Italian police step up surveillance and security checks amid fears of renewed violence; protests spread across several European countries demanding education, pension and housing reforms
The situation is being monitored constantly, but authorities remain calm because no major demonstrations have been detected so far. Surveillance efforts also extend to social media, where such events are often organized.
Authorities fear a repeat of events from the previous weekend, when a demonstration against the high cost of living degenerated into violent riots and looting carried out by young people, including minors.
The “October 17 Movement,” a group that emerged after those clashes, had initially called for another demonstration this Saturday in Duomo Square. In response, Milan has significantly increased security, particularly in its historic center.
I negozi del centro di Milano sono totalmente blindati per timore di una nuova guerriglia urbana. Le immagini in camminata tra le boutique di Via Montenapoleone. pic.twitter.com/xTIR7BUvPX
The text reads, “Commercial premises in downtown Milan are completely boarded up for fear of a new outbreak of urban unrest. A look at the scene among the boutiques on Via Montenapoleone.”
Some shops in the area have covered their storefronts with wooden panels to prevent them from being smashed, as happened a week ago.
The increased security presence is particularly visible, with officers receiving support from 500 paratroopers from the Folgore Brigade, whom the government of far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni deployed to the city.
The soldiers are patrolling Duomo Square, where about 10 police vans are parked, and also moving through tunnels in the subway network and along commercial streets such as Corso Buenos Aires, among other areas of the city.
The military’s mission is to reinforce the “Safe Streets Operation,” which has deployed personnel in the country’s busiest and most tourist-heavy areas since 2008.
Preciso che ci ho fatto il servizio militare, quindi so bene di cosa parlo. E dico che sono la summa del fanatismo e dell’obbedienza ottusa. Per carità, i parà sono unità di élite. Unità da combattimento, addestrate per scenari di pic.twitter.com/HAcPEP4Bao
The text reads, “I should point out that I completed my military service, so I know exactly what I’m talking about. And I maintain that they are the epitome of fanaticism and mindless obedience. For God’s sake! Paratroopers are elite units—combat units, trained for combat scenarios.”
On Saturday morning, Deputy Prime Minister and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini toured downtown Milan to monitor the situation, as the day represents a test of the Italian government’s security strategy.
Last week, Meloni also approved a decree introducing deterrent legal measures, ranging from requiring parents to pay for damage caused by their children to the preventive detention of underage protesters.
So far, authorities have identified 273 demonstrators who took part in violent protests in Milan a week ago. Most are teenagers, and the youngest is 11. Forty have already been arrested.
On Friday, authorities monitored social media users in 18 cities in northern Italy and managed to identify about 100 demonstrators, half of whom are minors.
Over the past three weeks, Italy has laid bare—all at once and unfiltered—its fundamental social reality. On one side are truck drivers, farmers, fishermen, steelworkers, and a mass of young people who cannot even put a name to their own anger. On the other is an institutional apparatus that, instead of asking why the real people of the country have taken to the streets, convenes high-level meetings on public order and prepares yet another decree. Anyone familiar with the principles of historical materialism knows that situations like these should not be interpreted through the lens of crime reporting. They should be seen as moments when class contradictions—suppressed for years beneath the surface of managed consensus—become visible to the naked eye.
This article does not intend to provide a chronicle of the clashes, which have already been extensively covered. Instead, it aims to lay out the facts and ask what they reveal about the nature of the Italian state at this stage, about the social composition of those protesting, and about the structural inability of the ruling bloc to offer a response that is not repressive.
It all begins, as is often the case, with a budget item. Decree-Law No. 162 of September 17, 2026, had provided for a temporary reduction in the excise tax on diesel fuel until October 5; once that deadline passed, the government did not extend it. The average price has returned to nearly 2.50 euros per liter. For a small Calabrian truck owner who owns just one truck and works as a subcontractor for large retailers, that figure determines whether the month ends in the black or in the red.
