 Hello, hello, hello, and welcome, I'm Meroen Kellele. We are DM25, a radical political movement for Europe. And this is another live debate with our coordinating team featuring subversive ideas. You won't hear anywhere else. Italy has just voted in its most right-wing government since World War II. Can't believe I'm saying that. A coalition led by the Brothers of Italy party that commanded 4% in the previous national election will now head up the Eurozone's third largest and second most indebted economy. Yes, the Brothers of Italy party who want a naval blockade to stop migrant boats leaving from Libya and have threatened to roll back abortion rights. The party is headed by Giorgio Miloni, who is set to become the country's first female prime minister. She's a critic of globalization and big finance, a religious nationalist who's vowed to protect God, family and country. But she's also reassured the US that she's all in with the Ukraine war and she's signaled to the European establishment that she won't rock the boat regarding the economic policies dictated by Brussels and the ECB. So how did Italy get here? What happens now? How did the left in Italy screw up so hard? And what would a progressive alternative that's in with a chance that the next Italian election look like? Our panel, including our own Giannis Farofakis and two of our colleagues from Italy, Federico Dolce and Patrizia Pozzo as well as our crew of campaigning and policy gurus are here with me to answer that and more. And you, you out there, this is live. If you've got any thoughts, comments, questions, rants, concerns, anything you want to throw at us, just put them in the YouTube chat and we'll put them to our panel. Now let's hand it over to Federico to kick us off. Federico. Hi, me Haran. Hi everyone. Pleasure to be here. Well, what do we start because you throw some very big questions in the beginning. We kind of see it coming. Okay, we're looking at the polls. There's nothing particularly shocking about these actually results from the election. They are dreadful, not the last, but it was expected. It was expected because Brothers of Italy invested hugely with the last government invested in being in the opposition, stayed at the position while all the other partners in the right wing coalition jumped in into the drug coalition supporters. And that was due to payout somehow. And it was already paying out in the polls and it turns out it paid out pretty well. What we expected was a very, very low turnout. And we, it was kind of easy to predict because these were the first election held in the summertime. It was the first time in the Republican history that we actually launched an election in these times with this timing and in this situation. And it was in a situation of very low trust in every political competitor. We had the biggest drop in turnout, more than 10% drop and the lowest turnout ever. And those two are the main two key factor about reading what we are facing right now. For everybody else, we see that in terms of absolute vote, the right wing coalition stays the same, didn't gain anything. Fratelli d'Italia just waited their turn and they eroded their partner in the coalition, especially Salvini and Leganoff. And they are now leading. They are now, and because they were expecting that they actually ran a low key campaign in order to avoid all the other competitors to join in a sort of Republican pact and to polarize too much the competition, they succeeded very well because the left, I mean, every other competitors and not just the left run separately and with our electoral system, they easily gained the majority in both of chambers. For everybody else, it was a very disappointing election starting from the neoliberal poll in the center, they are friends of Partito Democratico, they are the light of Partito PD in the left and the five-star movement. Five-star movement, actually they were pulled very low, around eight, nine percent, everybody predicted they used to be their last election. They managed to achieve a decent result, about 15 percent. They are very far from the fast of the 33 percent of five years ago, but basically when everybody else campaign against you, you gain somehow, you gain publicity, you gain visibility and most of all, they are somehow still seen by some supporters as an anti-system force, even though they were the only party that governed for the whole legislation for the whole five years, first with Mussalini and then with Draghi. And with those with Fratelli d'Italia are the only one who campaign against the system. So if we have to read something into these results, we have to see a low turnout and the two biggest results achieved by the two anti-system parties. We have, yeah, sorry. No, that's cool. Thanks Federico for setting the scene. We're gonna return to a lot of those details later in the conversation. Patricia, Patricia Pozzo. Thank you. Good afternoon to everyone. Well, Federico just did a quite interesting pick of the Italian situation, but let me add a couple of reflection to keep moving ahead and see what's happening next. As Federico already mentioned, abstention has been a great topic in this last election. But pay attention, not only in the last election, it has been increasing constantly in last years. Now we know why we can't think of different reasons, but what we should do and when I'm saying we, I'm thinking of our part of the game. Let's say the left part of this political situation is to reactive democracy, but to reactive democracy, we need to do it at transnational level because right now we have common problems which need common solution. Let me make an example. Just look at what's happening right now in Germany. Germany has organized and announced to come with almost 2,000 billion euros energy crisis. Of