Social protests | Blame for the protests? Migrants! Russia! TikTok!

Protesters in the Piazza Duomo in Milan Photo: AFP/Piero Cruciatti There have also been protests in Italy against the high cost of living and poor public services. The center of the unrest in recent days has been Milan. If you believe Italy's government politicians, either "the migrants" or "hybrid warfare", i.e. Russia - or social media like Tiktok, were behind the riots. The analysis doesn't go any further.

And what can you do about it? More police and more military on the streets, according to the government, more freedom for the police and harsh punishments for everyone, including the parents of the perpetrators. When it comes to assigning blame, one attacks “the left,” not as a particular party, but rather as a philosophical or mythological category. And this unspecified “left” – according to the representatives of the right-wing government – ​​condemns violence and looting, but at the same time defends the motives of the protesters and thus justifies the riots.

Many activists see the actions as a form of self-defense. If schools are allowed to deteriorate, if young migrants are increasingly excluded, if working conditions become more and more precarious and health care is increasingly privatized, this is also a form of violence. The young people would defend themselves against this with the means shown to them in their families, in their districts, and by their musical role models.

In addition, advertising and the media led them to believe that you are only “cool” if you wear certain jeans and certain sneakers, which are then unaffordable for the majority of young people, as a trendy pair costs at least 300 euros. And so it is probably not surprising that in Milan it was primarily shoe shops and the stores of well-known fashion brands that were attacked, demolished and looted.

The demands of young people are diverse, relatively general and, as a whole, rather apolitical. Less money for armaments and more for education, affordable housing, better climate protection, more justice in society, an end to the genocide against the Palestinians - roughly the same thing that the demonstrators are demanding in France, Spain, Greece and Albania.

Who is behind it, if anyone is “behind it”? Or is it more an expression of the general crisis in which society finds itself? It is often said that young people protested because they did not see a “future” for themselves. But don’t they see no “present” for themselves? And realize that they are not actually “seen” at all?

Most of the “explanations” offered by the right are simplistic and misleading. The reference to “migrants”, regardless of generation, is wrong anyway. Among the more than 400 young people who were arrested, there were more Italians than "foreigners", and the only common denominator seems to be their very young age: the youngest detainee is just 15 years old, the majority of the others are at best barely of legal age.

"For every problem, the government has a new security package passed."

The truck drivers in the south of Italy, who are blocking many traffic routes there to demonstrate against the absurdly high diesel prices, are more friendly than they are towards the youth in Milan. Due to the blockade, Naples supermarkets are lacking fresh food. However, this category of demonstrators has their contacts primarily in the current government and the right-wing parties. Within a few hours, the government suddenly made 450 million euros available for their needs. And although the truck drivers had set up several roadblocks with their trucks and blocked access routes to highways, nowhere was there a call to put them all in prison.

It was a completely different story for the young demonstrators in Milan, whose roadblocks were immediately enacted by a law. This “security package” provides for higher penalties, new criminal offenses (for example “violent demonstrations”) and, above all, more powers for the police. It is only thanks to the immediate intervention of President Sergio Mattarella that the military, which is now allowed to be deployed more frequently, cannot also take on police functions such as arrests.

Such so-called security packages are the government's preferred measure. For every problem, whether real or hypothetical, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has a new catalog of measures adopted. The one decided in the last few days was her eighth.

The government obviously believes that all social ills can be solved legally. If this does not produce the desired result, “left-wing” judges are blamed. They allegedly undermine the work of the government and oppose the legislators. The pattern is always the same, whether it is crime or migration. The fact that the Italians rejected an authoritarian reform of the judicial power in a referendum last year seems to have already been forgotten.

This article cost you nothing. Us: research, production and technology. We saved on office rent as well as on printing and distribution. And we gave up salary. Nevertheless, the calculation doesn't work without you. We need 300,000 euros by the end of the year. You pay what you can, in return we keep writing.

No paywall, no small print, just one goal: that nd stays.