The first spontaneous protests broke out in Calabria in early October. Then came Puglia, starting October 11, followed by Basilicata, Sicily, Campania, Molise, and finally Lazio, with picket lines at ports and blockades on the main thoroughfares. Truck drivers were joined by farmers, then by fishing communities. In front of the fish market in Termoli, a banner appeared featuring a skeleton and the words “You’ve reduced us to the bone”; in San Benedetto del Tronto, fishing boats remained in port. In supermarkets across Abruzzo, Molise, Puglia, Campania, and Calabria, the shelves emptied, and people rushed to stock up as they hadn’t since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Let’s pause to consider who these people are, because the sociology of the protest matters more than the slogans. We are not dealing with the classic industrial proletariat, the one found in large Fordist concentrations. We are dealing with a productive petty bourgeoisie in the process of proletarianization: the small business owner, the independent farmer, the fisherman with his own boat. Marx had precisely described—in Chapter 1 of the Manifesto—the fate of these intermediate strata, crushed between big capital, which absorbs them, and the wage-labor condition into which they ultimately plunge. The trucker blocking the highway today is formally an entrepreneur. In substance, his business is a disguised wage: the client dictates his rates, energy costs dictate his expenses, the state levies the excise tax, and he bears the risk. He is self-employed only in the sense that no one guarantees him anything.
In this sense, diesel fuel is more than just a fuel. It is the point where global oil rent—now spiraling out of control due to the Hormuz crisis—travels down the logistics chain until it is offloaded onto those at the very end. Financial capital speculating on futures, large retailers who refuse to renegotiate transport contracts, and the state collecting excise taxes: three forms of appropriation of value produced by others, all converging on the same social body.
The Second Front: The metropolitan subproletariat
On October 17, the protest changed in nature and geography. A hashtag that appeared out of nowhere on social media, “Italia in piazza,” called for demonstrations against the high cost of living, gas prices, and the tax burden. In Milan, Piazza Duomo became a battlefield; in Turin, a Feltrinelli bookstore was ransacked; in Bologna, clashes broke out in front of the train station involving water cannons and tear gas; the following day, in Milan alone, 271 people were taken to the police station, and as many as 220 were minors—among those detained were 12-year-olds, most of whom were second-generation Italians.
On the same day, in Rome, the CGIL’s national march and two other demonstrations against the high cost of living brought some 25,000 people into the streets without any incidents. This contrast must be kept in mind, because it disproves the government’s favorite myth of a single, violent protest. There are at least two distinct movements: one organized, with union roots and specific demands, and one disorganized, very young, urban, and lacking political leadership.
The second movement is the most interesting from a theoretical standpoint, and the most dangerous from a political standpoint. Marx had a term for the uprooted masses lacking class consciousness who, in times of crisis, can be mobilized by anyone who offers them a role: Lumpenproletariat. Using that word today does not mean insulting those young people. It means recognizing their objective position: children of the suburbs of Milan and Turin, often from immigrant families, excluded from the labor market even before entering it, raised in a world of conspicuous consumption that is never within their reach. It is a cognitive dissonance between imagination and reality, and the risk that this violence will be co-opted for reactionary purposes, as happened with the masses of unemployed and war veterans in the 1920s and 1930s.
The lesson of the 18th Brumaire also holds true in reverse. The underclass has no program of its own, and precisely for this reason it can become raw material for any project: that of those who want to set things ablaze, but also that of those who need an internal enemy to justify austerity measures. It is no coincidence that the government has chosen to speak almost exclusively about them, and almost never about the truck drivers in Gioia Tauro or the workers of the former Ilva plant who, in those same weeks, were striking in Taranto and Genoa to find out if they would still have a factory.
The state as a business committee
Il Manifesto defines modern state power as the committee that administers the common affairs of the bourgeois class. This formulation has often been dismissed as overly simplistic. The last two weeks offer an almost textbook-like illustration of it.
On October 18, following the clashes, the Prime Minister convened a summit on public order to evaluate further measures against those who exploit legitimate demonstrations. The October 19 summit resulted in the announcement of a decree-law that preempts measures from the security bill stalled in the Senate: deferred arrest for group vandalism, harsher penalties for roadblocks, and the strengthening of the “Strade Sicure” initiative in Milan with more military personnel. The League has called for the inclusion of preventive detention for minors as well. This would mark the eighth security package in four years.
Consider the sequence of events. A government that could not find the resources to extend the excise tax discount managed, in forty-eight hours, to find the resources to send the military onto the streets of Milan. An administration that, since March, has been issuing fuel decrees with two- or three-week deadlines—renewed only when the industry threatens a strike—is instead enacting emergency and permanent legislation on repression. Even the 300-million tax credit for the trucking industry, approved in May, still lacked an implementing decree by the end of June, to the point that industry associations were asking for it to be released. Social support arrives late, just in time, and in dribs and drabs; criminal legislation arrives immediately, and is designed to stay.