course, Germany can manage this and okay, that's it. We do that and what happened to other countries of Europe? This is one example in my opinion that we really ask us to find out and to move ahead at transnational level, building something together. Another point of reflection, the winner has been Giorgio Meloni. We already know that, of course. From one hand, we have Giorgio Meloni. From the other one, the second winner of this election is Giorgio Meloni. From the other one, the second winner of this Italian election has been Conte. Conte, the leader of five-star movements, has been the man who brought down Draghi's government. So basically, the winner are people who work in opposition of Draghi's government. Now, what's happening? Seems that Giorgio Meloni is having a lot of problems in creating the new ministers because seems she need to put technical figures in key roles. That what means? That basically she's keep moving ahead on Draghi, let's say, guideline. So we need to subvert, to invert this trend. And what I can say, in my opinion, this trend can be subverted only working on a new, completely new political class. What we really miss in Italy is a good political class which looks at a long-term vision and not only at our electoral outcome. So that's why even, we can even say that we need someone who has the courage to make unpopular decisions, maybe, but to move in that direction. So that are a very good point to start a new kind of debate. Thank you, Patrician. Giannis. Good evening from me too. Let me begin at the beginning, which is not this election. When I say the beginning, I mean the beginning of the return of neo-fascism to government. There is this popular narrative in the establishment press that this is the first time the neo-fascists are in government. This is the first time that they have been inducted into the corridors of power. It ain't. And you don't have to believe me. Silvio Berlusconi, who's already been prime minister twice in the 90s and beyond. Couple of years ago, three years ago or so. A man who is present today but a systemic press as a moderating influence upon Meloni because he's part of this coalition. The three leaders that will form this government are Meloni, Tarvini, and Berlusconi. His party is referred to as a center-right party, for C'est d'Aguien. And he's being portrayed as a Christian Democrat, such a right, somebody like Sarkozy in France, who is going to hold a range on the post-fascist, neo-fascist Meloni, who will be prime minister because she scored the highest number of votes. This is absolute rubbish. He himself, as I said three years ago, boasted. There is a YouTube video I can share with you. And I quote that he invented the alliance of the center-right with the League, Salvini, and the fascists. And the precise words he used were, we legitimized and constitutionalized them. Let us not forget that Berlusconi, when he was prime minister, he was the one that unleashed the anti-immigrant rhetoric. Routinely spoke highly of Mussolini and appointed members of the fascist movement in Italy to top-ranking positions. This is important because the liberal establishment, the liberal establishment, the people who supposedly go, ah, my goodness, neo-fascist is going to be prime minister. They want to inject in our blood an amnesiac liquid so that we forget what has already happened decades ago. The normalization, constitutionalization of fascism happened decades ago under Berlusconi. So there's nothing new there. What is new is that the fascist is not simply being co-opted by the right. The fascist now leads the right. Okay, that is a develop. But we've already had that because Salvini in the previous government between the five-star movement and the league, the leg up. Who's the one that introduced orchestrated misanthropy and organized murder and drownings in the Mediterranean as an instrument of immigration policy in Italy. We have our friend, the mayor, who is still in the courts being dragged through the mud for the heinous crime of having helped migrants. So let's get this clear. There's nothing new here. There's a simple twist, a small twist to the story, okay? Point number two. And there will be three points in my intervention. This is the second point. I'm saying this so that Maren doesn't fret. The second point that I want to make is that this is not going to be a fascist government. This is going to be a government with fascists in it. There's a big difference between the two, right? In the same day with Syriza was not the left-wing government. There was a government with leftists, like me, which failed to do anything in particular leftist. This is not going, I mean, they're not going to do anything different to Berlusconi or Salvini. In the past, they will be very anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-LGBGT, anti-trade union. They will introduce probably legislation similar to that of our bands. The Hungarian autocrats legislation, banning communist propaganda and Islamic propaganda. This will be fought in the courts. It will be nasty, brutal, but not particularly significant. What I find extremely significant, and that's my second point, madam, is that what this victory of Meloni represents in my eyes is a remarkable triumph for the liberal centrists. Because, let's face it, the liberal centrists were the ones that created the crisis of the Italian social fabric by adopting every stupid rule that came from Brussels or from the European Central Bank, by consenting to the banking union which wrecked the Italian banks and, as a result of that, created so much hardship amongst the indebted private privateers, private families, private business in Italy. You know, the Mario Montes of the world who said yes to fiscal rules that turned Italy from a success story into a