Introduction

Towards the end of 2017, Matteo Salvini, leader of the far right Lega party, pledged to bring a ‘common sense revolution’ (rivoluzione del buon senso) to Italy (@matteosalvinimi 22/11/2017). Buon sensoFootnote 1 became a consistent and recurring trope in Salvini’s communication via Twitter between 2018 and 2023. However, amidst a growing sub-field of scholarly work on the Lega’s online activism, few studies have noted this trope’s presence (Maccaferri and Newth 2022; Newth and Maccaferri 2022; Maccaferri 2022; Zappetini and Maccaferri 2021), overlooking how it might help mainstream far right politics (Mondon and Winter 2020; Brown et al. 2023). Common sense narratives have long been considered a key feature of populist politics (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017; Moffitt 2016) and have also been employed by far right movements and activists to provide their ideas a veneer of rationality and popular will (Loftsdottir 2021; Richardson and Wodak 2009; Mondon and Winter 2020). Further studies have highlighted how the far right uses a range of discursive techniques to reconstruct their image, including the outright denial of racism (Lentin 2020, p. 55; Goodman and Johnson 2013). Little attention has been paid, however, to how common sense discourse can play a key role in mainstreaming when used as a self-referential strategy. Accordingly, this article poses to the following question:

How did Matteo Salvini’s ‘common sense’ discourse on Twitter between 2018 and 2023 attempt to bring far right ideology closer to the mainstream?

My aim here is to examine Salvini’s use of buon senso as a self-referential strategy, i.e. a way of ‘talking about’ the far right (Brown 2023, pp. 72–74). This forms part of a larger project which seeks to understand constructions of common sense from a comparative perspective. To do so, I combine a Gramscian-inspired dyad of common sense v good sense (senso comune v buon senso) with recent discursive approaches to mainstreaming (Brown 2023; Brown et al. 2023; Krzyżanowski 2020). Following the constructivist-interpretivist epistemology of these approaches (Bryman 2012, p. 36; Brown 2023, p. 83), and due to the evolving nature of discourse, my aim is not to emphasise direct causality between constructions of common sense and mainstreaming. Rather, I interpret buon senso as a strategy which seeks to present the Lega’s far right political message as ‘normal’ and, thus, move it closer to the mainstream (Brown 2023, p. 53). I first establish definitions for the Lega, the mainstream, and mainstreaming and examine a cross-section of literature on Matteo Salvini’s digital activism. I then define a dyad of buon senso (good sense) and senso comune (common sense) and how this relates to mainstreaming. Following this, I apply the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS) to examine the discursive strategies used by Salvini to shape ‘common sense’ and bring far right discourses closer to the mainstream. In the final section, I summarise findings, and suggest future directions for research.

Interpretations of the Lega, common sense, and mainstreaming

Formed in 1991, by Umberto Bossi, as a merger of north Italian regionalist movements, the Lega Nord campaigned for ‘federalism in the first half of the 1990s’ and the secession of ‘Padania’ (its imagined north Italian state) in the second. For the respective first and second halves of the 2000s, the Lega campaigned for devolution and fiscal federalism (Cento Bull 2009). Following the resignation of Bossi (and a brief interregnum of co-founder, Roberto Maroni), Matteo Salvini took over as Federal Secretary in 2013 and steadily abandoned regionalism for nationalism. This culminated in 2017 with the creation of the Lega per Salvini Premier (Zulianello 2021),Footnote 2 accompanied by a slogan pledging a ‘common sense revolution’ (rivoluzione del buonsenso).

The Lega: a populist far right party with a strong social media presence

Given the Lega’s diverse campaigns for autonomy, categorising the party has often proved a contentious endeavour (Cento Bull and Gilbert 2001; Zaslove 2011). Since Salvini’s nationalist turn, however, the ‘populist radical right’ paradigm, i.e. nativism, authoritarianism, and populism (Mudde 2007, see also Rooduijn 2014) is applied to the party with increasing frequency (Albertazzi et al. 2018; Iocco et al 2020; Öner 2022). Interpreting the Lega as a populist radical right party, Pirro (2022, p. 107) uses ‘far right’ as an umbrella term to analyse how Salvini has ‘nurtured links with the extreme right Casa Pound and […] Forza Nuova’. This re-emphasises a binary between the radical right, perceived to ‘largely operate in line with the civic and democratic norms’, and the extreme right, as ‘wedded to a “classic” repertoire of far-right ideas’ including biological racism (Shroufi 2024, p. 15). Although this binary helps ‘categorise notable differences […] we also need to avoid “becoming overly preoccupied with ‘fundamental’ or ‘essential’ ideological differences” between and within far right parties and movements’ (Shroufi 2024, pp. 15–16; see also Copsey 2018, p. 117). One key issue, as Sengul (2022, p. 51) points out is that ‘the populist radical right definition insufficiently deals with race and racism in the context of the far-right’. This owes much to a conception of nativism as ‘non-racist’ (Mudde 2007, p. 19) or ‘race neutral’ (Bosniak 1997, p. 287). Rattansi, however, notes that this notion ‘is highly implausible’ as ‘nativism exists in a spectrum of continuity within […] the "race-nation-ethnicity" complex' (2020, p. 159). To address this, I adopt Mondon and Winter’s definition of far right which denotes

movements and parties that espouse a racist ideology, but do so in an indirect, coded and often covert manner, notably by focusing on culture and/or occupying the space between illiberal and liberal racisms, between the extreme and mainstream(2020, p. 19).Footnote 3