This does not stem from the malice of individual ministers, and those who think in terms of class need not demonize anyone. It stems from the role the state plays in a peripheral Western social formation, caught between European budget constraints and Atlantic rearmament commitments. We have military spending that will approach 45 billion in 2026 and austerity measures totaling approximately 23 billion. Caught in this vise, the state cannot redistribute wealth without breaking with its external guarantors, and so it does the only thing left to it: it manages the conflict as a matter of public order. Engels wrote this in The Origin of the Family: the state arises where class antagonisms become irreconcilable, as a power that claims to stand above society and that distances itself from it more and more.
The farce of contradictions
While the substance of the institutional response is consistent, its surface is a catalog of absurdities. It is worth listing them, because that is where the crisis of hegemony is most clearly visible.
The first concerns the diagnosis. Justice Minister Nordio spoke of probable criminal infiltration within the truckers’ blockades. Interior Minister Piantedosi, when questioned about the young people in Milan, admitted that there was still no evidence they were being manipulated. Two ministers from the same government: one sees organized crime behind the trucks, the other finds no orchestration behind the looting. Each chooses the interpretation that serves to delegitimize the crowd before them, and neither of them asks how much a full tank of gas costs.
The second issue concerns the passing of the buck. Milan Mayor Sala complained about an inadequate number of officers on the streets; Piantedosi responded by accusing him of being a representative of a “radical chic” left unable to condemn the violent protesters without exception. A group of mayors observed, with unintentional clarity, that pointing fingers at one another won’t lower gas prices. It is a perfect snapshot of a political class in which the majority and the opposition argue over the number of police needed, without either side questioning the system that fuels the anger.
The third issue concerns language. Meloni wrote that protesting against the high cost of living is a civil right, while sending a police officer to the hospital is the work of hooligans. Tajani called it unacceptable for the opposition to fan the flames. On October 22, Tajani himself welcomed the lifting of the strikes by the major trucking organizations, explaining that strikes do not lower diesel prices and only harm citizens and businesses. The right to protest is thus recognized in the abstract but denied in any concrete form that might produce results. You can protest, as long as the protest doesn’t disturb anyone; but a protest that doesn’t disturb anyone is a protest that no one hears. It is the old paradox of formal democracy that Marxist criticism has always denounced: equal freedoms on paper, unequal power relations in reality.
The fourth contradiction is the most serious. The government invokes the rule of law while drafting regulations—such as the preventive detention of 12-year-olds—that even its own commentators deem at risk of being unconstitutional. The state that demands that young people in the suburbs respect the rules is the same one that, to defend itself against them, is willing to violate its own.
The crisis is systemic
Gramsci, in his Quaderni, offered the most frequently cited definition of crisis: the old is dying and the new cannot be born, and during this interregnum the most varied pathological phenomena occur (readers are invited to consult Quaderni, Q. 3, 34). It is difficult to find a more accurate image for Italy in October 2026. The old social contract, founded on household savings, small businesses, and family-centered welfare, no longer holds. There is no new historical bloc. In between lie the pathological phenomena: youth gangs filming themselves as they ransack a jewelry store, ministers accusing one another, and a barrage of decrees.
Lenin, in the second chapter of The Failure of the Second International, way back in 1915, added that a crisis becomes revolutionary when those at the bottom no longer want to live as before and those at the top can no longer govern as before. The first condition is beginning to manifest itself in Italy. The second is evident in the paralysis of an executive branch that oscillates between last-minute extensions and punitive measures. The third element—the decisive one—is missing: a political force capable of transforming discontent into a program. The mass parties have been reduced to opinion-making groups and personal fiefdoms; the parliamentary left is demanding more police officers in Milan; the confederal unions have called for a general strike on November 20—five weeks after the clashes—and tend to meekly comply with government diktats just to keep their now-entrenched privileges intact. Meanwhile, in Milan, an “October 17 Movement” has emerged thatannounces demonstrations every Saturday until the government falls. Without roots, without organization, without theory, it is unlikely to go far. But its very emergence shows just how vast the void left behind is.
Herein lies the crux of the matter. I have argued elsewhere that the struggle today is not horizontal—between the right and the left—but vertical, between the people and the elites, and that those who reduce the conflict to a horizontal plane do so because they do not want people to understand where the problem lies. The events of October confirm this. The government has done everything in its power to transform a vertical conflict—over the cost of living and income distribution—into a horizontal one: Italians versus second-generation immigrants, law-abiding citizens versus hooligans, the productive North versus the South that blocks the roads. The slogan that appeared on the roadblocks, “The South Is Italy Too,” is the simplest response to this maneuver.
