Welcome to another episode of The Vast Majority, I'm Jacobin Deputy Editor Micah

Utricked. This week I am talking to Jacobin's Europe editor David Broder who has a new book out called First They Took Rome

How the Populist Right conquered Italy and I can't promise you that it is a particularly uplifting read as you will hear in my conversation with David.

The state of Italian politics is pretty bleak and it reflects the state of politics of many countries around Europe

and around the world.

But it is an excellent overview of what has gone on in Europe over the last three or four decades and how it's come to a situation in which the populist right has dominated the country's politics. The left has been totally neoliberalized

despite the fact that the country had the largest communist party in Europe and all kinds of things that are very familiar to those of us in the

United States like rising xenophobia in Italian politics,

real emiseration of the economy, particularly

for young Italians.

There's just a lot in there that is very similar to situations faced here in the US and around the world.

And so Italy is a real vision of our future, at least a vision of a worst-case scenario, a future

for American politics and for politics around the world.

Also, just a technical note on this episode,

if you had to think of the worst possible thing that could happen

in the middle of you recording a podcast you would probably say a severe jackhammering

happening directly outside of your window of your apartment and that's exactly what happened

in this episode so

Sorry if you hear any jackhammering when I am speaking to

David you can blame it on my socialist alderman, Carlos Rosa here in Chicago who ordered the

repaving of my street which is generally an extremely good thing but it does

involve some jackhammering which made it for a little bit difficult

...