Defined here as ‘an ideology which divides humans into distinct "races"’, racism creates ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’ via a process of racialization, i.e. ‘the instigation of “groupness”, and ascription of’ (physical and/or cultural) ‘characteristics as if they were natural and innate to each member’ (Garner and Selod 2015). Over the years, in government and opposition, the Lega’s politics have racialized various groups including ‘southerners’ (Moioli 1991; Cento Bull 1996), immigrants (Cento Bull 2011) Muslims (Garau 2011; Testa and Armstrong 2012), and Roma communities (Kóczé, 2018). The figure of ‘the immigrant’ has been consistently depicted as a threat to Italian identity in Lega discourse (Garau 2011, pp. 102–140), reflecting how racism and immigration are intrinsically linked (Balibar and Wallenstein 1991, p. 20). In analysing how immigrants are perceived as threats to the nation-state, nativism can prove a useful concept but only as ‘a precise way of identifying a specific form of racism’ (Brown 2023, p. 27). Nativism is interpreted here as a racist discourse structured around an exclusionary vision of the nation, juxtaposing the native—as a disadvantaged and threatened ‘in-group’—against a racialised non-native ‘out-group’(Newth 2023, p.172).

Immigrant communities in Italy have often found themselves at the sharp end of the Lega’s law and order rhetoric which has translated into laws criminalising ‘clandestine migration’ (Cento Bull 2010, pp. 420–421) and state violence against migrant workers (Iocco et al 2020, p. 744). Meanwhile, the Lega supports legislation that threatens ‘to reduce women’s and children’s rights in family matters […], cancel gender programmes in schools’ and ‘block LGBT-friendly initiatives and to restrict access to abortion’ (Donà 2020, pp.305-308). This authoritarianism—a ‘tough punitive approach’ or reintroduction of “moral” or “traditional” values to tackle ‘social problems’ (Mudde 2019, pp. 29–30)—is part of a wider discourse of ‘authentic civil society’ (Zaslove 2011, p. 107). More recently, authoritarian discourse has been conceptualized as ‘a set of practices centred around a rigid notion of authority that is characterised by the employment of actions/policies that aim to consolidate a strictly ordered society, limit accountability and counter deviance' (Katsambekis 2023, p.432) Advocating for ‘traditional values’ regarding ‘family, sexuality and law and order’ (Zaslove 2–11, p. 107; Barcella 2022 pp. 84–85) translates into ‘misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, and gender and sexual essentialism’ in far right ideology (Blee 2020, p. 427). This is often framed in the language of protecting people’s ‘rights and freedoms’ (Alekseev 2021). Finally, the Lega has often framed its politics as standing up for the demands of the (North) Italian ‘people’ in the face of ‘thieving Roman politicians’, ‘Brussels Bureaucrats’, and/or ‘the Do-gooder Left’ (Zappettini and Maccaferri 2021). This populist discourse constructs ‘the people’ as ‘a large powerless group’ against an ‘elite’ conceived as a ‘small and illegitimately powerful group’ (De Cleen and Stavrakakis 2017, p. 310; see also Katsambekis 2017). As elaborated below, populism is sometimes articulated via an exaltation of ‘common sense knowledge’ against ‘expert opinion’ (Moffitt 2016).

Social media forms a central plank of the Lega’s communication strategy (Zulianello 2021; Berti 2021; Berti and Loner 2021). This is not surprising considering the potential of such online platforms to spread far right ideology (Froio and Ganesh 2019; McSwiney 2021; Ekman 2022; Gallaher 2021) and enable populist forms of communication (Ernst et al 2017; Gerbaudo 2018). Analysis of Salvini’s social media underlines how he has harnessed its power to ‘shape (and, indeed, dominate) national debates on issues concerning identity, immigration, and law and order’ (Albertazzi et al 2018). In particular, Salvini’s use of Twitter and Facebook has contributed to a ‘Character Assassination’ of political opponents (Berti 2021; Berti and Loner 2021), a delegitimisation of the EU and rearticulation of fascist narratives (Newth and Maccaferri 2022; Maccaferri and Newth 2022; Zappettini and Maccaferri 2021), and reinforcement of ‘hegemonic forms of immigration discourse’ (Padovani 2018). In their study of Salvini’s Twitter usage in the campaign for the 2019 European Parliament elections, Zappettini and Maccaferri (2021, p. 250) observed the following of Salvini’s use of a buon senso trope:

through the buonsenso trope Salvini was also able to present himself as both determined and reasonable. His communication appeared thus aimed at a dual construction of himself as a strong leader […] but also an approachable people’s man, or ‘one of us’.

This highlights some key performative functions of common sense narratives, including the claim to represent ‘the people’. The following section expands on this interpretation by engaging with Gramsci’s dyad of senso comune v buon senso and literature on mainstreaming.

Populism, common sense v good sense, and ‘talking about’ the far right

Analysing Salvini’s buon senso trope requires a consideration of both how common sense discourse relates to populism, and how it can be used to reinforce reactionary ideas.

