Stregoneria Politica is the title of Guido Taietti’s ‘manual of non-conventional political communication’. It translates to ‘political witchcraft’ and one can see why such a title was chosen. There may be nothing new under the sun, and doing politics has always been a messy business no matter which system of government was employed, but the advent of the internet and social media has rendered the political realm today even more bewildering and heaving with with a multitude of parties and actors all noisily vying for attention. How can a small political operation, such as a nationalist movement, make sense of this weird world and come to use this ‘witchcraft’ for its own purposes? Taietti’s book aims to help.
Guido Taietti has been involved in right-wing Italian activism for nearly two decades and holds a master’s degree in political communication from the University of Florence. Naturally, his book is filled with references to and anecdotes about Italian politics and Italian history, but this does not mean it’s a book that is only for figures on the Italian political chess board. Almost everything Taietti addresses and his advice regarding strategy and tactics is relevant to anyone, anywhere. In particular, ‘right-wingers’ in the Anglosphere could benefit immensely from being introduced to some of Taietti’s concepts.
One of the pillars of Taietti’s thesis is that ‘the right’ must be radical. It must be revolutionary. He is adamant that the encroachment of ‘conservatism’ into right-wing politics in Italy has had a pernicious effect. In Italy there is a fairly solid foundation of genuine third positionism, nationalism, and anti-establishment sentiment. However, Anglo-Saxon style conservatism has been seeping into Italian soil of late and causing significant harm. For Taietti, conservatism is almost indistinguishable from the liberalism it purports to oppose.
The liberals are in favour of mass immigration for moral reasons, such as improving the lives of 3rd world peoples by letting them come to live in the 1st world and ‘ending racism’ by creating multi-racial societies where everyone gets along happily. The conservatives are in favour of mass immigration for economic reasons. So long as the migrants come ‘legally’, the conservatives really don’t have any objections. This has been evidenced in crystal clarity by Giorgia Meloni’s government and her new stance on immigration. In order to fill in ‘gaps in the labour market’, Meloni’s so-called far-right government has drawn up plans to take in 425,000 non-EU migrants within the coming years. Of course, given that these migrants can and will demand that their families be allowed to tag along, the real number of foreigners Meloni is prepared to let into Italy is actually closer to a million. We know from experience that these migrant workers and their families won’t pack their bags and go back home when whatever jobs they’ve been brought in to do are finished. They come to stay.
Meloni used the migrant invasion of Italy to stoke support for her campaign, and in typical conservative fashion she focused on family values and Catholic values, and this was enough to be labelled far-right by the mainstream media. But she is no radical revolutionary. We see the same trick play out in the United States and in other countries in Europe. Conservatives, ultimately, serve the establishment and the status-quo. This why Taietti recommends the ‘real’ right stop thinking and acting like conservatives.