Italian Police Targets Potere Al Popolo
Italian left political party Announces Discovery of Undercover Infiltration Operation
The Italian left political party Potere al Popolo announced that it uncovered that for approximately 10 months, a 21-year-old officer had infiltrated the party. The young officer pretended to be a supporter, joining mobilizations and political discussions while apparently sharing information with state authorities, the party said on Tuesday.
Potere al Popolo and other progressive groups denounced the incident as a troubling sign of the growing authoritarianism of Giorgia Meloni’s government and the state structures aligned with her ministers. “The situation, if we start connecting the dots, becomes increasingly disturbing,” the party wrote in a statement. “First, the news of espionage via Paragon spyware targeting journalists (Fanpage) and NGOs (Mediterranea), now the infiltration of a political party. Are we to believe this government is so intolerant of dissent that it must resort to regime-style tactics?”
How the infiltration was discovered
Giuliano Granato, a spokesperson for Potere al Popolo, first shared the news in an interview with the media outlet Fanpage. He described how the Naples chapter of the party had been approached by a young man claiming to be a student from another city. Soon after, he began participating in all of the party’s activities and mobilizations, from anti-eviction efforts to the national assembly to preparations for International Workers’ Day. “He was always present at political events,” Granato told Fanpage. “But he never formed any personal bonds with members. No evenings out, no beers, no dinners. Quite odd for an out-of-town student.”
The activists’ initial doubts prompted them to look into their supposed comrade. While they found surprisingly little on social media, a simple Google search revealed far more. They discovered records of the young man graduating from a policing course in 2023, along with several photographs of him in police uniform and alongside other officers. Their suspicions peaked after the May 1 demonstrations, when he was observed in a contentious conversation at a restaurant, which led party members to conclude he was likely sharing information about their activities. They decided to confront him.
“When we told him he was no longer welcome, and that he didn’t need to ask why, because doing so would insult both his and our intelligence, he didn’t even try to deny it, explain himself, or pretend to misunderstand,” Granato recounted in the interview with Fanpage. “He simply wished us a good day and walked away.”
The same person later attempted to reestablish contact with party members but gave up after being confronted with the evidence, including photos of him in uniform. The entire episode left little doubt, Potere al Popolo argued, that the group had been subjected to a calculated—if rather low-cost—act of political surveillance. The infiltrator had not been provided with a more substantial cover story or an alternate name, among other things.
Not an isolated issue, but a wider threat
In the broader context of Meloni’s push for increasingly aggressive forms of repression, including the recent Security Decree, Potere al Popolo warned that the situation may be spiraling beyond authoritarianism and edging toward outright dictatorship. “This story is not just about us,” Granato wrote on X, “but about the kind of ‘democracy’ envisioned by the state apparatus and the Meloni government: an increasingly reactionary and authoritarian model of society. Democracy does not exist if the state enters your home, spies on you, infiltrates you, and criminalizes you.”
Just days before the infiltration came to light, Potere al Popolo hosted international meetings to help build a broad anti-militarization movement in Europe, with participants from France Unbowed, Podemos, and the Workers’ Party of Belgium. At that event too, speakers warned of the increasingly repressive climate being fostered by right-wing and mainstream governments toward social movements and the left. As with resistance to Europe’s armament agenda, the response to the criminalization of dissent, they argued, must come through mass mobilization and solidarity—a response that was echoed by trade unions following the revelation of the infiltration in Potere al Popolo.
“We have shared many initiatives with Potere al Popolo over the years,” the trade union Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) wrote, “and this news alarms us regarding the protection of constitutional freedoms, including the right to political and labor organizing. This wickedness, spying on and provoking those who fight openly among the people and the working class to democratically challenge the current political and social model, exposes the true face of the Meloni government.”
“This is not an attack on a specific political party, but on the foundations of a democratic state governed by the rule of law,” Granato concluded. “This affects all of us. Why this operation? Who decided, planned and ordered it? Do we really want our country to be transformed, step by step, into an autocratic regime?”
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