Fighting 'maranza' is not politics It's oppression, but the Italian government thinks otherwise

This week the Italian government approved a new bill. Which might seem like good news, given the cost-of-living protests that have been going on for days across Italy — in the north by young people, and in the south by farmers and hauliers. But the bill proposed by Lega representatives in Milan this Tuesday has nothing to do with the price of diesel, rent, or food. They've nicknamed it the "anti-maranza" law, and it was drawn up in response to the violent incidents that took place last weekend in Milan. The interesting thing about all this is that neither Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister, nor Igor Iezzi, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, actually know what "maranza" means.

"The term maranza actually has more of a cultural meaning than a legal one," Iezzi said when Salvini invited him to field journalists' questions on his behalf. "I think it's a combination of 'marocchino' [Moroccan] and 'zanza' [a slang term for a petty criminal]," the MP ventured. The bill — which carries a nickname whose very authors don't actually understand — is intended to prevent crimes that the MP describes as "typical of the maranza," such as insulting a public official, mafia-type association, labour exploitation, and even non-consensual termination of pregnancy. The measures target minors between the ages of 14 and 18 (the age of criminal responsibility in Italy) and include bans on gathering and preventive detention. Essentially, they have classified Milan's young working-class kids as a criminal organisation.

The real meaning of "maranza"

But let's start from the basics: maranza, a term that originated in Milan and its surroundings in the 1980s, is simply another word for "tamarro" — a chav or working-class try-hard. In recent years the word has come back into circulation with a negative connotation, after the media began using it in their coverage of the lives of second-generation young people in Italy. Despite what the press and MP Iezzi claim, the term maranza mocks a person's style rather than their origins. Like "capelloni" (long-hairs) in the 1960s and "paninari" (a preppy subculture) in the 1980s, "maranza" encapsulates a whole set of style-based stereotypes: acrylic tracksuits, trainers, a bum bag, designer accessories. This is precisely why an "anti-maranza" law seems so strange: prosecuting criminal behaviour is one thing, but suppressing a subculture is quite another.

With the meaning of maranza now clear, one question remains: why has the government decided to wage war on Milan's working-class kids? The answer lies in the image that the media and politicians have built up around this stereotype over recent years. One of the first times a politician used the term was last year, when Milan's mayor Beppe Sala commented on a police operation that had led to the arrest of dozens of young people, many of them second-generation immigrants. That same year, in Verona, the student organisation Lotta Studentesca, affiliated with the far-right movement Forza Nuova, organised an initiative called "Emargina il Maranza" ("Marginalise the Maranza") — a gathering designed to spread fear, dressed up as a neighbourhood watch event.

Adding to this picture are the so-called ronde anti-maranza: organised groups of men in their twenties and thirties who, often filmed and celebrated on social media, patrolled city streets with the aim of attacking immigrants and second-generation young people, identified precisely under the maranza label. This phenomenon has also had legal consequences, with the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office opening an investigation into nine far-right extremists.

Slang as the latest tool of propaganda

It becomes easier, then, to understand why two politicians who don't even know what "maranza" means chose to use the term as the nickname for a new law: to win the votes of those who, in recent years, have been convinced by the media and by politicians that maranza are the primary cause of crime in Italy, and that this is the main issue the government should be addressing.

The problem is that using slang to court popularity, turning a subculture into a criminal organisation, and throwing all your chips onto one side of the scales — the side of extremism — risks dumbing down politics. All of this, at a time when the state has far more serious problems than a teenager in an acrylic tracksuit and Nike TNs: students struggling to afford tuition and rent, and empty supermarket shelves in the south as farmers and lorry drivers strike to protest rising fuel costs. It seems that, for Lega and the Meloni government, the answer to these protests is a law that makes it easier to lock up minors.