October 2022: in Italy, far-right leader Giorgia Meloni wins the legislative elections and is named Prime Minister.

To get a place at the polls, the leader of the post-fascist Fratelli d'Italia party managed to "demonize" her party by broadcasting her anti-immigrant rhetoric on television programs that claim to be neither right nor left.

This depoliticization of the Italian media landscape began at the end of the 1970s with the audiovisual mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who turned Italian politics upside down and initiated the era of populism.

The programs of its holding stand out with a style of its own: a TV of anti-intellectualism, entertainment, reassuring and above all "apolitical".

The audience agreed and RAI, the state television, found itself overwhelmed.

In Italy, a society that no longer “feels represented”

The arrival of the far right to power is not only an Italian phenomenon, believes Italian media historian Peppino Ortoleva.

"It is a phenomenon that derives from the loss of contact of the left with society. It therefore no longer feels represented and it tends to look for something else. In Italy we had the Grillo phenomenon [Beppe Grillo , the founder of the Five Star Movement, Editor's note], then Giorgia Meloni".

And it was in an equally innocuous way that the Islamophobic Dutch far-right party of Geert Wilders won the legislative elections in the Netherlands last November.

The sixty-year-old's anti-Islam, climate-skeptical and Islamophobic speech found its place in the Dutch media, which opened the microphone to this type of remarks in the early 2000s.

One show particularly embodies the phenomenon: “Vandaag Inside”.

With its sports presenters and its very masculine approach, the controversial show attracts an average of 2 million viewers, which is not insignificant in a country of 18 million inhabitants.

In the Netherlands, radical ideas are now tolerated

“This format was very popular,” explains the specialist in populism and anti-democratic movements Koen Vossen. “Over time, it was no longer a question of talking only about football, but also about politics. The remarks about women were very sexist. Without forget the jokes about homosexuals."

Very radical ideas that were absolutely taboo in the 1990s have gradually become acceptable.

“Saying that Islam is a retrograde religion or that Moroccans are criminals is part of everyday discourse,” specifies the political scientist.

Wilders, anti-system personality

Added to the speech is the personality of Geert Wilders: the strong man of the Netherlands likes to present himself as an anti-system and anti-media personality, but who still needs the latter to exist.

“He plays difficult, which means that the journalists who manage to get an interview with him are generally not very critical because the media are so happy to have him on their program that they do everything for him,” comments Koen Vossen . So it's easy for Geert Wilders."

Get into the news

The way is clear for the politician, who knows how to generate buzz by provoking people.

A strategy identical to that which exists across the Atlantic with Donald Trump, Javier Milei or even Jair Bolsonaro.

The principle: make controversial comments to get into the news.

And as in the United States, Geert Wilders was able to rely on a principle dear to the Dutch: freedom of expression.

But this strategy cannot be replicated everywhere in Europe.

In France, there are laws which condemn racist insults or incitement to hatred.

But is it really enough?

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