A class analysis that stops at national borders would be incomplete. The price of diesel in Cosenza depends on the Strait of Hormuz, and the Strait of Hormuz is closed or choked off because of a war that Italy did not decide on but supported as part of its Atlantic alignment. As early as March, the first fuel decree was justified by the international crisis linked to the war in Iran. Since then, the government has tried to keep up with rising prices through temporary discounts, while continuing to commit to rearmament goals and European austerity.
It is the old Leninist thesis on imperialism, updated to a condition of subordination. A country that does not control its own energy policy or its own foreign policy ends up passing on the costs of other people’s wars to the working classes. Sanctions against Russia have already driven up utility bills; the war in the Gulf is now driving up fuel prices. The bill always lands at the same address: the truck driver, the fisherman, the suburban family watching their grocery cart empty. While defense industry stocks rise, the real country grinds to a halt.
This is why Italy’s social crisis cannot be resolved with yet another extension of the fuel tax. It can be resolved—if at all—by breaking the constraints that make redistribution impossible: the European budget constraint in its current form, the military spending target, and the automatic alignment with wars that Italy endures without having any interest in them. Peace, energy sovereignty, and social justice are not three separate demands. They are the same demand viewed from three angles.
Who is asking for mercy, and from whom?
There is one image that stands out from these past weeks, and it is the skeleton on the banner in Termoli. It is not an image of revolt. It is an image of supplication: a people exposing their emaciated bodies and asking to be seen. The institutions have responded to this plea with the language of the criminal code, with mutual accusations between ministers and mayors, and with a tally of those arrested.
It must be stated clearly, because clarity is a duty of analysis: the devastation of a bookstore or the looting of a jewelry store is not class struggle. They are a symptom of a society that has ceased to offer its young people any sense of belonging, and the left, by romanticizing them, commits the same error as the right, which merely criminalizes them. Both fail to ask themselves how to transform that anger into consciousness. But it is equally clear that a state capable of responding to need only through force has lost its function as a social organism and has been reduced to an apparatus for defending those in power.
Italian history is all too familiar with these developments. Major social crises without political direction have always ended up shifting to the right, with an order imposed from above on the ruins of a fragmented movement. The alternative exists only if someone resumes the patient work that Gramsci called the “construction of hegemony”: organizing truck drivers and young people in the suburbs, fishermen and workers in Taranto, within a single vision that addresses wages, energy, peace, and sovereignty. This is not a task for talk shows or executive orders.
It is a political task in the oldest sense of the term, and institutional Italy, for now, has shown that it does not even want to acknowledge it.
Milano assurge così a paradigma di un Occidente che esclude ed emargina, privo di prospettive, privo di un’autentica volontà di invertire la rotta, votato più o meno consapevolmente all’autodistruzione.
Salone di rappresentanza del Comune di Milano, tra stucchi e affreschi, una composita schiera degli anziani più abbienti della città premia dei loro pari grado per età e per reddito, in mezzo a un effluvio di parole tanto vuote quanto altisonanti, un imbarazzante racconto di una città immaginaria, che esiste solo nelle chiacchiere dei loro ristretti circoli di amici e conoscenti, è tutta una narrazione di frizzi e lazzi, scoppiettanti meraviglie, luminose eccellenze, immancabili successi, se la suonano e se la cantano tra di loro, in mezzo a un tonitruante profluvio di aggettivi tutti superlativi, anzi, ultra – superlativi, un coretto autoreferenziale parossistico ed entusiastico in cui scambiano – forse inconsapevolmente – lo specchio dentro cui si rimirano felici e beati per una finestra sulla città.
D’altronde si frequentano abitualmente e assolutamente solo tra loro nell’ora dell’aperitivo e della cena e non riescono a vedere null’altro che loro stessi, anche la cameriera che porta i piatti in tavola è una specie di fantasmatica presenza a suo modo sconosciuta ed evanescente, di cui a mala pena ricordano l’esotico nome peruviano o filippino. Sono i campioni della società neo – schiavile[1], inventata con maestria palazzinara dai maggiorenti politici della città, ogni vagonata di cemento, riversatasi su Milano nell’ultimo decennio in quantità impressionanti, ha avuto effetti sociali dirompenti e deflagranti aumentando il divario sociale, costruendo schiere di poveri, lavoratori a basso reddito e pensionati, con i primi spesso a servizio del sempre più ristretto, ma pur considerevole, cerchio dei benestanti.
