference “for security reasons.”
The reaction online
The violent stance taken by the institutional left did not prevent the ReR committee from launching a petition on the Ministry of Justice website. The petition reached and exceeded the 50,000 signatures required for the proposal to be activated in less than 24 hours and is now heading towards 100,000. This is a real record, considering that other issues strongly supported by the self-proclaimed “civil society” and the media, such as euthanasia and voting for non-residents, achieved the same result in two weeks and three months respectively, even with the use of physical signature collection points. Only the bill to abolish the quorum in referendums achieved results similar to those of the remigration proposal, reaching 50,000 signatures on the Ministry’s website in just over 24 hours.
A divided society
Western societies are increasingly experiencing ideological polarization. Just consider the fact that in the United States, the possibility of marriage between people of different races or religions has surpassed that of marriage between a Republican and a Democrat. Issues such as remigration—i.e., the return of immigrants to their countries of origin—are deeply divisive.
The attempt at violent boycott by the institutional left saw an immediate reaction on social media, with triumphant posts by protest participants inundated with negative comments and, above all, calls to sign an online petition in favor of the bill. The left’s protest thus backfired like a boomerang.
What the data says
The demographic data provided by the Ministry also reveals another series of dividing lines.
The popular law is supported mainly by young and very young people, which is not surprising for this type of initiative, given the method of accessing the electronic platform for signing, which requires the use of digital identity (SPID or CIE).
However, compared to other initiatives, the pyramid appears less tapered: while many young people support this initiative, the older age groups also seem to have taken the issue to heart, so much so that – comparing the demographics of the law on remigration with those for the abolition of the quorum – the older age group (over 68) is three times larger in the former than in the latter pool.
There is also a large number of Generation Xers (here defined as those born after 1973) and baby boomers, while for the request to abolish the quorum, the age groups over 42 are all residual and more or less similar in size.
The same consideration can be made for two other proposals put forward on the Ministry’s website, one relating to so-called ‘emotional education’ and the other to the activation of a ‘national psychological network’, which see Zoomers in the vast majority (with a notable reversal of the trend in the first of the two, where younger people appear more lukewarm towards so-called ‘emotional education’ than those in their thirties).
The real and surprising fault line, however, is the different attitude between the two halves of the sky.
Men versus women
The vast majority of the popular initiative laws put forward on the Ministry of Justice website are supported mainly by women. And it is women who represent the absolute and overwhelming majority of supporters of very liberal and evocative proposals such as the two mentioned above on the ‘psychological network’ and the ‘abolition of the quorum’, but also the one that is exactly the opposite of the one on remigration, relating to the facilitation of obtaining citizenship for foreigners residing in Italy. In the latter case, women represent over 62% of supporters.
The proposed law on remigration, on the other hand, sees an overwhelming prevalence of men over women among its supporters, even among the younger age groups.
What emerges is an Italy in which political activism is radically divided by gender between nationalist/sovereignist and liberal areas, with males prevailing in the former and females in the latter.
After all, various statistics throughout the so-called enlarged West show that the female world is becoming much more radicalized on the left than the male world is on the right, but in any case with a gap between the two halves of the sky that has been literally widening since the 2010s. This period corresponds to the explosion of phenomena such as #MeToo, cancel culture, the exacerbation of censorship against right-wing topics on social media, and, in general, the triumph of liberal narratives in the media.
Final (and provisional) considerations
The incredible success of the ReR committee’s initiative emerges above all in light of a few considerations.
The first is the actual impotence of the threats from the liberal left, which has proved to be a paper tiger. Indeed, in a polarized society such as ours, its violent anti-democratic stance has undoubtedly contributed to pushing many people to support the ReR committee’s initiative simply to spite the illiberal and censorial positions of those who oppose it.
The second is that the issue is indeed of national importance and is transgenerational. Unlike the many flash-in-the-pan movements and mini-movements sparked by liberal groups (thanks in part to the support of the usual NGOs), remigration seems to be an issue that is solidly shared and cross-cutting among Italians of all ages. However, the reversal of the trend between male and female activism is striking, even considering that the remigration of several hundred thousand immigrants would have a significant effect on crime and violence in Italy, particularly that affecting women, such as sexual violence. In fact, statistical data objectively show that if, as if by magic, entire groups of immigrants with clearly defined passports (notably Islamic and African) were to disappear from Italy, the number of sexual assaults would fall by almost a third.
The third is that an issue literally erased from the mainstream media has managed to mobilize over 65,000 people in just over 24 hours, even if only online (with the not insignificant obstacle of SPID/CIE and the cumbersome nature of the website).
It is worth noting that while the censorship event by the liberal left in the Chamber of Deputies, with the physical occupation of spaces to prevent the presentation of the bill, received almost total press coverage (between news and comments), the subsequent exploit of the signatures – objectively sensational – was literally ignored by all the media (new and traditional), with the sole exception of the web page of the daily newspaper Il Tempo, which – a full six hours after the threshold of 50,000 supporters had been exceeded – finally broke the news.
It follows that civil society (not the self-proclaimed kind, but the real kind) has a vitality that is incredible to observe when looking only at the prevailing narrative in the media. We now need to understand whether a new divide is opening up – between Italians and the political class – or whether windows of opportunity for social activism will also open up within the government majority.