disaster area. Now, that must be made blatantly clear. Italy is no Greece, comrades. Greece was bankrupt. Greece before 2008, 2009, 2010 had a huge current account deficit. We were importing a lot more than we were exporting. So every year we were borrowing from the rest of the world in order to buy rubbish. We were indebted constantly to foreigners, to Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank, Finance Bank, Ben Peppari Bar, Barclays Bank, huh? Italy, yes, Italy had a large public debt, but it was a debt owed to Italians, not to the Germans, not to the French, not to the Japanese, not to the British, unlike Greece. And also, Italy was running a large current account surplus. In the sense it was a successful country. From 2011 onwards, Italy had a budget surplus, a primary budget surplus. It should be flying. The reason why it wasn't flying was because of the idiotic regulations, fiscal compacts coming from Berlin, from Frankfurt, from Brussels, that Mario Monti, Renzi, Matteo Renzi and all these idiots of the so-called liberal establishment were saying yes to, right? This is the liberal establishment which created so much discontent amongst the Italian population that the Italian population was ready to rebel. This is why they voted for five-star. Five-star was a non-entity. I mean, they had no program. It was a nothing party. It was a protest vote. They even gave them 30%. They were prepared to try anything. The question is, why did they try them and not the left? Which brings me to the third point. This is a failure of the left comrades. Okay? The liberal center succeeded because they copied the Milanese now working with Draghi and with NATO, you know, on how to implement everything that's coming for Brussels and Washington DC. So yet again, exactly as in the mid-war period, the fascists are doing the bidding of financialized capital even though they have this narrative against financialized capital, yeah? So Milan is going against globalization against, you know, even the Italian state because the fascists never liked the new republic that came out of the resistance, okay? But they are in the end running that very show along the lines of Mario Draghi and Mario Monti. So it's a fantastic success for the liberal establishment. Okay, Draghi doesn't like the fact that Miloni has taken his seat and Mario Monti doesn't like the fact that he would never be anyone who can walk down the street without people abusing him, right? But nevertheless, their project is successful. You know, they created all this discontent but this discontent came to nothing. The liberal establishment remained in power with Miloni running it. The question is why wasn't this discontent harvested by the left, by us? And what can we do to change that? Look, the reason, I'm going to be very simple, very simple in my analysis. There would be nothing complicated what I'm going to say. The liberal establishment has an internationalist agenda. The fascists have an internationalist agenda. The only ones who do not have an internationalist agenda is the internationalist left. This is a great paradox. We should be, you know, very ashamed of ourselves. The international agenda of Mario Draghi is what's known. It's the Washington Consensus. It's Brussels. It's the fiscal compact. It's, you know, the policies of the ECB. If you ask anyone of them, whether it's PD or I don't know, whatever. Those politicians or political parties that accept the Brussels agenda, they will tell you that, you know, our policy is the Brussels agenda. It comes from Davos, from Brussels, from Frankfurt, from Berlin, from most of them DC. Okay. Now, what is the fascist agenda? Okay. While they are serving the liberal agenda, they have a narrative. Their narrative is internationalist. It's called Europe of the Nations. We want to keep the common market so we can trade freely, but we want nothing to do with, you know, with each other. Every nation for itself, nationalism, religion, you know, the Catholic Church in Italy, the Protestant Church in Czech Republic, family, Donald blacks, we don't want gays. This is a common pan-European international agenda. You know, when Trump, Meloni, Orban, the Swedish Democrats, those fascists that got 20% in Sweden, when they get together, they create everything that I just said. The Europe of Nations, that is, you know, nationalism combined with some benefits for the poor, the old Mussolini style of looking after the poor, pensions and so on. Okay. As long as the many, we will look after them as long as they give up on their liberties and they accept the authoritarianism which is confirmed every four years by elections. This is the agenda of Orban, of Meloni, of Le Pen, of all, of Trump, of these people. They have an international agenda. Who doesn't have an international agenda? The internationalist left. And we, DL25, know this, because comrades let's, I mean, I know that you folks know this because we all suffered it, but the people who are watching us don't know it. Between 2017 and 2019, Patricia, Federico, me, Lorenzo, Srećko, Meran, all of us, those of us who were there then, okay? We were going up and down Italy, trying to put together a coalition of the left to run the European parliament today, in the, for the European parliament in 2019, together under one agenda across Europe, the green new deal for Europe. And we failed. And we failed, why? Because the left was not interested in having one agenda across Europe, across the world. So that which Mario Draghi takes for granted, one agenda across the world, that which Georgia Meloni takes for granted, the left did not want. And it was not even theoretical, ideological opposition to having the green new deal. None of them came to me or to Lorenzo, Richard said, you know what? We don't like the green new deal