Racism vs Liberalism: The European battle between Matteo Salvini and Emmanuel Macron - EDITORIAL

Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians – Charles de Gaulle

The mercurial rise of the Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini at a time French President Emmanuel Macron’s domestic approval ratings hit an all-time low, has become a concern not only in Europe but the rest of the world as well. After all the two young leaders represent the two sides of the European immigrant story.   

The 45-year-old anti-immigrant Salvini whom the west considers the most powerful man in Italy today is peaking at a time when his antithesis in the European immigrant story, the 40-year-old French President is being accused by his countrymen of being too authoritarian.   

A recent poll shows that 79% of the French population today thinks that Macron is “authoritarian” and 71% think he is “arrogant”. While the French leader still enjoys a fair degree of global appeal due to his youthful looks, sophistication and eloquence there’s a general perception in the country that he has lost touch with the common man.

His advice to an unemployed youth at a public open house at the Elysee Palace last month only went to prove that the public was not wrong. A video shows Macron advising an unemployed youth who was looking for a gardener’s job to go looking for one in cafes, restaurants and construction sites. The fact that the former banker Macron is insulated from the ordinary man today is a fact that even his wife Brigitte Macron has admitted.   

“Now, unfortunately, we are alone. That’s what living in the Elysée Palace does to you: we can’t trust anyone but each other. We’re lonely together, but lonely nevertheless…I trust Emmanuel and Emmanuel trusts me. That’s all that matters,” she was quoted as saying recently.   

The media also reported that 65-year-old Brigitte Macron has advised the president’s staff to let the president know that he is too “arrogant and snappy” with the public something that she too finds him to be.   

While the French president is grappling with his plummeting approval ratings the popular Italian Deputy Minister Salvini, who is also the country’s Interior Minister last weekend decided to dismantle a model town of ethnic integration. Hundreds of immigrants, mainly ethnic Africans of the Southern town of Riace are now slated to move out and spread in various parts of the country. Early this month the mayor of the town, Domenico Luciano who is also a human rights activist, was arrested for ‘helping immigrants’.   

A few days back, Salvini proposed that country’s “little ethnic shops” should close by 9.00 pm claiming that these late night shops, run largely by South Asians, are a “meeting place for drug deals and people who raise hell”.   

While these anti-immigrant Salvini’s aggressive moves have a strong appeal to the native Italians they have created a fear psychosis among the South Asian population comprising Indians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Africans. It is estimated that nearly a hundred thousand Sri Lankans, including the illegal immigrants are there in Italy right now and most of them are concentrated in the Lombardy region in the northwest of the country. Today migrants make up 20% of Lombardy capital Milan, the global fashion and design centre.   

A few weeks back burgeoned by his growing popularity in the region Salvini who works for hand in hand with French hardliner Marine Le Pen went on to attack Macron over his handling of the immigrant issue.   

The influx of immigrants no doubt has created multiple issues in Italy and the rest of Europe. However the solutions, the moderates feel, should not be decided by the hardliners like Salvini and Le Pen.   

“Let us not be naive, globalization is going through a major crisis and this challenge needs to be collectively fought by states and civil society in order to find and implement global solutions,” Emmanuel Macron was heard saying at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland early this year.   

However, given the manner he has let down his own nation Macron’s story has failed to inspire other aspiring European leaders to follow his path of liberalism.