Domenica 18 ottobre 2026 – pomeriggio
Come non fosse bastata la guerriglia urbana scatenatasi in piazza Duomo e tutto attorno, a margine della manifestazione di sabato 17 ottobre contro il caro – vita, il caro – carburanti, il prezzo sempre più proibitivo dei prodotti alimentari, le bollette aumentate di un terzo e per ciò stesso sempre più intollerabili, almeno per quella metà di milanesi che a fatica arriva alla terza settimana del mese, ecco che ragazzini a mala pena quattordicenni si danno appuntamento in branco per la domenica.
È rabbia pura, scriteriata e distruttrice, è odio per tutto quello che vedono e da cui sono esclusi. Spaccano e rubano, è un esproprio proletario compiuto da masse di ragazzini che non hanno nessuna consapevolezza di essere proletari, ma che in ogni caso si comportano in questo modo perché non vogliono essere proletari, ovvero l’ultimo gradino di una società pesantemente ingiusta, diseguale, escludente, hanno un istintuale desiderio di uguaglianza, ma non la sanno declinare in nessun modo, anche perché tanto è impossibile, il divario sociale non è colmabile, l’ammissione al ristretto circolo dei possidenti che possono permettersi di comprare e possedere quello che vogliono non li riguarda, purtroppo non tocca neppure tutte e tutti quei milanesi che son scesi in piazza pacificamente il giorno precedente.
Questi ragazzini sono fuori da tutto, vittime di una città e di una società in cui gli abbienti organizzano convegni sull’inclusività, in cui volano paroloni e discorsoni pieni di propositi, i quali terminano appunto all’ora dell’aperitivo.
Sono ragazzine e ragazzini cresciuti nelle periferie invisibili, povere, quelle in cui non arriva la metropolitana e gli autobus e i tram sono stati dimezzati negli ultimi anni, non credono in niente e in nessuno. Si muovono in branco, perché solo dentro il branco dei loro pari riconoscono quel minimo di uguaglianza che non trovano da nessuna altra parte.
Odiano la scuola, perché è vuota, perché non offre prospettive, perché usa parole antiche e a volte incomprensibili, perché i professori sono vecchi e hanno l’età dei loro nonni che stanno a Lima, al Cairo, a Manila, perché studiare molto difficilmente potrà permettere loro di emanciparsi dalla povertà, anzi è certamente inutile, perché tanto sanno già benissimo a dodici anni che i loro genitori non avranno mai i soldi per mandarli all’università.
Disprezzano i loro genitori, li disprezzano profondamente, con una rabbia che spesso cancella ogni affetto. Li guardano consumarsi di fatica per portare a casa il pane della sopravvivenza, donne e uomini italiani e più spesso di tutto il mondo che si alzano alle quattro del mattino, il papà per andare a pulire gli uffici degli abbienti, la mamma per sbrigare fino alle sei del mattino le questioni di casa propria e poi prendere anche lei quel bus che non arriva mai per andare a pulire le case di quegli stessi abbienti, per portare a passeggio i loro cani, per stirare le loro camicie e per preparare la loro cena. Gli uomini lavorano anche nell’edilizia, ogni cantiere è una babele di lingue, nell’urbanistica, là dove si rifanno marciapiedi e strade asfaltate si sente solo parlare arabo, chissà se per appalto diretto o subappalto, o purtroppo, come accade non di rado, per subappalto di un altro subappalto, fanno i custodi dei palazzi in cui gli abbienti a mala pena passando la mattina biascicano loro un annoiato “buongiorno”.
Lo schianto tra la città immaginaria, o per meglio dire reale per una ristrettissima minoranza, e quella reale, o per meglio dire dura e povera per la stragrande maggioranza, ha la violenza delle vetrine mandate in frantumi, così la società, come quei vetri sfondati, collassa senza lasciare margine alcuno di ricomposizione.
Un mondo peggiorato dall’individualismo, un universo che ha perso ogni spazio sociale e collettivo in cui ritrovarsi e confrontarsi, in cui la fatica e il sacrificio sono visti come la condizione dello sfruttato neo – schiavile, non del lavoratore, anche perché il lavoratore riceve sempre meno diritti e meno rispetto e dunque ha sempre meno dignità.