that you are proposing. Because had they done that, we'd say, okay, what would you like to change? Let's sit down and work it out. No, you know what the argument was? If Maurizio is with us, we cannot be in the coalition because Maurizio is good friends with Melonjon and we cannot be friends with a friend of Melonjon. That kind of stupidity is what undermined the left in Italy. It's not just in Italy, it's elsewhere as well, it's here in Greece too, okay? But this kind of an interest in a common agenda and focusing on, you know, the enemy of my friend is my enemy, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, that kind of thing. And also, look at Podemos in Spain. We have the same problem with Podemos in Spain. Podemos had the policy of not having a European policy. Now, when you go, you are in Tiazenza, you are in Oma, you are in wherever you are, in Milano, and you talk to people and you say, you have to vote for us because, you know, Meloni, because Mario Draghi, and they say to you, even people who are well-disposed to you, okay, let's say we vote for you and you get in. What will you do in the first Eurogroup? You know, what are you gonna say about the electricity situation if the European Union comes? And you have no answer because you have a national agenda. You know, the fascists, even though they're talking about the Europe of the nations, have an internationalist agenda. We don't, so I think it's time, the DIM 25 Italia, try again to bring together the progressive left in Italy, try to show that we can all learn lessons from the failure of 2019 because it is the failure of 2019 that has put the post-fascist, neo-fascist in government to carry out the dirty work of the establishment of the Troika, of the Mario Montes, of the Mario Draghi's. Thank you, Janis. Can I ask you something on that? Sure. I mean, you're talking about the failure of tribalism and the purity of the left, whereas the right was united in this case and therefore managed to win the election. Isn't the situation worse though, today? I mean, aren't we more tribal, more isolated today than even back then? What needs to change with regard to the political dynamics for people to overcome that and come together in order to make a credible alternative? I don't think we're more fragmented than we were in 2019. That's certainly not possible. Once you've divided the electron, you can't subdivide it much further, right? You go into the world of quantum mechanics. I mean, we were as fragmented as we would be in 2019. What we are now, and you're right in that, is we're more defeated, we're fewer. We've been abandoned by comrades. Comrades who didn't necessarily go to the fascist No, they stayed at home. They stayed at home, right? Now, a little aside, if I may, you noticed how wrong the Polsters were in Brazil about Bolsonaro and Lula. Bolsonaro did magnificently better than Polsters expected. The same thing happened with Trump, with Brexit, with the Swedish Democrats, with the fascists here in Greece. Why is this? Why is it that Polsters are not picking up their eyes of the extreme right? A rhetorical question. The answer that I'm going to give you is, the reason is that they are not picking up the people who have been sidelined by politics, who don't vote, who abstain, and who suddenly see in the fascists something that inspires them to say, look, I may not like these people, but if I vote for them, I will piss off the establishment. So I will vote for them, okay? So this is what has happened since our great grand failure in 2019. We are as fragmented as we were, we are fewer. Many of the people that might have come along with us in 2019 are now sitting on their couch, watching ridiculous reality shows and television. Yeah, as escapism. And so what do we need to do? What would, that would, which would, okay, this is my personal opinion, folks. And I'll end it here. What we didn't try to do in 2019 was to create a political party that is solid, that has a solid program, and which is not simply a confluence of people who want to walk together and sing Bella Ciao. I mean, we want to walk together and sing Bella Ciao, but we want more, we want to have any internationalist agenda. And I think that this time around, we should be working towards that. Okay, thank you, Yanis. A couple of comments from the chat. Yabbitz notes, austerity leads to fascism. Hashi notes that many European governments are swinging to the right, people are voting for them. Will the EU sustain this if many parties in government support leaving the EU? So question. Salvatore Stefanelli comments that we shouldn't forget the ties that Berlusconi has with the mafia that he was almost convicted, or that he would have been convicted had he not changed the law himself. And Stefano Vergari, in relation to this question of the last time that DiEM tried to construct an alternative in Italy says, there were some mistakes made by DiEM. I'm a big fan of DiEM, but the analysis is good. But DiEM, truly, if I wanted to, forgive me, Stefano, if I'm misquoting here, to speed up to build such an important movement, I think you mean to build a movement very fast. And they were not able to talk with people. I think what you're getting at there is talking to the common man. Perhaps that we were more, I don't know, a more elitist movement. Please qualify your comment in the chat if I've misquoted you. So some food for thought there for people to get out from the panel to think about. Johannes Fair for a take from Germany. Johannes. Thanks, thanks, Meran. And thanks for the interesting point raised so far. Hello to everyone listening in and tuning in. And thanks for participating in the chat and letting us know your opinion. I want to pick up on something that both Janis and Pavitia mentioned, which is, of course, that