The role of common sense in populism has been examined across disciplines (Scott 2022; Mazzarella 2019; Patten 1996; Staerklé et al 2022). While varied in scope, there is general agreement in these studies that acting in the name of ‘common sense’ narratives facilitates populists’ claims to act on behalf of the vox populi. Indeed, populists often claim to be ‘arbiters of common sense’ (Moffit 2016, p. 44), representing ‘the common sense of the common people’ (Mazzarella 2019); this notion of ‘common sense’ is a proxy for ‘the general will of the people’ useful for ‘aggregating different demands’ (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017, p. 18). Populists also portray common sense knowledge as ‘equal to, if not superior, to expert and scientific knowledge’ (Staerkle et al., p. 916). In short, as Scott highlights, populist actors

rely on the incoherence of common sense to bind together a loose alliance of disaggregated groups possessing different views and goals, but all of whom consider their own knowledge as ‘common sense’ (2022, p. 333).

The issue of ‘incoherence’ brings us to Antonio Gramsci’s senso comune v buon senso dyad which is central to what he called hegemony, i.e. ‘the political process that aspires to conquer the ideological terrain’ (Filippini 2017, p. 18). Neatly summarising Gramsci’s conceptualisation of common sense, Filippini writes

common sense (senso comune) […] manifests itself as the incoherent stratification of worldviews, prejudices, and beliefs […] the plurality and incoherence of common sense contribute to reproducing domination, because they fragment individual wills and prevent the formation of collective wills as an alternative to the dominant one (2017, p. 110).

This incoherence means that it can ‘encompass contradiction and facts that shift over time’ (Crehan 2018, p. 278). Consequently, Gramsci (1971, p. 423) claimed that ‘to appeal to common sense as a proof of anything is a nonsense’. Furthermore, senso comune holds a ‘crudely neophobe and conservative nature’ (Gramsci 1971, p. 423), meaning it contains ‘the most reactionary ideas’ (Filippini 2017, p. 110) deriving from ‘an uncritical acceptance of those precepts that have been experienced in common by a particular group’ (Scott 2022, p. 333). However, senso comune also contains the ‘intuitions of a future philosophy’ (Filippini 2017, p. 110). It was to these intuitions that Gramsci, appealed for the development of buon senso (good sense) as a ‘critical and coherent worldview’ with a ‘progressive role’ (Robinson 2005, p. 479). Recognised as ‘the healthy nucleus’ that exists within senso comune—the other side of the dyad—buon senso, according to Gramsci, deserves to be made ‘more unitary and coherent’ (1971, p. 328). Indeed, ‘alternative collective wills […] may emerge from the combination of the development of good sense and a criticism of common sense’ (Filippini 2017, p. 110). By displacing Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, Laclau and Mouffe eschewed the senso comune and buon senso dyad and argued for ‘the construction of a new “common sense”’ to articulate the demands of different groups […] and bring about a radical pluralist politics. (2001, p. 162). Subsequently, in a development of this post-structuralist approach, Snir (2016, p. 277) revisited the senso comune v buon senso dyad to argue for a heterogeneous ‘good sense’ which may ‘vary according to political context’.

For this article—which examines reactionary, not progressive or radical pluralist politics—the original distinction emphasised by Gramsci proves useful. However, rather than what Gramsci would consider a ‘healthy nucleus’ (Gramsci 1971, p. 328), Salvini’s buon senso trope relies on senso comune’s reactionary, fragmentary and incoherent nature and can be interpreted as what Alain de Benoist referred to as a ‘Gramscian of the Right’ strategy (Pasieska 2022).Footnote 4 In terms of how such strategies relate to mainstreaming, Mondon (2015, p. 392) notes that

far right ideas are seen in the media and within the ranks of mainstream parties as ‘common sense’, or at least acceptable. The growing acceptance of this ‘common sense’ is the result of very carefully crafted strategies put in place by extreme right thinkers since the 1980s.

Interpreted here as ‘representative of the norm or centre’, the mainstream is ‘contingent’, discursively constructed, and ‘not essentially good, rational or moderate’ (Brown et al 2023 p. 166). Mainstreaming entails a process in which ‘discourses and/or attitudes’ ‘move from a position of unacceptability to one of legitimacy’ (Brown 2023, p. 59; Brown et al 2023, p. 170), otherwise referred to as ‘discursive shift’ entailing ‘deeper change of norms of public expression’ (Krzyżanowski 2020, p. 509). Literature on mainstreaming notes that ‘ideas which are at one time unacceptable can become […] normal and even common sense through the process of mainstreaming’ (Brown et al 2023, p. 172, see also Kallis 2013, p. 221). Following this line of thinking, I question how common sense discourse can actively contribute to a discursive shift. Katy Brown (2023, p. 73) notes that one of the determining factors of the relative position of the far right to the mainstream is the way in which the mainstream ‘talks about the far right’, i.e. ‘how mainstream elite actors discursively construct the far right (including groups, individuals and their ideas/discourse)’. Adapting this logic, I argue that Salvini’s buon senso trope should be viewed as a way in which he ‘talks about’ his and the Lega’s politics to depict this as common sense and, therefore, the norm. By depicting the far right as common sense, Salvini is also refuting accusations of ‘irrationality’ often levelled against populist actors (Eklundh 2020). This relies on a distortion of what Gramsci conceptualised as buon senso by actively appealing to senso comune’s fragmented, incoherent, and reactionary nature. The next section illustrates this process, after outlining a methodological approach.

