Matteo Salvini (Milan, 1973) gets into his hotel room in Lyon, removes his shirt and puts a green tie on his bare chest. It was November 30, 2014 and she had just attended the National Front Congress, where the ultra-conservative Marine Le Pen was delighted to see him on the podium wearing a t-shirt. anti-war shirt. Nothing else was needed that day. But his chief of communication, the person he most trusted, asked him to be photographed for the cover of a gossip and celebrity magazine. Luca Morisi, an introverted IT expert, wanted Facebook's algorithm to expand his boss's visibility beyond the political filter in which he was embedded. The plan was to colonize the flow of information from the timeline of millions of users who were not yet paying attention to Salvini. But the manual discouraged the time that an aspiring prime minister behaved like a Big Brother participant. Five years later, the rules have changed for everyone.
The leader of the League – a former Lombard independence party now transformed into a badtail of Mediterranean trumpet and low-intensity leprosy – put an end to the balance of Italian politics and submerged the country. A period of emotion and fury in a sort of reality show where he tells about his life, his snacks with Nutella, his disappointment after a defeat of AC Milan, the conditions with his friends and the lawsuits. Everything can be reported on Facebook, where there are more subscribers than any politician in Europe. The commands of the algorithm. Shoot the Animal, the software on which he sits to listen to the rumor of the web and fly the mood of each moment with an appropriate comment. The real engine, however, is a predatory instinct that has been underestimated for years by its rivals. The strategy is clear: look for and attack an enemy: Immigration, Emmanuel Macron, Brussels, Roberto Saviano, NGO, Pamela Anderson. That does not matter
– Is it against Germany? "
" He is against all, "replied the count to rebadure her.
The true personality of the" lone wolf ", in the words of a colleague who has known him for 25 years, remains an enigma . Also for those who have been around you for some time. Last minute faith, for example, now allows her to display a rosary and a Bible in the facts and complete the puzzle of her successful niche politics. Although perplexed on the other side of the Tiber and the Italian Episcopal Conference. "Religious? I do not remember that he was … But now there is the house full of statues of the Virgin given by his fans," says an old acquaintance.
A loud Lombard voice improvises on the other side of the telephone a theory. define the chameleonic character. "Some animals notice when a storm is coming in. Most are restless and run to shelter.Others enjoy chaos to destroy everything: he is one of those animals," says a former colleague of the party and one of his mentors before finally breaking the chains.
Salvini is Italy's deputy prime minister thanks to the agreement reached with the 5-star Movement (M5S) in June. He then presented himself at the negotiating table with half the votes of his interlocutor. Today, on the other hand, it amuses itself to irritate its political partner whereas the polls place the League at the rank of most favorable party in Italy (31,7%, according to the survey YouTrend, against 25, 8% of M5S). The supporters of Beppe Grillo underestimated the political appetite that first devoured Umberto Bossi and Roberto Maroni, his political parents. The same instinct that later crushed Silvio Berlusconi, who treated him like a jester until the March 4 elections. But in Italy, nobody ever hides the drama. "The goal was to take our vows and fulfill them, there is nothing left we have proposed the same leadership for 24 years and people have gotten tired.The change that he has proposed has been a winner," says l & # 39, one of the men who counted one day to succeed Berlusconi.The Italian right center is yours.The only unknown is when he will decide to overthrow the government and attack the palace of Chigi. [19659008FrenchleaderMarineLePenwasdelightedtoseehimonthepodiumdressedinananti-wart-shirt
Salvini, affable and direct education, divorced and father of two, became an activist of the Northern League on the streets of Milan in the 1990s. He never finished his studies in political science and history. "Independence will come sooner than my graduation," he joked. But he did not need her.The creature of the season changes, always knew when political music was going to change. In 1993, for example, he entered with 20 years like municipal councilor to the mayor of the Lombard capital. Italy was defeated by the bribery scandals of Mani Pulite, a lawsuit filed by Antonio Di Pietro at the Milan prosecutor's office, which left 1,233 convictions. Christian democracy lost the monopoly of 40 years, emerged the figure of Silvio Berlusconi and started the so-called Second Republic. A great moment for a military party founded only two years ago, ready to attack the institutions with the shout of "Rome barks". "Salvini was already there, he was always an idol for him, very charismatic within the party."
Il Capitano, baptized by Morisi, his head of communication, flirted with leftist ideas at the time which allowed him to build his own account on the idea of the people.One of his first speeches as echevin was to defend from expulsion the center of Leoncavallo, a busy house in Milan, symbol of the movements This is not that it was left, but it was not fair today. It was not racist and xenophobic, because in the Northern League, there were several who were at that time, "says an old activist.And if that was the case, only the Po River would be A camera has immortalized him in 2009 at the annual meeting of the League in Pontida, singing with a pitcher of beer in his hand a song of radical supporters of AC Milan, of which he is still a part "Feel the stench, the dogs run away, the Neapolitans arrive …" The South, as for all the hosts of the Northern League, seemed to him another country.
Matteo Salvini, in religious act in Viterbo (Italy) on September 3. Antonio Masiello Getty Images
The street has hardened the militant. Radio Padania, the party broadcaster that he directed and presented from 2009 to 2013, put the parliamentarian, the communicator The political scientist Giovanni Orsina, author of The Democracy of Narcissism highlights this period to understand the character. "The listeners were very hard people, very direct, without refinement … It was not easy to stand in front of them.This gave him great media skills.The day is fast, brilliant.It is good to remember , however, that it is an ability of communication, developed in a traditional political structure.The League is today the oldest party in Italy.This confirms an old speech: if you want to select the structure of political talent needs.And the traditional festival is the best place to meet him. "But the former Northern League needed a facelift.
