Hundreds of mostly young Italians marched through central Milan last Saturday to protest soaring living costs and unaffordable housing. The demonstration was peaceful until police blocked a side street near Piazza del Duomo, at which point — according to journalist Martina Miccichè, who was struck by a flying object requiring stitches — officers turned suddenly violent, beating and kicking protesters at random while filling the square with teargas. Fringe groups of masked youths then smashed and looted fashion-district shops including Footlocker and Levi's, with vandalism continuing into Sunday. Over two days, police detained more than 271 young people. Of those, 32 were arrested, including 23 minors and 13 foreign nationals. The government's response was immediate and legislative: new measures hold parents financially liable for their children's vandalism, criminalise violent participation in demonstrations, toughen penalties for rioters, and 500 troops were dispatched to Milan. These stack on top of existing security bills that already made blocking public highways a jailable offence — a provision now being applied against lorry drivers in southern Italy protesting high petrol prices, where 71 people have been reported to judicial authorities and 242 fined. The pattern is unmistakable. Economic grievances surface — housing costs, fuel prices, wage stagnation — and the Meloni government responds not with policy addressing the causes but with new criminal categories and expanded police powers. Each protest generates its own crackdown legislation in a tightening feedback loop. Miccichè's observation is precise: "This government just tries to repress protesters instead of listening to them and addressing the issues." The protests have also exposed a deeper fracture. Working-class Italians and second- and third-generation immigrants from marginalised neighbourhoods like Milan's Barona estate are routinely dismissed by rightwing politicians and media as maranza — a derogatory term for urban youth who congregate in city centres. Luca Orlando, who manages a cultural hub in Barona, frames the looting as a symptom, not a cause: "When an opportunity arises, these kids take revenge. They don't do it simply because they want to steal something." Thomas, 18, training to be a chef in Barona, plans to leave Italy "as soon as possible." His friend Mohamed, an Italian citizen of Moroccan origin, offers a sharper diagnosis: "The more a government doesn't listen, the more people get angry." Sociologist Mauro Magatti of Milan's Catholic University warns that socioeconomic discomfort and abandonment affect "an entire generation" and that excessive repression risks enlarging the protest. This is the structural trap: the government's security-first posture treats youth anger as a law-enforcement problem while the underlying economic conditions — housing affordability, wage stagnation, and a generation that sees no path to stability — remain entirely unaddressed. Italy's youth unemployment rate, already among the highest in the EU, is producing a cohort that Miccichè calls "so terrified of the present" they cannot think about the future. The cycle is now self-reinforcing. A new online movement has pledged weekly protests "until this government of thieves falls." With general elections approaching next year, the pressure will only intensify. Every deployment of troops and every new criminal statute validates the protesters' core claim — that the state has chosen to manage their rage rather than address its causes. Military and police presence was already building in central Milan days before this Saturday's planned march. Italy is running a live experiment in whether you can legislate away economic despair. Four years of Meloni's coalition have produced an expanding security apparatus and a shrinking civic space for dissent, while the structural drivers of youth anger remain untouched. The debate over Italy's "lost generation" is no longer academic — it is playing out in teargas clouds in Piazza del Duomo every Saturday.
