Italy's defence minister blames foreign hybrid war for Milan riots
Guido Crosetto attributes the Milan riots to a hybrid war waged from abroad without naming any actor or providing evidence, while Meloni's government tightens the legal response.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Italy points abroad, but the story doesn't hold up
Two hundred arrests, looting in central Milan, and a defence minister who, instead of talking about crime or social policy, talks about hybrid war. Guido Crosetto claims that what peine in Milan and other Italian cities "is the result of what I call a hybrid war that someone is waging against our nations using unconventional tools such as TikTok, social media and YouTube." The thesis is catchy: it turns a weekend of vandalism into a chapter of geopolitics.
The problem is that, once you scratch the surface, the explanation rests on very little. Crosetto does not identify the external actor. He offers not a single piece of data on coordination. And, along the way, he dismisses the idea that the phenomenon is down to "second-generation Italians": if six out of ten young people share the protests, he argues, it is because "they have been subjected to a counter-education somewhere, not in the family or at school."
What is the hybrid war the Italian minister keeps invoking?
The concept is nothing new in defence manuals: it refers to the combined use of cyberattacks, disinformation and social pressure by a state adversary. Applied to street riots, it demands evidence that has so far not been shown. The minister speaks of unconventional tools and of a machine that operates "without the West noticing or reacting in any way," but the diagnosis remains a metaphor.
That vacuum is what fuels distrust. Some read in the official thesis a shifting of responsibility: if the culprit is abroad, no one has to examine what has failed at home. Giorgia Meloni's government's response points in another direction: toughening the legal response, defining aggravated damage, imposing mandatory detention for those who cause destruction during demonstrations and opening the door to banning gatherings.
The economic reading: collapse, cheap land and buyers with deep pockets
As soon as you get into the details, the geopolitical framework gives way to a far more material hypothesis. Some argue that the real goal would not be to impose a dictatorship but to collapse Europe until it becomes ungovernable, so that, with the continent going cheap, external buyers snap up the assets. It is a thesis that cannot be verified, but it explains why the hybrid war narrative resonates more with economic discontent than with criminology.
The other line of analysis reverses the causality: the conflict does not come from outside, it comes from the management of migration flows and the lack of integration. Some argue that unskilled labour has been imported, that a pull effect has been fuelled, and that the result is now being reaped in the form of a social mass with no prospects. Crosetto's accusation of "counter-education" fits poorly with that diagnosis: he blames diffuse indoctrination rather than material conditions.
One uncomfortable detail remains. Matteo Salvini's Lega is using the package to push for restricting citizenship for foreign minors when they turn 18, a measure that has no direct connection to TikTok or any social network. If the threat were truly external and digital, the chosen legal response seems, to say the least, striking.
What if the problem were not identifying the enemy, but rather that the enemy is simply the deterioration of living conditions at home?
Two hundred arrests, looting in central Milan, and a defence minister who, instead of talking about crime or social policy, talks about hybrid war. Guido Crosetto claims that what peine in Milan and other Italian cities "is the result of what I call a hybrid war that someone is waging against our nations using unconventional tools such as TikTok, social media and YouTube." The thesis is catchy: it turns a weekend of vandalism into a chapter of geopolitics.
The problem is that, once you scratch the surface, the explanation rests on very little. Crosetto does not identify the external actor. He offers not a single piece of data on coordination. And, along the way, he dismisses the idea that the phenomenon is down to "second-generation Italians": if six out of ten young people share the protests, he argues, it is because "they have been subjected to a counter-education somewhere, not in the family or at school."
What is the hybrid war the Italian minister keeps invoking?
The concept is nothing new in defence manuals: it refers to the combined use of cyberattacks, disinformation and social pressure by a state adversary. Applied to street riots, it demands evidence that has so far not been shown. The minister speaks of unconventional tools and of a machine that operates "without the West noticing or reacting in any way," but the diagnosis remains a metaphor.
That vacuum is what fuels distrust. Some read in the official thesis a shifting of responsibility: if the culprit is abroad, no one has to examine what has failed at home. Giorgia Meloni's government's response points in another direction: toughening the legal response, defining aggravated damage, imposing mandatory detention for those who cause destruction during demonstrations and opening the door to banning gatherings.
The economic reading: collapse, cheap land and buyers with deep pockets
As soon as you get into the details, the geopolitical framework gives way to a far more material hypothesis. Some argue that the real goal would not be to impose a dictatorship but to collapse Europe until it becomes ungovernable, so that, with the continent going cheap, external buyers snap up the assets. It is a thesis that cannot be verified, but it explains why the hybrid war narrative resonates more with economic discontent than with criminology.
The other line of analysis reverses the causality: the conflict does not come from outside, it comes from the management of migration flows and the lack of integration. Some argue that unskilled labour has been imported, that a pull effect has been fuelled, and that the result is now being reaped in the form of a social mass with no prospects. Crosetto's accusation of "counter-education" fits poorly with that diagnosis: he blames diffuse indoctrination rather than material conditions.
One uncomfortable detail remains. Matteo Salvini's Lega is using the package to push for restricting citizenship for foreign minors when they turn 18, a measure that has no direct connection to TikTok or any social network. If the threat were truly external and digital, the chosen legal response seems, to say the least, striking.
What if the problem were not identifying the enemy, but rather that the enemy is simply the deterioration of living conditions at home?
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (18 replies).
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