{"id":393,"date":"2024-01-30T12:12:52","date_gmt":"2024-01-30T11:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noria-research.com\/mena\/?p=393"},"modified":"2024-08-14T08:46:31","modified_gmt":"2024-08-14T06:46:31","slug":"an-italian-connection-racism-and-populism-in-kais-saieds-tunisia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noria-research.com\/mena\/an-italian-connection-racism-and-populism-in-kais-saieds-tunisia\/","title":{"rendered":"An Italian Connection? Racism and Populism in Kais Saied\u2019s Tunisia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Migration has long bound Italy and Tunisia. Depending on the moment in time, the twinned countries have alternated as sites of sanctuary and exodus. Just as Tunisians and those transiting through the country are today heading to Lampedusa to seek asylum or a better life, the late 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries saw political refugees and economic migrants from Italy\u2019s impoverished south take to the sea for Tunisian shores.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What marks the present off from the past, certainly, is the reception that migrants receive as they traverse the borders of the paired nations. Those Italians who came to Tunisia in search of work, land, and escape from persecution many years ago were unobstructed by the local governing authorities. Settling permanently in many instances, they became fixtures of Tunisian life during the late colonial era. Contrarily, when economic migrants began pushing from Tunisia to the Mediterranean\u2019s northern reaches starting in the 1980s, the human right to free movement had long since been disowned by the prevailing powers that be. Those searching for a better life at this juncture encountered a legal and security apparatus designed to stop them. In this manner, where the Mediterranean once held the promise of delivering an Italian peasant to a grander future, over the last ten years especially, it became a mass grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marking the present off from the past as well are the political and ideological sinews presently connecting the halls of power in Rome and Tunis. Differences notwithstanding, the Italy of Giorgia Meloni and Tunisia of Kais Sa\u00efed are animated by a populist appeal grounded in the same foundations: racism and xenophobia. This has brought the countries into a strange and unique kind of alignment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Brief History of the Present<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On June 6, 2023, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made an official visit to Tunisia. The purpose of her trip was to discuss irregular immigration, an issue she had rode to power the previous fall and one that remained front and center for her government and party, the Fratelli d\u2019Italia<\/em> (Brothers of Italy). In the preceding months, arrivals at Lampedusa had jumped considerably, and there were growing fears in Italy that Tunisia\u2019s economic crisis and the impasse that had been reached in discussions with the IMF might soon prompt even larger movements of people. While in country, Meloni met with Tunisian president Ka\u00efs Sa\u00efed at the presidential Palace of Carthage and his then Prime Minister Najla Bouden at the seat of government in the Kasbah of Tunis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Put on the back foot by Meloni\u2019s boldness, the European Union ended up falling in line with the Italian agenda for Tunisia. Over the course of the next two months, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte accompanied Meloni on two journeys to Tunis, where the mission was to negotiate \u201cenhanced cooperation on migration management.\u201d In practice, this required convincing Tunisian President Ka\u00efs Sa\u00efed\u2014publicly resistant to the notion of Tunisia being deputized as a border guard of Europe\u2014to stem sea crossings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carthage saw Europe\u2019s sudden attentiveness as an opportunity. Indeed, aware of Brussels\u2019 need for a deal, Sa\u00efed thought it possible to trade cooperation on migration for the lifting of the conditionalities that the IMF and the EU\u2019s official lenders typically attached to financial assistance packages.