The party collapsed after a period of victories as the owners of a force troop from Italy and reached the bottom of the well. Explosions of financial scandals, conspiracies, abuse of power, purchase of diamonds in Africa … The group had only 4% of electoral support and was approaching a long pbadage outside Parliament. Roberto Maroni, several times Berlusconi's government minister, resigned from the secretariat in 2013 and bet on a young Salvini. The old Northern League held its convention in December to be called. And in the front row, the new leader appointed Viktor Zubarev, a Russian parliamentarian representing the government of Vladimir Putin, a member of the National Front Le Pen Marine, and Geert Wilders himself, chairman of the Dutch xenophobic party for freedom. No one in a party used to the Lombard dialect understands anything. But this staging has advanced Salvini's international strategy and the beginning of a new political pattern in Europe, which now also extends to Hungary and Poland.
The leader of the League was a European deputy for two long periods (2004-2006 and 2009-2018) during which no one remembers anything important that he has accomplished. "It did not interest him or he understood absolutely nothing, which can be too," said a senator from Italy Force who has known him for 20 years. This long experience in the European institutions has allowed him to see some weaknesses in the community bureaucracy and the rise of nationalist movements: after months of intense contacts and the advice of Donald Trump's former strategic advisor Steve Bannon, he now plans to conquer one third of the seats. elections and change the balance of power in the EU. But the long international tour has also contributed to the development of a simple and straightforward mechanism for connecting to the nuisances crossing Europe. In 2013, 40,000 immigrants arrived on the Italian coast. The following year, their number rose to 180,000 and in 2018, another 620,000 landed. Salvini decided to start running in the same direction as the fireball. And it still works.
His public personality differs from private. Introverted, taciturn and very polite, he trusts almost no one
On the night of August 15, the Italian coastguard rescued 177 immigrants in the central Mediterranean. The Interior Minister closed the ports and left them for two weeks in inhumane conditions at sea. He embarrbaded the President of the Republic and was accused of kidnapping people (punishable by 15 years in prison ) and denunciation of all humanitarian organizations. But that has increased in the polls. "With him is happening the same thing as with Berlusconi, his enemies give him visibility on a subject in which he has nothing to do, the majority of the country is with him.The Italians do not want "And this ongoing moral blackmail bothers them and pushes them towards him," says Orsina. But does he really believe what he says? "He knows how to decipher what people want to hear, then he speaks clearly and simply, he has an incredible instinct as to how the wind will change and adapt," said Gianni Fava, a colleague of the party for 25 years and alone rival of the last primaries.
Salvini's public personality differs from private life. Introverted, a little taciturn and very polite, say in their environment, do not trust anyone. Not even completely in Giancarlo Giorgetti [subsecretário do Governo e cérebro estratégico da Liga] who hates his boss's battles with the M5S and threatens to leave if certain limits are exceeded. Perhaps for this reason, he depoliticized the hard core of the party and hired two men from the city of Mantua who changed the orientation of the league. Luca Morisi and Andrea Paganella, members of the Intranet system, a software company that makes software for half of Lombardy's hospitals, have become respectively head of communications and cabinet. Between them, perhaps the most influential people in the Salviniana Command Tower have turned the Interior Ministry into a fabulous propaganda machine and the delegitimation of opponents funded with public funds.
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Matteo Salvini, in the act that relied on his support on the place of the people of Rome in December FILIPPO MONTEFORTE deciphered with the help of Morisi, an extremely discreet man and faithful to his boss. "Digital philosopher, megaphone social, I almost always occupies the communication of Il Capitano," explains his profile on Twitter. He gives almost no interviews and is almost invisible (he asked to answer EL PAÍS's questions by e-mail, but the answers never arrived). It is the doctor spin creator of the Animal. The content is simple and straightforward, industrially distributed, as said by the digital advertising specialist and founder of The Fool, Matteo Flora. "They use a simple, close to the public lexicon that humanizes Salvini's figure.It's one of them.They reach grotesque levels for a state office that looks like the candidate. "But the success of its formula in the streets is not virtual.
On December 7, the League broke definitively with its past and took the symbolic Piazza del Popolo in the center of Rome. Never before has a minister in office appointed an act on his behalf. Buses arrived from Naples and Calabria. They lit flags and shouted the name of Il Capitano. None of its rivals, much more anchored in the capital, filled this space during the last demonstrations. In Italy, where the life expectancy of a prime minister is 14 months, no one doubts that Salvini will reach his goal. When the turning point of his tense relationship with the M5S will be marked by the results of the European elections, during which he intends to become the leader of the national-populist current. Salvini denies having that in mind. But if they get 40% of the votes, they fear their allies and may attempt to attack the government. Before this announced victory, however, came the triumph of his political account.
MORE THAN NETWORKS
The digital trench of Matteo Salvini and his hit formula go beyond the interpretation and rapid reaction to the most discussed topics on the networks. The strategy developed by Luca Morisi, head of communications at Il Capitano, includes accounts based abroad as lobbies such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) in the United States. This alliance was revealed by the journalist Sandro Routolo, whose Interior Ministry has withdrawn the escort who accompanied him since 2015 due to threats received by the Neapolitan Camorra. A few weeks later, the ministry decided to send him back under escort for the demonstrations provoked by the decision.
