The Guardian view on Italy’s new far-right party: the rise of a rogue general | Editorial

From the publisher

When a serving Italian general published a far-right tract in 2023 entitled The World Turned Upside Down, a disciplinary inquiry swiftly followed. Roberto Vannacci’s text was a sustained exercise in bile and bigotry, attacking among other things the “normalisation” of homosexuality, and questioning whether a high-profile black volleyball star could really be considered Italian. The controversy sent the book into the bestseller charts, and its author was suspended for bringing the army into disrepute. A year out from Italy’s next general election, Mr Vannacci is a problem not for the military but for the country’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Now a member of the European parliament, in February he exploited…

The source's own excerpt, unedited