Una società che coltiva il culto della ricchezza e che (auto)premia e (auto)celebra chi l’esibisce, che marginalizza e giudica negativamente chi da quella ricchezza è escluso.
Una società senza pietà, piena di un’arroganza diffusa e cattiva, che ha elevato l’esibizionismo della ricchezza e il disprezzo per chi non la possiede a massima espressione di giudizio verso le altre e gli altri.
Le ragazzine e i ragazzini delle periferie respirano questo clima tossico in cui l’avere è tutto e l’essere gli è totalmente subordinato.
Respirano la violenza del disprezzo che li marginalizza e a loro volta – come detto – hanno fatto proprio quel disprezzo al punto da riversarlo sui loro genitori, li osservano senza capirli, guardandoli schiacciati dalla fatica quotidiana, inginocchiati davanti all’arroganza e alla prepotenza degli abbienti.
I genitori tristi e sconfortati si interrogano mestamente su una società, quella occidentale, così violenta da aver distrutto qualsiasi valore, qualsiasi rispetto, qualsiasi affetto. Amano i loro figli, cercano di mostrare con il loro impegno quell’amore, ma appunto non sono capiti e non sono ricambiati, maturando indicibile interiore dolore.
È una società divaricata, del tutto frammentata e atomizzata, non vi è assolutamente alcun progetto per la costruzione di una città partecipata e condivisa, non esiste alcuna autentica volontà di una ricomposizione comunitaria.
È la deriva finale di una società priva di autentica empatia, di sincero interesse per il prossimo.
Ora il governo italiano vara leggi per la punibilità dei minorenni, aumenteranno i carcerati dei penitenziari minorili, un muro con le sbarre che terrà nascosta per un po’ una minuscola porzione del disagio sociale e giovanile.
Nulla più.
Milano assurge così a paradigma di un Occidente che esclude ed emargina, privo di prospettive, privo di un’autentica volontà di invertire la rotta, votato più o meno consapevolmente all’autodistruzione.
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[1] Leggasi quanto già dettagliatamente spiegato in https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/07/27/beppe-sala-sindaco-di-milano-inventore-della-post-modernita-neo-schiavile/
Italian authorities are examining whether foreign interference helped intensify violent protests across the country, as Defence Minister Guido Crosetto warns that social media is being used as an instrument of hybrid warfare. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has introduced emergency security measures and deployed additional troops to Milan, while further demonstrations are planned for Saturday, 24 October.
Italy is investigating the possibility that foreign actors, including Russian operatives, helped amplify the violent unrest that swept Milan and other Italian cities on 17–18 October. The inquiry introduces a national security dimension to demonstrations initially driven by rising living costs, dissatisfaction with public services and broader economic grievances.
According to information disclosed about the government’s intelligence inquiries, officials working under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni have requested assessments of whether foreign provocateurs contributed to the disorder. No public evidence has established that Moscow organised the violence, and Meloni’s office has declined to comment on the reported intelligence discussions.
The developments follow EU Today’s earlier coverage of the Milan disturbances, which documented extensive looting, attacks on police and the detention of hundreds of young people, many of them minors. Since then, Rome has moved beyond emergency consultations, approving legislation that expands police powers and introduces tougher criminal penalties for violent demonstrations.
On Saturday, 24 October, Italian security forces are preparing for another wave of protests, with additional military personnel, drones and specialist police units deployed in several major cities. The immediate question is whether the government can prevent further disorder while establishing how much of the unrest was locally organised and whether foreign information operations influenced its development.
Crosetto warns of hybrid warfare through social media
Defence Minister Guido Crosetto introduced the hybrid warfare argument during a Defence Procurement Forum in Rome on Tuesday, 20 October. In remarks recorded by Italian public broadcaster Rai, he described the disturbances as the culmination of a form of conflict being conducted through TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms.
Crosetto argued that young Italians were undergoing what he called a form of counter-education outside their families and schools, absorbing political attitudes and values increasingly hostile to democratic institutions. He criticised Western governments for failing to recognise the consequences of this process, although he did not publicly present intelligence establishing Russian responsibility for the riots.
His comments also exposed differences within the governing coalition. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini questioned suggestions of Russian involvement, arguing that the immediate priority was identifying violent groups and preventing their movement into Milan.
Russian information operations under scrutiny
European investigators have identified activity by established Russia-linked disinformation networks, including Operation Overload and Doppelgänger, which have circulated and amplified material concerning the unrest.
