Is fascism back to Italy? Is Italy going towards its own Trump age? Are civil rights in danger in Italy? Those are the questions now spreading all around the world as Giorgia Meloni, an Italian far-right politician, won Italy’s last elections on September 25th, those which have been the most covered by the international press since at least twenty years ago.
CNN called her would-be “most Far-right prime minister,” the Times has covered her win as it has never done for any other PM, even trying to understand how “Lord of the Rings” influenced her political life path. On the day before the election the British Guardian called her a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe.
Pages have been written to portray her as a woman who endorses policies that would annoy any feminist in the world. She is not a hard-working advocate of LGBT and migrants’ rights. Her agenda is conservative.
But yet, her view should be no surprise, indeed it is surprising if you only look at her as a woman, implying that she should have certain values because of it, but in reality, she’s a politician. Politics has been her life since she was a teen. I don’t doubt that she genuinely believes in the values she advocates, as she has been consistent in her beliefs. An example of this regards pink quotas at work. She’s totally against it saying that a woman should be valued for her merit, not as a void to fill. Her career speaks for her, as she’s been able to make her own way in the Far-right environment starting as a newcomer and ending up youth leader, MP, minister, then party leader and now would-be Prime Minister.
But if this coherence draws her praise, it also raises doubts. She started her career in Italian Social Movement, a strong post-fascist party in 20th century Italy. There’s footage of her as a youth militant praising Mussolini as a statesman and a few years ago she even promoted the candidacy of some of Mussolini’s relatives.
During this latest election she was able to close with this past publicly, even though nobody among her opponents actually believed her. As we mentioned before, her famous coherence helps her.
However as the Times wrote “she’s extreme, but she’s no tyrant.” Fascism will not come back, and most voters seem not to care about the opposite ideas from the the left. But if fascism won’t come back, what about the extreme-right?
There will be changes. Meloni is a strong woman, her political style is direct, sometimes rude. This gained her the leadership of the European Conservative Party, the appraisal of American conservatives (she was a major guest at CPAC) and strong international support from the center-right area. Even Zelensky praised her win, as she’s been one of the most supportive politicians of Ukraine in Italy since the war started.
But she has problems with the European Union. EU Commissioner Von der Layen said that if Meloni tries to move the union to the right, he has the tools to stop her. The French Prime Minister said “we will overlook the respect of civil rights in Italy”, not a good sentence to say about a first-world country.
Meloni knows how strong the European Union is and she’s been really cautious, building a strong collaboration with outgoing Italian Prime Minister, former EU Bank Governor Mario Draghi. In the past she was in favor of an Italian style Brexit.
Moreover, after winning the elections she hasn’t released any interviews and her voice hasn’t been heard a lot in the political debate. She’s probably planning her future steps. In the electoral campaign she turned out to be really moderate, counting on the left’s weakness. But how much moderate shall she become in order to keep the power that she’s now gained, after years of struggling? And how long will her electorate tolerate the moderate direction she’s stepping towards?
Government is a double-edged sword. Meloni’s reputation is now on the brink of her biggest challenge.
She hasn’t won yet, because if you go in government and then fall in a year and a half, as most Italian cabinets, you will have no impact. Meloni’s been training her whole life for this moment. Adept at politics, if she fails it won’t be because she didn’t try her best.
Author
Dario Pio Muccilli is the Star-Revue’s Italian correspondent, based in Turin. Email him at [email protected]
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