Context, dataset, and methods

The data examined below start in 2018, following the formation of the Lega per Salvini Premier, until the end of 2022. This five-year period is representative of the ‘fluctuating fortunes’ that have characterised the Lega since its formation (Cento Bull 2015). In the March 2018 elections, the Lega received 17.4% of the vote, leading to Salvini becoming Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in a coalition government with the Five Star Movement (M5S) led by Giuseppe Conte. The subsequent European Parliamentary (EP) elections saw the Lega gain 34.3% of the vote. Attempting to capitalise on strong national polling in the summer of 2019 (circa 36%), Salvini withdrew his support for the government in the hope of triggering elections. Instead, the M5S and the Democratic Party (PD) formed the second Conte administration, consigning the Lega to opposition benches until the subsequent formation of the Mario Draghi government. Salvini lent his support to Draghi between 2021 and 2022 while Giorgia Meloni’s far right Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) remained in opposition and overtook the Lega in the polls. The Draghi administration fell in July 2022, and snap elections were called for 25th September, the implications of which are discussed in the concluding paragraphs. For an examination of Salvini’s buon senso trope, Twitter was given preference due to its ‘ability to drive traffic across all platforms’ and its role in ‘shaping public opinion’ (Berti and Loner 2021; Parmelee 2014). Tweets from the handles of @matteosalvinimi and @legasalvini were extracted using Twitter’s ‘Advanced Search’ function and downloaded with the data-extraction software EXPORTCOMMENTS™.

Due to Salvini’s ‘role in framing the overall party message’ (Albertazzi et al 2018 p. 661) and the active digital mediatisation of his own political persona’ (Zappettini and Maccaferri 2021, p. 245), I aggregated results from both Twitter handles which led to a total of 25,026 tweets. Refining the tweets to those containing the phrases ‘buonsenso’ or’buon senso’ narrowed the field to a total of 624 tweets (@Matteosalvinimi = 296 @Legasalvini = 328). This constitutes an average of 2.47% of the aggregated tweet output over a five-year period, during which a buon senso trope was only absent in one month (May 2018).Footnote 5 Considering the ‘broad range of populist communication tactics available and the usually fragmented nature of populist communication’ (Ernst et al 2017; Berti and Loner 2021), the recurrence and consistency of the buon senso trope means it is interpreted here as a significant strategy. Aiming to make the Lega’s stances more acceptable to prospective voters, references to buon senso saw peaks and/or steady levels either during national and administrative election campaigns (2018; 2021; 2022) or attempts to either promote policies when in government (2018–2019; 2021–2022) or oppose policies when in opposition (2020–2021) (Tables 1 and 2).

Table 1 Frequency and consistency of tweets containing buon senso between 2018 and 2023
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Table 2 Frequency of themes
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Guided by the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) to Critical Discourse Studies (CDS), I followed a three-step process. First, a ‘coding’ of the tweets identified recurring discursive themes. I derived my codes both deductively and inductively. Regarding the deductive process, I drew on pre-existing codes used to Salvini’s social media usage. This included Albertazzi et al’s (2018) codes of ‘the EU, Economic Crisis, Terrorism, and Security’, Cervi’s (2020) ‘the people’, ‘clandestine migration’ and ‘politicians/the EU’ and (Maccaferri and Newth 2022) codes of ‘anti-immigration’, ‘anti-austerity’ and ‘anti-EU’. Using such codes/categories as a point of departure, what followed was an inductive process of manual coding in line with the features of the conceptual framework of populist far right outlined in "The Lega: A Populist Far Right Party With A Strong Social Media Presence" section. Tweets that mentioned common sense fell under one of three broad themes. Under Italy and Italians First, I coded tweets which included explicit or implicit references to either protecting Italy’s economic and political sovereignty (Italy First) or protecting Italian jobs, housing, culture and identity (Italians first) against an external ‘other’ and/or a set of nefarious political and financial elites. Closed Borders and Cleared Camps refers to tweets that promote anti-immigration measures, and policies targeting Italy’s Roma and Sinti populations. Such tweets included explicit or implicit references to legal/illegal immigration, border controls, refugees, asylum seekers/ Italy’s Roma/Sinti population and/or Refugee or Roma/Sinti camps. Finally, I used Law and Order- Rights and Freedoms as a code for tweets which included explicit or implicit references to Italians’ ‘right to security' via self-defence, the police’s right to impose law and order and/or Italians’ ‘right to freedom’ from lockdown measures during the Covid 19 pandemic (Table 3). This constructivist/interpretivist element of coding is a key feature of CDS’ epistemology and its explicitly political aim of uncovering the exclusionary discourses behind the apparent opacity of language (Fairclough et al. 2009).

Table 3 Codebook
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Second was an examination of how themes were deployed via discursive strategies (Reisigl and Wodak 2001). The five types of discursive strategies identified by Reisigl and Wodak, namely nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivisation, and intensification/mitigation,Footnote 6, are all involved in the positive self-and negative other presentation [and] the discursive construction of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Reisigl and Wodak 2001). While a variety of these strategies are identified below, specific emphasis is placed on argumentation, which is ‘based on topoi and through which positive and negative attributions are justified and legitimised with the establishment of out-groups, in-groups, and metaphorical devices’ (Reisigl and Wodak 2001; Boukala and Dimitrakopoulou 2017). Topoi refer to modes of justifying arguments as, for example, the conditional or causal logics ‘if x then y’ or ‘y because x’ (Reisigl 2014). The third stage, intrinsically linked to the second, consisted of examining the modes of realisation, enactment, and discursive performance which enabled these strategies. (Zappettini 2019; Reisigl and Wodak 2001). By highlighting these strategies, the article aims to deconstruct/make less opaque the exclusionary language which lies beneath Salvini's claims to represent 'common sense' (Fairclough et al 2009).