These operations have previously used manipulated content, misleading narratives and coordinated online distribution to influence European audiences. In the present case, investigations into the online amplification of the violence have identified foreign exploitation of the disturbances, rather than proof that foreign governments organised them.
The European Commission has consequently declined to initiate emergency intervention against social media platforms, citing insufficient evidence linking foreign manipulation directly to the organisation of the protests.
France has taken a similarly cautious position. President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that foreign actors had manipulated information after the violence but said there was no established evidence that they caused the disturbances. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has separately identified hostile narratives originating from Russia, China and Iran.
For European security authorities, the principal investigative question concerns the relationship between genuine domestic grievances and externally coordinated information campaigns. Foreign networks can exploit political divisions without necessarily directing the organisations or individuals involved in street violence.
Meloni introduces tougher security legislation
Meanwhile, Meloni’s government has proceeded with a substantial legislative response. Following cabinet approval on 20 October, Decree-Law No. 190 of 22 October 2026 entered into force on 23 October.
The legislation introduces penalties of two to five years’ imprisonment and fines of €10,000 to €20,000 for specified forms of organised violence during public demonstrations. Those organising or encouraging qualifying violent groups, including through digital communications, face potential prison terms of four to twelve years. It also expands provisions concerning juvenile offenders and preventive policing. The decree must undergo parliamentary consideration within 60 days.
Separately, the Italian Defence Ministry confirmed the deployment of 500 additional soldiers to Milan under Operation Strade Sicure until 31 December. The soldiers will reinforce security around sensitive locations and support existing police operations without acquiring additional judicial policing powers.
New demonstrations test the government’s response
Security arrangements have been intensified ahead of demonstrations scheduled for Saturday, 24 October, in Milan, Rome, Turin, Bologna, Florence and other cities.
According to the latest security preparations, Rome is deploying approximately 1,500 officers, while Milan is preparing a combined police and military presence supported by aerial surveillance.
On Friday, Italian investigators conducted searches targeting approximately 100 people suspected of involvement in the previous weekend’s disturbances, including 51 minors. Authorities are also monitoring online calls for renewed protests, some organised by groups whose leadership and membership remain unclear.
The unrest presents Meloni with two parallel challenges: containing violence and determining whether hostile foreign networks have played a significant role in its escalation. Italy’s investigations may help establish whether the events represent primarily a domestic public-order crisis, the exploitation of existing tensions by foreign actors, or a combination of both.
For Brussels, the outcome could influence future enforcement of the EU’s Digital Services Act and its wider response to foreign information manipulation. For now, the evidence supports concern about Russian amplification of European unrest, but not a definitive conclusion that Moscow orchestrated the riots.
In una stanza bianca e ovattata di Santarcangelo di Romagna, profumata da leggere note d’incenso, forbici precise tagliano lane biellesi e sete comasche per confezionare le vesti sacre di Papa Francesco. A Venezia, tra le acque dell’isola della Giudecca, aghi robusti forano damaschi, velluti e passamanerie per tappezzare gli interni delle gondole e dei taxi acquei. E nel cuore di Milano, mani sapienti modellano pelli pregiate per dare vita a quella stessa borsa-gioiello che ha accompagnato le uscite pubbliche della Regina Elisabetta II. Sono i suoni, i profumi e i gesti di un’Italia laboriosa che opera lontano dai riflettori delle passerelle, ma che da secoli detta le regole dell’eleganza globale. Un universo fatto di telai secolari, banchi da taglio, macchine da cucire e archivi sterminati che il 24 e 25 ottobre torna a spalancare i propri battenti in occasione della decima edizione di ApritiModa.
Da 14 a 100 porte aperte: la rivoluzione di un decennio
Ideata dalla giornalista Cinzia Sasso, la manifestazione è nata dieci anni fa come una scommessa circoscritta a 14 indirizzi milanesi, con l’obiettivo di rendere accessibile al grande pubblico un mondo tradizionalmente esclusivo e blindato. Oggi, ApritiModa è un fenomeno culturale e turistico di respiro nazionale. L’edizione 2026 coinvolge oltre 100 luoghi in ogni regione d’Italia — tra maison internazionali, manifatture di provincia e piccole botteghe d’eccellenza — registrando numeri che certificano una fame di autenticità senza precedenti: dai 16.000 visitatori degli esordi si è passati alle oltre 50.000 richieste di partecipazione dell’ultima edizione, con più di un milione di interazioni sul sito ufficiale. Attraverso una semplice prenotazione, i visitatori possono oltrepassare la linea di demarcazione che separa il consumatore dal creatore, osservando in tempo reale come materie prime grezze si trasformano in abiti, cappelli, occhiali, scarpe, profumi e bottoni.