[1]<\/a> During his meetings with Meloni, Sa\u00efed made this objective plain, warning that creditor demands for austerity threatened to ignite an \u201cexplosive\u201d situation and strain Tunisia\u2019s social peace. The subtext was hard to miss: Impose pain on Tunisia and the numbers arriving on Lampedusa would spike. For Meloni, the terms Sa\u00efed was laying out were hardly a deal-breaker. Animated by the immigration question first and foremost, she was unbothered by the Tunisian President\u2019s interest in bucking fiscal orthodoxies: Insofar as Tunisia had leaped Libya as the top departure point for irregular migrants and asylum seekers disembarking for Europe a year prior, the priority was to shut the Mediterranean gate by whatever means required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the surprise of some, the Italian and Tunisian leaders would evince a clear personal rapport as the negotiations process played out. This was despite Meloni\u2019s penchant for dog whistles and barely hidden racism back home. Brushing that aside, Sa\u00efed, usually intransigent and combative in dealing with Europeans, displayed obvious warmth toward the Italian President. Appreciative of her \u201coutspokenness\u201d, he told her with a smile in front of a pack of journalists that \u201cYou are a woman that says out loud what others think about in silence.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fellow Travelers in Ideology<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As events before and after the press conference displayed, Sa\u00efed actually agrees with a great deal of what Meloni says aloud. Due to distinctions in context, the specific others <\/em>he targets may be different from those Meloni takes aim at. Nevertheless, the same ideological impulses guide the two. As Meloni\u2019s immigration policies are, Sa\u00efed\u2019s repressive dealings with black African migrants\u2014be they residents or those transiting through\u2014is guided by racism, xenophobia, and conspiratorialism. And just as Meloni has injected this racism into her populist appeal, so too has Saied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, the two Presidents took advantage of a similar historical conjuncture in rising to power as well. Though themselves from different sociological backgrounds\u2014Meloni of working class stock, Sa\u00efed decidedly not[3]<\/a>\u2014both proved deft in appealing to marginalized and downwardly mobile constituencies. This appeal was especially apparent for Sa\u00efed: Where Meloni actually campaigned on cutting state benefits to many of society\u2019s most vulnerable, Sa\u00efed skillfully won a base by speaking to the struggling people of Tunisia\u2019s hinterlands, those in the country\u2019s north, central, and southwest especially. For each, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic also served as a catalyst par excellence. In Italy as in Tunisia, management of the virus had been disastrous: Tunisia lost 30,000 lives, the second highest total in Africa; Italy tallied one of the worst ledgers in the global north. Despite being President, Sa\u00efed deftly leveraged public frustrations over the government\u2019s handling of the pandemic in conducting his self-coup in July 2021. Meloni, likewise, struck an appeal based on the Italian citizenry\u2019s anger at lockdowns and intensifying economic stagnation to win the 2022 elections. Thereafter, both leaders would also display talent in attributing the causes of social suffering onto external (and occasionally internal) forces. Though the food shortages which emerged in Tunisia after Ukraine\u2019s invasion of Russia stemmed from fiscal mismanagement, Sa\u00efed pinned them on sinister actors working to undermine his rule. Meloni, meanwhile, has routinely targeted Brussels as the source of Italy\u2019s penury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes specifically to questions of migration, Meloni and Sa\u00efed read from the same rhetorical hymnal again. This is most apparent in their (aforementioned) conspiratorialism. In the case of Meloni, conspiratorialism is observed in her references to post-2016 schemes for altering Italy\u2019s ethnic composition.[4]<\/a> Conjuring a wedge issue from these fictions, she has proved capable of holding together a right-wing coalition and<\/em> positioning herself as a guardian of \u201cItalianness.\u201d In the case of Sa\u00efed, conspiratorialism is present in a vernacularizing of the European far-right\u2019s Great Replacement Theory: As Sa\u00efed has publicly proclaimed on more than one occasion, an Afrocentric plot organized by criminal enterprises and modeled on the Zionist project of the late 19th<\/sup> century was put into motion in the early 2000s with the goal of changing the demographic (read: Arab) makeup of Tunisia.[5]<\/a> Such a tale was originally spun by the Tunisian Nationalist Party (TNP), an outfit that has been calling for the expulsion of black African migrants from Tunis and Sfax since 2018 and that connected with the President\u2019s office in late 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tunisian Nationalist Party\u2019s (TNP) Dangerous Delusions<\/strong><\/summary>\n