Findings

‘Italy and Italians first’

‘Italy First’ hinged on a vision of ‘two Italies’: a common sense Italy vs an Italy of out-of-touch experts, intellectuals, bankers, and bureaucrats (@LegaSalvini 22/07/2018; 25/11/2019). For the 2019 European Parliament elections, Salvini used the topoi of definition and responsibility (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, pp. 16–17) to promote a ‘common sense Europe’ against a series of elites. Italians had a choice between ‘on one side, bureaucrats, bankers, do-gooder, NGO boats, on the other the People and Common Sense’ (@matteosalvinimi 23/05/2019). Similar tweets used the metonymical device of the ‘four Bs’ (Burocrati, Banchieri, Buonisti Barconi), as elites who posed a threat to ‘common sense Italy’ (@legasalvini 29/04/2019). Later, in 2021, Salvini supported a government led by Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank. Having once formed part of the ‘four Bs’, Draghi now enjoyed the ‘absolute trust’ of Salvini who argued that opposing the Draghi agenda would be ‘against common sense’ (@matteosalvinimi 21/04/2021). On the one hand, Salvini used a topos of reality (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 18) arguing that the social, political and economic realities of Italy had changed, and by participating in this government the Lega would contribute common sense proposals (@legasalvini 10/02/2021; @matteosalvinimi 29/11/2021). On the other hand, a topos of advantage (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 16) argued that supporting Draghi meant ‘defending Italian interests’; according to Salvini, being involved in a government that ‘does not sell our national interests to Europe’ was ‘not sovereignism, but common sense’ (@legasalvini 10/02/2021). Furthermore, in the 2022 election campaign, Salvini posted a series of images of Lega activists with the tagline ‘bringing common sense to Italy’ (@legasalvini 10/09/2022a; 10/09/2022b).

‘Italians First’ is reflected by posters released for the 2021 administrative elections. For the image below (Fig. 1) in an accompanying tweet, Salvini stated that ‘to return to talking about the traditional family, choose common sense and vote for the Lega (@legasalvini 20/09/2021). The term ‘traditional family’ is an ideologically loaded term which serves as a nomination strategy to create clear gendered in-groups and out-groups.

Fig. 1
figure 1

‘Choose common sense to change from parent 1 and parent 2 to the family’. https://twitter.com/LegaSalvini/status/1439957276924723204. (accessed 15 April 2022)

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Savini refers here to his decision in 2019, while Interior Minister, to change the wording used in the online request form for Identity Cards for minors in the section regarding the applicant’s parents. This entailed reverting to the gendered titles of ‘mother’ and ‘father’, thus replacing the more general (and potentially more inclusive) title of ‘parents’. Meanwhile, Salvini tweeted his satisfaction that ‘on Italian identity cards, the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ are back […] A little bit of common sense restored’. (@matteosalvinimi 04/04/2019). Salvini used a nomination strategy of labelling Italy’s LGBTQ + communities as a ‘dictatorship of the politically correct’ and that the Lega was instead on ‘the side of common sense’ (@legasalvini 13/06/2020). Furthermore, in the face of the proposed ‘Zan’ law in 2021—which aimed to make homophobia and transphobia a hate-crime- Salvini stated the ‘need for common sense’ and that its supporters ‘preferred conflict to common sense’ (D’Angelo 2021; @matteosalvinimi 23/06/2021; 17/07/2021).

A further image (Fig. 2) depicts the Lega’s racialised image of Italian grandparents with their grandchild. Implying that their right to housing is under threat from ‘illegal immigrants’, an accompanying tweet states that ‘giving council houses to Italians first is common sense’ (@legasalvini 20/09/2021). This coded and covert form of racism also took shape in references to culture and traditions (a dog-whistle Islamophobic trope):

It is common sense to guarantee hospitality and respect to those who want to integrate. It is not common sense to allow somebody to trample on our history, culture and traditions, take down crucifixes in schools and take the celebration of the nativity away from our children.’ (@legasalvini 15/02/2018)

Fig. 2
figure 2

‘Choose common sense to change from houses occupied by illegal. immigrants to council houses for Italians’. https://twitter.com/LegaSalvini/status/1439952256418394113. (accessed 15.th April 2022)

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Salvini combined the topoi of danger and threat with that of culture (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 16; p. 18) by connecting ‘Italian culture and traditions’ to Christian symbolism of the ‘crucifix’ and the ‘nativity’. Meanwhile, claiming these traditions were under threat of being ‘trampled on’ by non-native out-groups acted as an intensification strategy by depicting immigration as an act of violence against Italians. Stating, it was ‘common sense’ to tell ‘those who do not respect our traditions’ to ‘go home’ (@matteosalvinimi 27/12/2019) sets clear boundaries of belonging/exclusion.

