Right wing propagandists love to use the migrant crisis to appeal to their atavistic followers. It therefore helps to ignore sensationalist babble about "crisis" and instead consider empirical facts. The most striking thing is that Italy has a population of 59,000,000 people. This means that this year's arrivals amount to 0.05% of the total population. Italy is the eight-largest economy in the world with a GDP of 2.1 trillion Euros. Although Italy is profoundly corrupt, with Mafiosi and politicians and well-connected special interest groups syphoning off vast amounts of cash illegally, it's clear that Italy is still an extremely rich nation.

Why, then, are so few desperate migrants considered to constitute a "crisis" when Italy in reality faces far more urgent challenges?

Could it be that the "crisis" narrative is pretty much the only thing Meloni's neofascist Party can drum up to save itself from exposure as inadequate and pointless?