The social media pages of the TNP have unfortunately galvanized a great many Tunisians against black African migrants, weaponizing falsehoods to attack those on student visas as much as those who lack legal status. On these social pages, a diversity of (often contradictory) conspiracy theories are available for consumption. Some center on allegations of criminal networks, others on sorcery and human trafficking. Those that have gained the most traction, including with the President, are the ones claiming that black Africans intend to take over Tunisia as part of an Afrocentric colonial project. The TNP has charged late Senegalese anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop and the 20th<\/sup>-century Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey as furnishing the inspiration for this plot.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Violent Consequence of Racist Populism<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

By defining the problem <\/em>of migration in this manner, Meloni and Sa\u00efed set themselves up to propose similar fixes: Zero tolerance for what is deemed \u201cillegal\u201d immigration, and vigilance for the ethnic outsiders who have already managed to make a home inside their countries. Directing public anxieties against society\u2019s most vulnerable whenever it is politically expedient, Sa\u00efed looks, in the eyes of sociologist Vincent Geisser, to be following in the populist wake of Meloni.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When politically necessary, it is worth noting that the two leaders also indulge in not dissimilar attempts at hiding or selectively softening otherwise racist agendas. Of course, the wider current from which Meloni flows\u2014the Lega Nord<\/em> and Fratelli d\u2019Italia\u2014<\/em>expressly associates itself with fascism and the racist legacies of Benito Mussolini, and as a general tendency, the Italian right does not shy away from sullying black people as invaders and rapists while accusing them of attempting to turn Europe black. Softening, in this context, can only go so far. That said, Meloni herself is careful to keep things subtle, lest she invite a frontal attack. In public, the Prime Minister\u2019s racism is therefore often expressed in indirect terms, as when she suggested a black minister, C\u00e9cile Kyenge, was a representative of foreigners (The Italian right, for its part, has lifted up a model minority as evidence of its general decency: in 2018, they promoted the candidacy of Toni Iwobi, a naturalized citizen of Nigerian descent). In the same vein, when an overtly racist speech delivered in February 2023 got Ka\u00efs Sa\u00efed into hot water at home and abroad, he would also seek self-preservation by muddying the waters. In a March meeting with Guinea-Bissau president Umaro Sissoco Embal\u00f3<\/em>, Sa\u00efed pointed to his black African in-laws and African pride as evidence of non-racism. After racist mob violence began targeting black Africans and some black Tunisians, Sa\u00efed\u2019s minister of foreign affairs Nabil Ammar proceeded to diminish the events and denigrate the very notion of Carthage articulating anti-black racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly, Sa\u00efed\u2019s combination of overt speechmaking and denialism seems to have facilitated the normalization of anti-black racism in Tunisia. Regardless of the spurious defenses they put forth, the President and his allies know well that their public warnings of plots to colonize Tunisia have legitimized vigilantism throughout the country: That civilian groups patrolled and harassed neighborhoods in Sfax and Tunis with large black African communities follows directly from Sa\u00efed\u2019s words. Indeed, 2023 was the year that the promotion of a racist-populist discourse gave way to state-sanctioned anti-black violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given their acute vulnerability, it should be unsurprising that black refugee women have suffered the worst from this development. For them, sexual assault, rape in particular, has become increasingly prevalent.[8]<\/a> Human Rights Watch[9]<\/a>, Amnesty International[10]<\/a>, and Sweden\u2019s Kvinna Till Kvinni Foundation have all documented this worrisome trend: The latter, which partners with Beity, a Tunisian organization whose mission is to welcome women victimized by gender-based violence, reported growing numbers of migrant women being \u201csubjected to sexual harassment, sexual and gender-based violence, threats of rape\u201d after Sa\u00efed\u2019s February 2023 speech.[11]<\/a> Last July, only a short while after Meloni\u2019s visit to Tunis, the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women also received information about a possible gang rape of black migrant women during the wave of violent attacks on the migrant communities of Sfax.