A key part of Salvini’s ‘talking about’ the far right as common sense, therefore, related to notions of belonging/exclusion vis-à-vis the Italian nation-state, examined here under the umbrella term of ‘Italy and Italians First’. Italians First entailed the depiction of common sense Italian families as hetero (and gender) normative, which excluded LBGTQ + Italians and/or gender fluid Italians. It also meant dog-whistle references to Italian Muslims not ‘respecting Italian cultures and traditions’ via a discursive link between common sense Catholicism and Italian identity. Talking about the far right as common sense therefore involved discursively constructing an Italian in-group against a series of ‘others’/out-groups and depicting this as an inherent Italian ‘norm’, and therefore part of mainstreaming way of thinking. Common sense depictions of ‘Italy First’, meanwhile, further contributed to a mainstreaming of this strict demarcation of belonging by emphasising an exclusionary vision of the nation-state. Talking about a ‘common sense Italy’, i.e. one which defended Italy’s and Italians’ interests against EU elites, aimed to normalise an exclusionary vision of a ‘Europe of the nation-states which prioritised borders and tariffs against further European integration. The logical conclusion of this exclusionary vision of Italy and Italians First was a targeting of marginalised out-groups, thus leading to an overlap with the discourse of ‘closed borders and cleared camps’.

Closed borders and cleared camps

As Interior Minister, Salvini’s ‘Security Decree’ ‘stopped asylum seekers from accessing reception centres and introduced a fast-track expulsion system for so-called ‘“dangerous” asylum seekers’ (Dennison and Geddes 2022). This was its depiction as a ‘common sense’ measure that protected Italy against ‘sly and fake refugees’ (@matteosalvinimi 25/09/2018). As a perspectivisation strategy (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 14), Salvini retweeted TV interviews with members of leftist associations and parties who supported his decree, (@matteosalvinimi 16/06/2018; 27/06/2018) stating that ‘this isn’t about Right or Left, but simple COMMON SENSE!’ (@matteosalvinimi 27/06/2018). Furthermore, Salvini argued that

Two Italians out of three are with us (so says a Corriere della Sera poll, but speaking to the people for me the number is even higher) Are they all dangerous ‘racists populists, fascists, extremists…?’ No, it’s just COMMON SENSE (@matteosalvinimi 12/01/2019).

A topos of numbers (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 18) is used to add legitimacy to anti-immigration claims. This also entailed perspectivisation insofar as Salvini, argued he spoke on behalf of more than two thirds of ‘common sense Italians’. In an example of mainstreaming Great Replacement conspiracy theory (Ekman 2022),Footnote 7 Salvini stated that

They are filling us with illegal immigrants who say they are escaping from war, but they are bringing war to our country. Asking for order is not fascism, but COMMON SENSE’ (@matteosalvinimi 16/02/2018).

While the verb ‘filling’ contributes to an intensification strategy conveying the idea that Italy’s borders are reaching breaking point, the image of ‘illegal immigrants bringing war’ to ‘our country’ serves as a nomination strategy to depict all immigrants as violent actors. Meanwhile, a topos of definition (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 16), used to refute accusations of fascism, was reiterated the following year:

Friends, […] s together we can save our country from the devastating project of invasion […] Where is the ‘racism’? where is the ‘intolerance?’ Where is the ‘fascism’? To me it seems only COMMON SENSE. (@matteosalvinimi 07/07/2020)

A topos of danger and threat (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 16) is also emphasised here via metaphors relating to ‘invasion’ that discursively construct migrants as an enemy (Taylor 2021, p. 474). Rhetorical questions also act as a nomination strategy, attempting to distance Salvini’s supporters from stigmatising ideologies. Meanwhile, in terms of ‘cleared camps’ this was linked to both migrants in detention camps and Italy’s Roma population:

In Italy, there is a Roma population of nearly 150 thousand. The problem regards those 30 thousand who insist on living in camps, at the border of legality or in full illegality. Stopping all of this seems to me only a question of COMMON SENSE (@matteosalvinimi 27/07/ 2018)

A topos of numbers (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 18) in the form of a caveat of 30 thousand ‘problematic’ members of the Roma community out of 150,000, aimed to add a veneer of rationality to this argument. The 2021 administrative elections would advocate for a ‘fast eviction of overcrowded Roma camps’, depicting an image of law enforcement carrying out such a clearance as a ‘common sense’ security measure (Figs. 3, 4).

Fig. 3
figure 3

‘Choose common sense to go from overcrowded Roma camps to speedy evictions’. https://twitter.com/LegaSalvini/status/1443480491093602312. (accessed 15 April 2022)

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During the national lockdowns in Italy imposed during the Covid 19 pandemic, cleared camps discourse was extended to migrants accused of bringing Covid 19 to Italy:

Without these centres for migrants, we wouldn’t have had two big (coronavirus) outbreaks. […] They must go home. These are the words of common sense and what the majority of Italians think (@matteosalvinimi 04/08/2020)

The discursive link formed between migrant centres and coronavirus hotspots acts as a nomination strategy to depict migrants as disease carriers; meanwhile, invoking ‘the majority of Italians’ point of view acts also as a perspectivisation strategy. Arguing that ‘infected immigrants continue to disembark against every notion of common sense’, the use of the adjective ‘infected’ contributes to a predication strategy which constructs migrants as an out-group (Resigl and Wodak 2001, p. 14) (@legasalvini 18/07/2020).

In short, therefore, ‘talking about’ closed borders and cleared camps as common sense was a further attempt to enact a gradual process of re-establishing norms around migration and integration. The racialisation of migrants arriving in Italy as ‘fake refugees’ whose arrival in Italy was being depicted as orchestrated by nefarious elites was framed as a common sense way of thinking. Meanwhile ‘talking about’ cleared camps as common sense led to a racialisation of Italy’s Roma populations as a ‘criminal’ out-group, and the advocation for forced evictions as normal discourse. Both narratives, therefore, both implicitly and explicitly called for stronger law and order measures to protect Italians' rights and freedoms.