we need to build the credible alternative everywhere, an internationalist left. And that is, I think, something that Diem is trying from the very beginning and that we're still working very hard on. And it's, I guess, now more necessary than ever because also short story here from Germany today. In Germany today, the one person from the Liberal Center, our minister for economics, Mr. Habeck, went in front of the press next to a CEO from one of our four big monopolistic energy companies and announced that they made some deals to go out of cold a little bit earlier. And what they said was that one of the villages that local activists in Germany have been fighting very hard for to not be taken away because of coal mining, because it's right next to one of the big coal mining of the company of Habeck that I just mentioned, that this village now will be destroyed because they made a deal with the energy company. And studies have actually shown that because we need to stop mining coal because of climate change and to not go below the 1.5 degrees, it is actually not necessary to mine this coal. So the Liberal Center in Germany today made a deal with the devil to dig down this village for making some more profits for some more time. This is why what we are up against here in Germany with Meta 25. And this is why we need to do this everywhere because also, yeah, these big energy companies in Europe, they are basically, you know, they have strong links, they are one force. So we need to build one force as well. And the other thing that Pavica mentioned was the 200 billion that the German government announced. This is for sure big money, although what they didn't announce is to how exactly they actually in detail going to put the price on gas and going to put price break on electricity because they are also inside heavily divided. So they went in front of the press with a big announcement number, but not so much detail on how it's actually going to work in the end. And of course, at the same time ignoring, yeah, a kind of common approach in the EU, which is, yeah, I think just awful in terms of, yeah, that we should work on this crisis together. And this brings me to something, Jan has also mentioned the 2019 election of the M25. When we run for the European Parliament, we actually had the proposal of 500 billion every year for a Green New Deal, for like, for a just transition for an industrial revolution in Europe, all over Europe, not only in Italy or in Germany, but in all countries. And back then, of course, everyone said, ah, this is a crazy amount. We cannot even, we cannot ever spend this money. And now it turns out the German government is spending one package after the other in this kind of amount. And if we would have actually put this program into place in 2019, we would have been much better prepared for the energy crisis that at the moment, yeah, is running through Europe because of the war in Ukraine and our, yeah, very bad energy system, energy market system that we described in the last episode, I believe for two episodes ago. And yeah, I think those are more reasons why we need this agenda and why we need to work on a credible alternative in Italy, for example, that we are talking about today and I'm very happy. And at the moment, actually involved to work on a program for Italy, that is something that we are also doing trans-nationally in the M25. Thanks. Thanks for that, Johannes. And just to further qualify that question that came in in the chat, what our friend, Stefan, who in the chat was saying was we need to be able to talk to regular people, workers, not just university students. This often comes up with progressive parties and if you look at Georgia Melonium and she's, I think she was described as a pugnacious working class woman with, if I understand it, the equivalent of a Cockney accent. Somehow I heard that in a podcast, a Rome accent with sort of very sort of woman of the people. So I think please also factor this into your analysis because it's very true if we're just speaking to intellectuals, it's not going to happen. Dushan, Dushan Payevich from Montenegro, for yours. Thanks, Stefan. Basically a lot has been said already by comrades but I would like to stress one additional thing which is that neoliberalism, what we all agree on that, but for the sake of viewers, neoliberalism and fascism are two sides of the same coin. Basically neoliberal has only been because they can pinpoint the fascist and tell the people, well, if you don't vote for us, yes, we are bad but if you don't vote for us, Meloni is going to come or whoever on the extreme right wing spectrum of politics. So basically they are folding each other. What happens is that they repeat the same phrase too many times and people actually want to try the other side of the coin because when capitalism fails, which is guaranteed and imminent if you ask me and left doesn't lose its shot, then right wing fascism comes, fascism comes. Basically it's much, much easier to direct anger of the masses and this dissatisfaction of masses towards the immigrants, the LGBTQ plus people and some other minorities, then to explain to them the class analysis and economics to be honest because that primal emotional reaction is much powerful and more simpler, more simple than cognitive abilities. Even Lenin said that in the process of decay, capitalism smells like fascism. So let's hope that this is at least the last phase of capitalism or techno feudalism. Why I want to now do a critique on the left is because I think we didn't use that shot as a left because usually the left is unorganized, self-censored, isolated in communication and doesn't offer real solutions. Basically why I joined DM and why DM is the only organization that I can identify with by far is because we offer real