[12]<\/a> With the Tunisian Truth and Dignity Commission having documented but a few years ago how gender-based violence was used by the bygone dictatorial regime of Ben Ali to intimidate political dissidents, the suffering of these women shows just how far the 2011 revolution has been rolled back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Since winning the Presidency in 2019 and assuming what amounted to unchecked power in 2021, Ka\u00efs Sa\u00efed has derived legitimacy from populist appeals of different kinds. As his response to Israel\u2019s war on Gaza brings into the starkest of reliefs, these appeals often lack substance: Publicly denounce the genocide or not, Sa\u00efed opted against joining South Africa\u2019s case at the International Court of Justice and has otherwise taken no meaningful action in support of Gaza apart from offering a handful of persons medical treatment in Tunis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tragically, there is substance to Sa\u00efed\u2019s flirtations with racism. Sure, he might perform solidarity with the African continent in proclaiming \u201cAfrica belongs to Africans\u201d at the sixth European Union-African Union Summit. When it comes to Tunisia, however, it is clear that belonging does not mean brotherhood, particularly for black Africans. The dropping of 1200 black African at the desert border with Libya\u2014where more than two dozen would die of thirst and hunger\u2014made the truth of this unambiguous. So too have his attempts at appropriating Tunisia\u2019s anti-discrimination law and the horrifying speech of February 2023. Like Italy\u2019s Giorgia Meloni to his north, Kais Sa\u00efed traffics in a racism-infused form of populism to buttress his rule. As these two partners may shape the future of migration in the Mediterranean, that should give us all immense pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Luca Barana and Asli Selin Okyay, \u201cShaking hands with Saied\u2019s Tunisia: The paradoxes and trade-offs facing the EU\u201d, Commentary<\/em>, Istituto Affari Internazionali, August 5, 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Ghaya ben Mbarek, \u201cItalian PM visits Tunisia with hopes trip will help unlock $1.9bn IMF Loan\u201d, The National<\/em>, June 6, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Sa\u00efed was employed as a constitutional law university professor prior to contesting for office. Though this translated to a modest, middle-class life, he is of a family with lineage in the old Ottoman bureaucracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Barbi Latza Nadeau, \u201cFemme Fascista\u201d, World Policy Journal <\/em>35:2 (2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Monica Marks, \u201cTunisia\u2019s President gives life to a Zionism conspiracy theory\u201d, New Lines Magazine<\/em>, March 21, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> Tunisian Nationalist Party (Al Hizb Al qawmi Attounsi<\/em>), Facebook Page (Accessed January 11, 2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Charlotte Lalanne, \u201cTunisie : derri\u00e8re la d\u00e9rive raciste de Saied, l\u2019ombre de Giorgia Meloni\u201d, L\u2019Express<\/em>, March 6, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Lilia Blaise, \u201cRacism in Tunisia: If I had known, I never would have come live here\u201d, Le Monde Afrique<\/em>, March 16, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> Human Rights Watch, \u201cTunisia: No safe haven for black African migrants, refugees\u201d, Dispatch<\/em>, July 19, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> Amnesty International, \u201cTunisia: President\u2019s racist speech incites a wave of violence against Black Africans\u201d, News<\/em>, March 10, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Kvinna Till Kvinna Foundation, \u201cMigrant women amongst those vulnerable\u201d, Commentary<\/em>, May 3, 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> Lilia Blaise, \u201cTunisie : les associations feministes d\u00e9bord\u00e9es par les demandes de migrantes subsahariennes\u201d, Radio France Internationale, (August 13, 2023).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Migration has long bound Italy and Tunisia. Depending on the moment in time, the twinned countries have alternated as sites of sanctuary and exodus. Just as Tunisians and those transiting through the country are today heading to Lampedusa to seek asylum or a better life, the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw political refugees […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":418,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_molongui_author":["user-423"],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[227,221,22,225,223,67],"podcast":[],"project":[41],"region":[25],"class_list":["post-393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-italy","tag-kais-saied","tag-middle-east","tag-populism","tag-racism","tag-tunisia","project-tunisia-in-transition","region-middle-east"],"yoast_head":"\nAn Italian Connection? 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