POLITICO Wants You to Know That Italian Food is Fascist

I need a sanity break, or at least a break from leftists who want to incite a civil war. 

So let me focus for a moment instead on leftists who want to "decolonize" food. 

No, I am not kidding. We have reached the stage where food is fascist. 

OPINION: Italian cuisine certainly merits recognition. But it shouldn’t become an unwitting participant in an ideological agenda.

Perhaps it’s best if Giorgia Meloni's government kept politics off the dinner table.

🔗 https://t.co/j0kfLmE8F9 pic.twitter.com/axubEpaNiS

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) January 6, 2026

Now, nobody should be surprised when an academic writes about the need to "queer" food. Academics need to find something to write about, and by now it's clear that the best way to get ahead in the world of our intellectual betters is to be as ridiculous as possible. 

Boston University students can study the “ways in which language and behaviors around food both reinforce and challenge gender hierarchies and restrictive norms around sexuality,” in a “Food Studies” class.

“Food, Gender, and Sexuality,” helps students explore the concept of “queer food,” according to Professor Megan Elias. The university recently profiled the professor and her course, along with a book she helped write, titled “Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food (with Recipes).”

The professor (pictured) gave some examples of topics of discussion in her “food studies classes.”

Students might consider “how [their] food choice is representing [their] gender identity,” she said in an explanatory video produced by Boston U.

“How is that different if you’re gay? How is that different if you’re non-binary? How is that different if you’re polyamorous,” she asked.

All these questions help “disrupt kind of ideas about foods that really obscure human experience,” she said.

Queer food is not a new concept, according to Elias.

“Queer food has always been,” Elias said in an interview with the university’s Faculty Angle series. “Queer people have always been cooking, they have always been eating, they have always been part of the food landscape. And so to acknowledge that is really to show us a new way of thinking about food.”

Queer food. You can take a class in Queer food. 

Whatever. Academics will be academics, and obviously, the parents who send their kids off to take expensive classes like this have more money than sense. 

But when a publication like POLITICO.eu is writing about food and fascism, it signals just how far the madness has spread. 

Perhaps I am taking this a bit too personally because I happen to love Italian food and have been building up my skills, or because I have this secret desire to have Elon Musk and Georgia Meloni have a love child who will one day become mayor of Musk City on Mars, but this article pissed me off big time. 

Last month, UNESCO designated Italian cuisine part of the world’s “intangible cultural heritage.”

This wasn’t the first time such an honor was bestowed upon food in some form — French haute cuisine and Korean kimchi fermentation, among others, have been similarly recognized. But it was the first time a nation’s cuisine in its entirety made the list.

So, as the U.N. agency acknowledged the country’s “biocultural diversity” and its “blend of culinary traditions […] associated with the use of raw materials and artisanal food preparation techniques,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni reacted with expected pride.

This is “a victory for Italy,” she said.

And prestige aside — Italy already tops UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites — it isn’t hard to see the potential benefits this designation might entail. One study even suggests the UNESCO nod alone could boost Italian tourism by up to 8 percent. But behind this evident soft power win also lies a political agenda, which has turned “Italian cuisine” into a powerful weapon for the country’s right-wing government.

For Meloni’s government, food is all the rage. It permeates every aspect of political life. From promoting “Made in Italy” products to blocking EU nutrition labelling scores and banning lab-grown meat, Rome has been doing its utmost to regulate what’s on Italian plates. In fact, during Gaza protests in Rome in September, Meloni was sat in front of the Colosseum for a “Sunday lunch” as part of her government’s long-running campaign to make the coveted list.

Uh...yeah...right. I guess. 

Nobody but a fascist would want to promote and preserve their cultural identity. By now we know that we should all be eating Somali food. Mayor Frey loves it!

Jacob Frey looks like he really went through it while sampling Somali cuisine pic.twitter.com/4E0ZSIImvW

— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) December 5, 2025

Much better than the Roman classic dishes, I am assured. 

European countries, by the way, go to great lengths to preserve their food's cultural heritage, and as far as I know, this has not been a political issue. If you ever wondered why we have "Sparkling wine" instead of champagne from every place except Champagne, France, it's because "Champagne" is a protected term. Same with all sorts of foods, which have strict classifications in Europe. And lots of money is tied to those designations. 

For instance, I buy San Marzano tomatoes, which are plum tomatoes from a specific region in Italy. I am pretty sure that it was a left wing government that fought to ensure that the term "San Marzano" was protected. 

There are two main principles involving Italian gastronationalism: The notion that the country’s culinary traditions must be protected from “foreign contamination,” and that its recipes must be enshrined to prevent any “tinkering.” And the effects of this gastronationalism now stretch from political realm all the way to the world of social media “rage-bait,” with a deluge of TikTok and Instagram content lambasting “culinary sins” like adding cream to carbonara or putting pineapple on pizza.

For God's sake, man. Pineapple on pizza is a crime. 

The correlation between "food nationalism" and fascism is precisely nil. It is as European as apple pie, or something like that. Maybe apple strudel? Tiramisu? Baklava? Croissants?

You can see where this all leads: we must get beyond pride in our cultures, which by definition is colonialist. Why aren't Italians promoting Egg Foo Yung as the national dish? Or the transnational dish. Or whatever. 

Somali food. Everybody must eat Somali food, like Mayor Frey. 

You see the point, don't you? Europeans should be embracing transnationalism, and if pride in your cultural heritage gets in the way, then throw out the culture. 

Everybody needs more Syrians and Pakistanis. They do the mass rapes that natives refuse to do. 

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, the Left's attempted radicalization of American culture has stalled – for now.

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