solutions. We have concrete numbers, concrete names of the institutions where to direct money, what laws need to be made and so on and so on. Basically, DM is my only hope and Mera25 is my only hope and I am very positive that Italians will have someone to vote for in the next elections. Thank you, Dushan, Amir, Amir Kiayi, our political coordinator. Thank you, Mehran. Yeah, just echoing everything that's been said so far and it's also about visibility of the public and the border left, if you want to call it, on the streets and I'm especially keen to highlight the role of those that are already organized in society be it the activist groups or unions and so forth. With the aim of eventually seeing such a level of street activity and resistance that these forces actually meet on the streets and begin to grow power because the principle of organization as opposed to mobilization requires visibility on the street as well as corresponding actions be they, for example, as tracks of truckers, port workers, students, teachers and so on. And then we start seeing as well the main demands of coming down the coming up, whether we saw it last night that in Italy there's a demand of the workers that have made the link between the war in Ukraine and the material situation that we don't pay for their crisis and their wars, low weapons and raised wages. Or if it's the woman or if it's the workers in Italy or if it's a woman life and freedom in Iran and let us extend solidarity to the good people of Iran who have maintained their protests in successive waves of against forces of repression and continue the grassroots efforts in resisting all forms of oppression while calling for full democracy, civil liberties and a life of dignity. It's not clear yet, of course, if this current wave will be extinguished or not but it has broken through major barriers of public consciousness in Iran and has gone past the point of no return. But then coming back to Italy and linking this because as Zanis also said earlier, the discontent amongst the public and there's also worse coming given a dark winter we should enact our plans that we have in our manifesto, our plan for change, forging broad alliances that share our methods of constructive civic disobedience as we'll have more directly organizing in Italy with our internationalist agenda. And we also have to guard against failures of the past. The time is now is to build, build, build and organize, organize, organize. And critically at this stage, the aim with giving all his movements together is to come up and support each other. So environmental activists for workers, delivery workers for migrants, tenant unions for peace activists, pensioners for students, partners for academics. Thank you, Amir. We all noted the next generation barging into the chat. Yes, this is real time. Okay. Daphne, Daphne Valkara, based in Paris, Daphne. Based in Grenoble. Forgive me, Grenoble, France. I was just throwing random French cities out there. Go on. I just want to touch up on something Yanis said that I think is quite important, that the left doesn't have a common agenda. And I would go one step further, is that the left has completely stopped talking about economics beyond like economic solutions, beyond taxation. Like that's the only structural, it's not even a structural critique. It doesn't say anything. And this keeps it from tapping into anti-establishment sentiment, which is extremely powerful nowadays. But more so, it's just like it's impossible to have a plan. It's like left likes to talk about everything, except economics. And that's like a very strange place where you're in historically, I think that's a very abnormal place to be in. And I just want to, I took a small screenshot from the election night tonight. So when I was looking from the live stream in Bloomberg and it says, remember that a weak scenario is, weak Salvini scenario is positive for markets. As JP Morgan pointed out this week, he would have less bargaining power with Meloni to push for higher deficit. So like Yanis said, both the far right, the center right, the liberals, they always have this common agenda. Let's also have one in the left, or else I think it's quite bothering. Thanks. Thank you, Daphne. Patricia, can I bring you back in and then we'll go back to Dujan, who wants a quick word. Patricia Pozzo. Thank you. And I want to going back to Dujan, actually what he said, because he pushed me to add one more point. We have at the moment, many, many left parties in Italy. At the same time as I said before, we got a big abstention. Many, many people didn't feel confidence in none of them. They don't feel represented by none of them. That's quite interesting because we, it means that we still need something new and we need it now, soon, as soon as possible. So keep in mind. And anyway, the M25 is working on that. Thanks, Patricio Dujan. Listen, I don't know who needs to hear this, but I need to say it loud. Tax the rich is not a policy program. The left needs to understand that it's a demand. It's not a concrete step. Also solve the climate crisis. Okay, but how? What should we do? Where does the money come from? What is all of that in a package, you know? This is why Mera25s and the M25 distinguish from the others. And because we have people with integrity who cannot be bought off with, bought off with small ministry places or whatever. And even the movement is, actually the parties are subordinated to the movement. So the movement will prevent something like that, which is a beautiful thing. With the M25, there is literally not a chance to fail if we are in the parliament or in the government, even better. Thank you, Dujan. Okay, Lucas. Lucas Febrero, our communications director. Thanks, madam. I wanted to, like Yanis, go again on a brief detour to