Italy’s new populist government has attracted interest in the
USA, and in particular in the small, but active American Catholic
anti-liberal and neo-traditionalist minority. There is a
perceptible fascination with the new League-Five Star populist
government, if we read the analysis hosted by the centers of these
post-liberal and anti-liberal theo-political circles - magazines
like First Things and Commentary.
What is at play here is not just an American perception of
Europe, the European Union, the Euro, Italy and Germany that is different from the
perceptions of Europeans vis-à-vis other fellow Europeans and
European institutions. There is also a theological and religious
battle going on. For anti-liberal US Catholics, the coming to power
of right-wing and populist governments in Central and Eastern
Europe (Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia) represents,
together with Putin’s Russia, a new and attractive model for the
relationship between religion and politics. Italy’s regime change
is so far the most ambitious goal in the plan of Catholic
traditionalism and anti-liberalism in America to take back Europe
from secularism, multi-culturalism, immigration, globalization, and
in particular from the European Union
[...]