Le novità: dai sarti del Vaticano agli ombrelli della Corona inglese
Il cartellone di questo decennale si arricchisce di tappe che sfiorano l’arte pura e il misticismo. Tra i debutti assoluti spicca LAVS (Laboratorio Atelier di Vesti Sacre), fondato da Filippo Sorcinelli a Santarcangelo di Romagna: un luogo dove l’alto artigianato incontra la liturgia e dove sono stati realizzati i paramenti per Benedetto XVI e Papa Francesco. A Napoli, i riflettori si accendono per la prima volta su Mario Talarico, bottega ferma all’Ottocento con il suo antico tornio ancora in funzione, celebre per aver forgiato ombrelli per la famiglia reale britannica e innumerevoli celebrità storiche. Non meno affascinante è la tappa veneziana da Hydro Mirò, l’esclusivo cantiere della Giudecca specializzato nella tappezzeria nautica, dove il fascino della laguna prende forma tra “pareci” e “dogaresse”. A Milano, invece, Leu Locati (Amato Daniele) svela i segreti delle calzature e delle borsette che rappresentano un omaggio totale all’alto artigianato tramandato da sette generazioni.
I colossi del lusso, i telai di Leonardo e la magia della sposa
Il grand tour di ApritiModa consolida inoltre il legame con i colossi e le istituzioni storiche del settore. Il pubblico potrà passeggiare tra i capolavori di vent’anni di Alta Moda esposti all’Armani/Silos, respirare l’atmosfera cosmopolita ma intima di Casa Cucinelli a Milano, e ammirare la perfezione sartoriale fusa all’arte orologiera negli spazi di Dolce&Gabbana. Accanto a loro, resistono i templi della manualità assoluta: dal laboratorio di Pino Grasso, le cui mani incastonano migliaia di strass e paillettes per le sfilate di Armani e Valentino, fino all’Antico Setificio Fiorentino, che dal 1786 produce broccati per il Cremlino e la Casa Reale svedese utilizzando ancora un orditoio realizzato su un disegno originale di Leonardo da Vinci. Una sezione speciale del decennale è dedicata al mondo “bridal”, con l’apertura di atelier specializzati nella creazione di abiti da sposa come Anna Renzi Brivio a Brescia, Cecilia Gerosa a Bologna, Poesie Sposa a Piacenza e la prestigiosa manifattura di Antonio Riva a Garlate. Un viaggio tra tulle, mikado di seta e cartamodelli per scoprire come la tradizione si rinnova attraverso il design contemporaneo.
Il messaggio: “Un patrimonio condiviso da conservare”
Dietro lo stupore visivo, l’apertura delle fabbriche lancia un messaggio culturale potentissimo: la moda in Italia non è un’industria asettica, ma un tessuto connettivo fondato sul genio umano. “ApritiModa è un’occasione unica per scoprire i luoghi autentici dove nasce la bellezza e si esercita la bravura. Un’esperienza che riempie di ammirazione, orgoglio e amore“, spiega la fondatrice Cinzia Sasso. È un incontro che arricchisce chi guarda e chi crea: “I visitatori sono felici di entrare dietro porte sempre chiuse e i lavoratori sono felici di mostrare al pubblico le loro mani sapienti”. Un ponte gettato tra il lavoro manuale e la società, per ribadire un concetto essenziale: “La moda non è un capriccio per pochi, è un patrimonio condiviso, fatto di saperi, tecniche e creatività che va conosciuto e conservato per quello che è, un tesoro prezioso”.
Come partecipare
La regola è una: prenotarsi su Apritimoda.it. La sezione “Partecipa” offre una mappa intuitiva dell’intero Paese; ogni luogo ha una scheda con descrizione, indirizzo, orari e slot disponibili per sabato 25 e domenica 26 (le disponibilità si aggiornano in tempo reale). Le visite sono guidate e gratuite. Si entra in piccoli gruppi: si ascolta, si guarda, si fanno domande. Si esce, quasi sempre, con un rispetto nuovo per ciò che indossiamo.
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