At the inauguration of the 2025 New Year’s conference, Giorgia Meloni introduced the Birth Bonus 2025 — fostering natality with 1,000 euros to cover expenses during the newborn’s first year of life. This is part of a growing effort of the Italian Government to ‘increase Italy’s birth rates’ as stated by the Minister for the Family, Eugenia Rocella.
The Birth Bonus followed a statement by former Italian Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida, who claimed that Italians risk ‘ethnic replacement’ as Italy has the lowest birth rate in Europe. ‘Italians are having fewer children,’ stated the minister, ‘and we replace them with someone else: that is not the way forward.’
The statement has sparked widespread controversy, with opposition parties strongly condemning its implications. Elly Schlein, secretary of the Democratic Party, criticised the remarks, asserting that ‘Minister Lollobrigida’s words take us back to the 1930s; they carry the unmistakable undertones of white supremacism.’
The ‘Great Replacement’ Fiction
The conspiracy theory cited by Minister Lollobrigida is widely popular among the far right and suggests that mass migration is an orchestrated effort to replace white Europeans with non-white immigrants.
The most significant proponent of this theory was the French academic Renaud Camus, who in 2011 published The Great Replacement: Introduction to Global Replacement. Camus primarily discussed the situation in France, a country with a long colonial history, arguing that the ‘indigenous’ French population had been replaced by immigrants from former colonies. Referring to immigrants as ‘colonizers’ he even compared the mixing of ethnicities and cultures in France to the genocide of the Jews carried out by the Nazis.
Camus’ claims have no scientific basis, yet over the years, they have gained significant traction. The term ‘replacement’ has become part of the common vocabulary used by many far-right politicians when discussing migration. Beyond immigration, supporters of the ‘ethnic replacement’ theory also oppose homosexuality and abortion, believing that these factors contribute to lower birth rates and that they could lead to the eventual extinction of the ‘white race.’
According to the IDOS dossier, Italians believe that immigrants make up 27 per cent of the population, whereas as of January 1, 2024, there were 5,307,598 foreign residents in Italy, accounting for only 8 per cent of the total population
If ethnic replacement is the diagnosis of right-wing parties across Europe, then boosting Italian birth rates and enforcing ‘remigration’ — which essentially means deportation — have been presented as national antidotes. The alleged threat of this conspiracy has been repeatedly invoked by Matteo Salvini, the leader of right-wing party La Lega, who has said: ‘I am convinced that there is a mastermind behind this exodus.’
QAnon and the ‘Evil System’
In the New Year’s press conference, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni revived the eternal conspiratorial paranoia about George Soros— the so-called puppeteer behind the ‘exodus.’ This is not the first time that Meloni has taken aim at the Hungarian-born Jewish financier, who is now 94.
In 2018, the politician even announced the introduction of an ‘anti-Soros’ bill, explaining that she wanted to ‘prevent Soros and people like him from funding NGOs that promote irregular immigration because their goal is to weaken nation-states so that speculation can prevail.’
The emergence of QAnon in Italy has added fuel to the anti-Soros fire, with unfounded claims that Soros, as a ‘globalist,’ is behind an international network of paedophiles who seek to ethnically replace the white European population and defeat nationalist populists such as Giorgia Meloni and Victor Orbán.
QAnon’s infiltration into Italian political discourse has reinforced these conspiracy narratives. Though initially an American phenomenon, QAnon is a conspiracy theory according to which the world is allegedly governed by a so-called Deep State; an occult entity controlled by a cabal of satanic paedophiles whose goal is to establish a New World Order. U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters, including the extremist factions of Giorgia Meloni’s political party, are considered ‘patriots’ who are secretly fighting against this so-called evil system.
In Italy, these narratives have resonated with far-right groups that see migration as an existential threat to national identity. With 63,505 subscribers, the king of Italian QAnon conspiracy theorists, Cesare Sacchetti, has published dozens of anti-Soros posts on his Telegram channel. Specifically, he published an article supporting the thesis that Soros fuels the ethnic replacement of white Europeans by funding an NGO that distributes immigration guides for illegal migrants.
Deflection Instead of Discourse
These conspiratorial discourses have shifted into legislative actions, such as the anti-NGO law, which stipulates that humanitarian ships may carry out only one rescue operation at sea per mission and establishes new administrative penalties, including fines of up to 50.000 euros and the seizure of the ship for organisations deemed non-compliant with the new code of conduct. Secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Shlein, has argued that ‘by receiving a fine and an administrative detention for saving more human lives than “authorised,” the Meloni government’s decree criminalises solidarity.’
The growing influence of conspiracy-driven narratives in Italy is not just rhetorical; it actively shapes policy and public perception. By framing migration as an existential crisis rather than a complex socio-economic issue, far-right politicians deflect attention from deeper challenges such as labour shortages, an ageing demographic, and integration policies.
Conspiracy-based narratives may mobilise political support in the short term, but they risk entrenching exclusionary policies that undermine democratic values and human rights. The real test will be whether evidence-based policymaking can counteract fear-driven conspiracies before their long-term consequences become irreversible.
DISCLAIMER: The articles on our website are not endorsed by, or the opinions of Shout Out UK (SOUK), but exclusively the views of the author.