Rights, freedom(s), and law and order

The association of common sense with Italians’ ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ to security, via law and order included shaping common sense via the topos of law and right (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 18) to, respectively, forbid and prescribe certain actions. As Interior Minister, Salvini introduced legislation which broadened the definition of ‘legitimate self-defence’ (Mendoza et al. 2019), arguing for

the right to legitimate self-defence, zero tolerance for thieves and zero reduction of sentences for grave crimes such as rapes or murders […] to restore a little normality and common sense for Italians. #self-defenceisalwayslegitimate (@matteosalvinimi 06/10/2018)

Salvini depicted his ‘legitimate self-defence’ measure as common sense by employing a perspectivisation strategy (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 14) via the opinion of a legal expert:

I believe that if you find a thief in your house and you shoot, you have the right to do it, especially if your life is in danger’. So says Franca Leosini, who is one of the leading experts in judicial cases in Italy. It’s just COMMON SENSE. #self-defenceisalwayslegitimate. (@matteosalvinimi 07/09/2018)

In a poster for the 2021 administrative elections, Salvini denotes a vote for the Lega as a ‘common sense vote’ for ‘security’ over ‘fear’. This authoritarianism was later reiterated in several tweets which depicted police use of tasers as a ‘common sense’ security measure (@matteosalvinimi 07/05/2022; 13/04/2022). The naming of the foreign nationalities of those tasered in the alt-text of the tweets acted as a predication strategy which othered racialised out-groups as ‘non-natives’ (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4
figure 4

‘Choose common sense to change from fear to security’. https://twitter.com/LegaSalvini/status/1442030947596079104. (accessed 15 April 2022)

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During the pandemic, Salvini’s advocation for strong law and order policies conflicted with an opposition to laws designed to protect the health and safety of Italian citizens. Salvini stated

I hope […] the forces of law and order will be used as soon as possible not to […] fine hairdressers or bartenders, but to arrest drug dealers and criminals. I’m counting on Italians’ common sense (@matteosalvinimi 08/05/ 2020).

When the Conte II administration first announced lockdowns in Italy, Salvini retweeted a message from the governor of Lombardy, Attilio Fontana, which stated that ‘common sense has prevailed’ and that ‘the government has acted on our requests’ (@legasalvini 11/04/2020). Through a topos of responsibility (Reisigl and Wodak 2001), therefore, Salvini claimed to be using common sense to act in Italy’s interest. This, however, later gave way to a position closer to that typical of the populist far right during the pandemic, i.e. a ‘conspiratorial view of pandemic response’ which reified freedom, individualism and social Darwinism (Gerbaudo 2020, p. 63, see also Brubaker 2021). Salvini argued, ‘further lockdowns are against COMMON SENSE. If they want to keep us cooped up, they really haven’t understood’ (@legasalvini 27/04/2020). While ‘cooped up’, as a metaphor, is an intensification strategy emphasising a lack of freedom, a reference to ‘us’ is used to speak on behalf of ‘the people’. Again, Salvini cherry-picked ‘expert opinion’ as a perspectivisation strategy and framed such ideas as ‘common sense’ to endow anti-lockdown discourse with a veneer of intellectual respectability (@legasalvini 12/04/2021; 21/11/2020). Salvini cited such opinion to criticise the mandatory use of face coverings, restricted travel, curfews, and the ‘Green Pass’ (Vaccine Passport). Later, however, Salvini used a topos of reality (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, p. 18) to frame his support of the Draghi administration as a way of returning freedom to ‘common sense Italians’ (@matteosalvinimi 26/06/2021; 25/04/2021). Depicting the Draghi government’s proposed removal of mandatory use of masks on 11 February 2022 as a ‘common sense’ measure (@legasalvini 09/02/2022) Salvini now offered lukewarm support for a ‘common sense Green Pass’, provided it did not cause unnecessary bureaucracy for Italians (@legasalvini 07/11/ 2021).

‘Talking about’ ‘law and order’ and ‘rights and freedoms’ as common sense, therefore, entailed an attempt to shift what is considered acceptable/mainstream in everyday discourse. By associating common sense with authoritarian discourses aimed at stoked moral panics around security, Salvini attempted to normalise a society structured around strict law and order norms. Depicting law and order measures and ‘legitimate defence’ reforms as tantamount to reason and wisdom meant a framing of such authoritarian measures as normal and, therefore, as mainstream in terms of everyday discourse. Meanwhile, during the pandemic, Salvini continuously depicted anti-lockdown narratives as common sense, claiming he wanted to put ‘Italy’s and Italians’ freedoms first’. This contributed to an attempt to mainstream conspiracy theories relating to anti-lockdown measures.

Discussion and conclusions

This section, prior to drawing overall conclusions, discusses the article’s findings to examine buon senso as a way of ‘talking about the far right’. This relied on a two part process linked to the senso comune-buon senso dyad. The first part relates to appealing to what Gramsci noted as senso comune’s ‘most conservative and reactionary elements’ (Filippini 2017, p. 110). Buon senso was shaped around a series of discourses, Italy and Italians First, Closed Borders and Cleared Camps, and Law and Order, and Rights and Freedoms. These discourses, overlapped in their racism, nativism, homophobia/transphobia, and authoritarianism. Via a series of discursive strategies Salvini’s appeals to senso comune represented examples of what Reisigl (2018, p. 52) defines as ‘trying to persuade addressees of the validity of specific claims of truth and normative rightness’. A populist logic framed this attempt to shift the boundaries of what is considered acceptable, juxtaposing a ‘common sense Italian people’ against a series of enemies (the EU, experts, ‘do-gooders’, ‘the Left’) who were depicted as ‘against common sense’. This represented an exclusion of opponents/out-groups via claims of ‘rationality’ (Eklundh 2020).