Brazil, but it's gonna come back to Italy. Don't worry. Because it's my home country. And as you know, for some of the elections just happened. And like Yanis mentioned, Bolsonaro over-performed the expectations that we have from the polls wildly. And if you haven't been following it very closely, the way the elections has gone is not too dissimilar in a sense from what we've experienced in Italy and other European countries before. So there was on the one hand, very hard right-wing, xenophobic, racist, misogynist sort of block that of course has Bolsonaro as his figurehead. And then on the other hand, we had the left but also a bunch of forces in the old establishment that sort of coalesced around Lula, which is understandable when the other option is Bolsonaro, but it means that it was essentially, if you just look at the names on paper, it was kind of a big tent coalition almost, although it was left of center, of course. And there was a big focus on democracy during the campaign. The big banner of the coalition that Lula assembled was to defend the democracy, which is being threatened by Bolsonaro. We need to defend institutions. We need to, you know, there might be a coup. If Bolsonaro is a self-couple, Bolsonaro is allowed to stay in power and so on and so forth. And that's all fine and good. It's good to defend democracy and it is in the threats when you have someone like Bolsonaro on the scene. But at the same time is not enough. So the campaign had no real program to speak of. I think, you know, in large part, because it was such a broad coalition, it meant that you kind of tied your hands a little bit when you wanted to talk about economics and when you wanted to get into the finer details of policy. Because it's hard to, you know, everybody's on the same page as long as you're just shouting about democracy. But as soon as you sit down and start talking about policy and economics and so on and so forth, then the cracks start to show a little bit. And they were just hoping that, you know, if you ride on Lula's charisma and this sort of focus on defending democracy, that you could win. Well, he still finished ahead of Bolsonaro in the first round. But, you know, like I said, Bolsonaro overperformed the expectations and also together with the first round we had also the elections for Congress and that was a mitigated disaster. We're gonna have the most conservative Congress, most conservative parliament that we've had in Brazil for a long time. And that can be undone no matter what you do for the second round, no matter how you change your message, you know, the train has left the station there. And I'm mentioning this because it takes us back to this point that a lot of people have said in different ways that as long as you don't show that you don't have material policies that are different from those of the establishment, then people are going to want to vent their anger and show it to that establishment and they're gonna find whichever way they can to do that. And they won't particularly care if there's, you know, if it's, you know, xenophobic or sexist or racist so on and so forth. Because, you know, they're all for anything that seems like it might change those things on that level. It's not just, I don't think people are voting, you know, by and large because they're also racist and because they're also xenophobic necessarily. But we need to show, you know, that we're able to do things differently. We need to be able to show them, okay, when we take power what is it that's going to change in the material conditions? What is it that hasn't been done for them in the past that the left will start doing? And that's an issue even in Brazil when you have a character as powerful or actually as Lula, you know, even someone like him isn't immune to that sort of thing. But the problem is easier to fix because you do have him in Italy. We don't have that luxury, of course. We don't, you know, any Coletta to put it kindly to him. He doesn't have the same charisma that Lula has. So the problem is deeper and that makes it all the more necessary that in Italy we step up our efforts to really build this alternative that we'll be able to communicate to people on that level and show that we can do things differently, confronting actual power for interests rather than just colluding with them while shifting the blame on the weakest in society. Thank you for that, Lucas. One comment from the chat here, Filippo Boatis, says Meloni is far-righted inspiration, but she's also very weak compared with the other EU right-wingers. That's why she doesn't scare anyone in Italy. She will ultimately apply all of Draghi's prescriptions. Yanis, let's bring you back in. Just a quick comment on something Patricia, you said. It's quite right, but there is a proliferation of Italian left-wing parties. There is a plethora of them. That's our predicament as the left almost everywhere. When we created Meta-25 in Greece, there were plenty of left-wing parties as well. And one of the arguments was, do we need another one? And of course, it was a difficult question to answer. We ourselves didn't know the right answer. We had a choice to enter the countless, never-ending discussions amongst the different group of schools, different small parties, trying to bring them all together. Something to tell you the truth. I mean, I lost the will to live, even imagining, because these conversations are endless and they never conclude, never. They can go on forever, much longer than I will live. Or we could demonstrate what the principles, internationalist parties should be like and hope that it will pick up. Four years later, four years after we created Meta-25, not only are we in parliament, but the good news is that a lot of those groups that wouldn't talk to one another in 2018 today