A traditionalist Catholic, anti-vaxxer and Eurosceptic: who is Lorenzo Gasperini, Vannacci’s ideologue?

A 34-year-old philosophy lecturer and former Lega councillor in Cecina (Livorno), he was won over by the “general”. Lorenzo Gasperini is the ideologue behind Roberto Vannacci and coordinator of programme. It was to him that the leader of Futuro Nazionale entrusted the longest speech on the final day of the constituent assembly of the party. Cultured and eloquent, Gasperini quotes the historic secretary of the MSI at least a couple of times in his speech. “As Giorgio Almirante used to say,” he shouts to closing applause, “the right is either courage and freedom, or it is nothing.”

“We must re-examine the euro in the interests of our country’s sovereignty,” he explains from the stage. And two points, he emphasises, are “fundamental: remigration and non-negotiable values, linked to the national emergency of population decline”. Foreigners must choose: assimilate or remigrate. Provided they can find a place. “It is not enough for immigrants to respect our rules; we want an Italia where there are almost exclusively Italians. We demand to put a cap on the presence of foreigners in our homeland.” And what about families? “To tackle the falling birth rate, we have devised a tricolour mortgage guaranteed by the state at a reduced rate based on the number of children. Having children is an essential priority for our people. We want Italians to return to procreation’. The family is only the traditional one: ‘For us, the family consists of a man and a woman; we are firmly opposed to other forms of family’. Complete with a provocative remark: ‘Let’s use the money from gay pride events to care for the elderly’.

But what are Gasperini’s political roots? In 2018, he failed to win a seat in the Chamber of Deputies with the League. Yet he has always made a point of publicising his views, through social media posts and interviews. Between Catholic traditionalism and anti-progressive provocations. He has led a crusade against abortion, going so far as to equate voluntary termination of pregnancy with femicide. He also frequently called for a return to pre-conciliar liturgy and the Latin Mass, seen as a bulwark against the secularisation of modern society. He was the one to put a stop to gender theories, complete with warnings about attacks carried out by transsexuals. His attacks on the Zan bill against homophobia, which was subsequently scrapped, were direct.

During the pandemic, he makes no secret of his anti-vax beliefs. ‘A healthy young person who gets vaccinated,’ he writes in a post, ‘shows weakness, a fear of death, gullibility, intellectual infirmity, a willingness to blindly obey the first politician who comes along and threatens them, and a servile mindset. All characteristics that should, at the very least, result in exclusion from sexual life, as a natural retribution.” And again: “Nowadays, if you’re not gay and vaccinated, you’re nobody. You’re discriminated against.” Statements that caused embarrassment even within the Carroccio, to the extent that the then Lega commissioner in Tuscany asked him to suspend himself.

Now that the pandemic is over, Gasperini has made the defence of patriarchy his cause: ‘Burn feminism, nihilism and ’68, and give us back patriarchy, now,’ he wrote on social media three years ago. In a post in which he argued that ‘1968 and the ’68ers are the ones most directly responsible, morally and culturally, for the wave of violence against women in our times’. Patriarchy, on the other hand, means ‘attributing responsibility, purpose and order to male strength. It is a classic concept to be preserved. It implies chivalry, control of emotions and the protection of women