The second part of the process relates to the ‘incoherent and fragmentary’ nature of senso comune (Filippini 2017, p. 110). While Salvini framed buon senso against experts and intellectuals when campaigning in the 2019 EP elections he later linked buon senso with the opinion of experts to promote his ‘legitimate defence’ bill, and to support a lifting of lockdown measures. Meanwhile, having argued that one of ‘common sense Italy’s’ principal enemies were ‘European bankers’, Salvini later framed his support for a government headed by the former head of the European Central Bank (Mario Draghi), as buon senso. Strict law and order measures were common sense when applied to stopping migration, targeting marginalised groups, or discharging tasers on migrants; however, regarding the pandemic, Salvini argued that more lenient lockdown measures were common sense. The changing position of the Lega towards lockdown measures was also enabled via this incoherent nature. To an extent, this is what Scott (2022, p. 333) notes as populism’s ‘valorisation of an incoherent residue of philosophies’. However, rather than to ‘aggregate different demands’ of ‘the people’ (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017) Salvini’s discourse is an example of senso comune’s capacity to ‘fragment individual wills and prevent the formation of collective wills’ (Filippini 2017, p. 110). In short, Salvini appealed to the incoherent, fragmented, and reactionary nature of senso comune to reinforce far right ideas. At the same time as claiming to represent buon senso, Salvini distorted what Gramsci (1971, p. 328) would have considered ‘the healthy nucleus’ within senso comune. ‘Talking about’ the Lega’s politics as buon senso, therefore, aimed to enact a discursive shift by depicting far right ideas as ‘the norm’ and, therefore, part of the mainstream (Brown 2023).

As with any mainstreaming process, Salvini’s ‘talking about’ the far right ‘can only be made sense of in a precise time and space and within the coordinates of a particular political moment’ (Brown et al 2023). The snap Italian elections held on 25th September 2022 represented the culmination of one such moment. Days prior to this election Castelli Gattinara and Froio (2022) noted ‘the main issues on the agenda illustrate that some of the key ideas of the far right are now normalised and deemed “common sense” in public debates’. This was confirmed when a coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s far right FdI and also containing the Lega and Forza Italia, gained an overall parliamentary majority. Of course, the mainstreaming of the far right in Italy has been a long-term process which cannot be solely attributed to the discourse of one political actor (Broder 2023; Castelli Gattinara and Froio 2022; Bruno et al. 2022). However, Salvini’s buon senso trope represents one discursive element which contributing factor in this discursive shift. Salvini had helped set the mainstream agenda mentioned by Castelli Gattinara and Froio by ‘talking about’ the far right as common sense, thus bringing far right discourse closer to the mainstream. Indeed, while the Lega suffered significant electoral losses and lost its primacy in this coalition, the Lega’s ‘common sense’ discourses were recycled as part of the far right coalition’s electoral agreement and packaged as mainstream ideas.

This article has looked beyond the pre-existing understanding of both how common sense and populist discourse via people v elites dichotomy, and also how far right parties employ common sense ideas as common sense. Instead, the key contribution of this article is a theoretical framework, inspired by a combination of Katy Brown’s discursive understanding of mainstreaming (2023) and a Gramscian understanding of common sense. This has enabled an examination of how populist far right actors can exploit the incoherent, contradictory, and reactionary nature of common sense, to depict it as ‘good sense’ and therefore as part of a gradual process of re-establishing (and re-entrenching) norms. Repeated depiction of far right ideas as common sense was a clear strategy used by Salvini which aimed to contribute to this gradual process by framing reactionary ideas as ‘the norm’. Discourse, however, ‘is not simply a means to an electoral end’ and as a result, elections never mark the end of a discursive process (Brown et al 2023, p. 171). Furthermore, mainstreaming is not a one-way process and requires the participation and/or complicity of mainstream actors (Brown et al 2023, p. 171). I finish, therefore, by offering three further lines of academic enquiry which might build on these findings.

First, this article’s findings complicate the assertion that populist politics entail an outright rejection of expert opinion. Future studies may pose further examination of how, via common sense discourse, populist politicians selectively engage with intellectuals and experts as a way of presenting their ideas as rational and beyond debate. Second, beyond the Italian context, this article’s theoretical framework may contribute to a comparative study with other far right actors. Empirical findings have spanned a 5-year period marked by social, economic, and political upheaval in which common sense discourse was used to ‘talk about’ the far right and depict reactionary politics as the solution to a plethora of problems facing a country while excluding all political opponents as irrational and/or against common sense. One hypothesis is, therefore, that populist far right parties in other countries will use common sense discourse in a time of political transition and crisis as an attempt to contribute to discursive shifts which reinforce in-groups and out-groups in society. Finally, further research should examine shared common sense narratives between the far right and the mainstream. Salvini’s praise for UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak’s anti-immigration rhetoric as ‘common sense words’ (@matteosalvinimi 11/03/2023) illustrates blurred lines between the mainstream and the far right. Examining constructions of common sense enhances our understanding of the contingent nature of the mainstream which, in turn, is a crucial element in understanding and challenging the far right.