talk to us and through us to one another. And I hope that we will be able to announce soon, before the next general election here in Greece, which now has been postponed until sometime in the late spring, early summer next year, that we will be able to announce, and I'm confident we will, that these small parties that wouldn't talk to one another and now talk to us will join us in a coalition, a principled coalition, not a confluence of unprincipled people that simply won't get elected. So it's a difficult question for Italy as well. Can this happen? But this is the alternative. These are the two options we have. Continue to bring together everybody, like we've been trying to do and failing, something that clearly didn't even happen in this election. We supported, DiEM25 Italia, we supported our comrade, Luigi the Magistris, and all the others who tried to create something together. It was not coherent. It didn't have any impact on the election, but we supported it, in a way that we supported the Mélenchon in France, in the presidential election, even though we disagreed with many of the ideas and tactics employed by Mélenchon. The time comes when I think we need to take the plunge, like we did in Greece. Thank you for that, Yannis, and someone on the chat also echoes that. Let's hope the left will understand how to build a new united front after this tragicomic defeat. They say, Federico Dolce, let's bring you back in to close us, Federico. Thanks, Maran. I just want to have, just have a couple of things. I mean, you all said so many true things, so many true analysis, but as an Italian, I have a couple of things to point out, as Dujan before was mentioning that two sides of the same coin, here in Italy, we don't have that anymore. It's probably a luxury that we don't need anymore because they work bluntly in the sunlight together for years, as Yannis rightly pointed out before. Since the first Berlusconi government, the very same Berlusconi always refused to join the 25, the Liberation Day anniversary and manifestation, because it would have upset the far right of its own coalition, but because it never liked it. And we, all the parties in that coalition always had strong ties with the fascist, extreme fascists, even in France and from the national of the Le Pen father. And make no mistake, Brothers of Italy is a true son of that movement, of the fascist movement, and they have candidate in the past, the grand daughter and the grandson of Mussolini himself. They celebrate the marching of Rome, but no one ever really asks to differ from the neoliberal agenda. They work on the economic plan very well together. They see no particular difference. They see no problem they never had in the almost 12 years they govern together in the past. And so what we are expecting now, we are expecting a government that will follow that economic agenda, adding a ferocious war toward minorities for the civil rights. They will add even more verbal violence that Salvini had. They will work in especially, especially they care about indoctrination of the children to the education. And they will fight every program. They will go to children and say, please don't fight and don't beat someone who's different because they say that doesn't protect the family. They will fight violently, violently with two minorities, two immigrants and two leftists. That's what's gonna happen if that's not fascism. I don't really care about labels anymore. But on the left, we always have this big, big problem of a huge part of the left spectrum that was focused only on following economically the European agenda, the neoliberal agenda to gain credibility and to gain power. And everybody else who didn't want to follow the agenda never presented and never were perceived as trustworthy and reliable. So what we need to do is to present an offer and offer a solution, a party, a manifesto that can be reliable, trustworthy in its being radical that can bring a vision and perspective because that's what's lacking. And that vision and perspective, like you all said, came from being international from an international movement with broader shoulder, with many militants and with the good ideas, just like Dujan said, not just for demands, but how to do it. We got the solution, we got the knowledge, we will be trustworthy, reliable and radical. And that's why I'm certain that this is going to be the last time that in Italy we will not be able to vote for a radical proposition, for a radical proposal, for a radical party, for Mera. And we will be able very soon to present our own Mera 25 Italy. And that's our promise to all the viewers. Great, thank you Federico. We're very happy to hear that. It's been a fascinating discussion. Thank you all. We've talked about how the success of the far right in Italy is actually a failure of the left. We've talked about political experiences from Germany, from Brazil and elsewhere and the importance of not staying within an intellectual bubble. And of course we're sketching the beginnings for a real political alternative in Italy. Mera 25 is the name of all our political parties and it will be the name of the one that we launch in Italy when we do. And if you out there would like to be part of this, be part of building a real alternative in Italy or elsewhere, then please join us. The website dm25.org slash join, you can in a few seconds become a member and we hope to have you on board because we're not commenting, chatting discussion. Excuse me, I'm getting some noise out here. We're not a commenting and chatting group. We are an active action group, a group that wants to see change and see it through and make it happen. Thank you again for you out there for your contributions and your comments in the chat. See you again at the same time, same place, two weeks.