Roberto Saviano

The tragedy of Meloni

Giorgia Meloni presents a danger to the democratic balance in Europe. Her leadership looks to be the antithesis of what Italy needs – and not just at this difficult moment. The danger arises for Europe because Italy has always been a laboratory: it has foreshadowed the crises of other countries. Italy had Mussolini before Hitler and the leftwing extremist Red Brigades before Action Directe appeared in France and the Red Army Faction followed suit in Germany. Italy had Berlusconi before the US got Trump. And after years of Berlusconi misrule, Italy produced the Five Star Movement, the first populist party led by a comedian, before the rest of Europe caught up; its agenda was political disruption, often without any thought to the consequences.

Meloni’s party has expanded its electoral base in Italy by poaching militants from other parties ready to jump on what was supposed to be a winner’s bandwagon. This strategy has worked although it has drawn the Brothers of Italy into controversy and several ongoing judicial investigations, over candidates’ alleged involvement in corruption, extortion, sleaze and illegal waste disposal. Yet Meloni has been able to reaffirm her credibility by expelling troublemakers and publicly distancing them. The only figures it seems she has difficulty disowning are politicians whose identity is built on far-right ideology.

She denies that she is a fascist. I don’t think it is the most important point of her party’s programme, but it is worth addressing. It is a simple game: parties whose lineage can be traced back to neo-fascist movements have gone to lengths to detoxify and soften their image, declaring their opposition to antisemitism, racism and the historical fascist experience.

Meloni dog-whistles to her neo-fascist political ancestors with the Mussolini-era slogan “God, homeland, family”. She did it in 2019, telling a rally: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian.” She reaffirmed it that year, at the World Congress of Families in Verona, promising: “We will defend God, the homeland and the family.”

During an interview in the election campaign, she said that Dio, patria, famiglia was not a fascist slogan, but a declaration of love. To those who remember that it was daubed everywhere during the fascist regime, she countered that the original quote was from the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini.

God, for her, does not seem to represent faith, but rather a brand of Catholicism imposed as the only religion worthy of rights. The homeland’s borders must be defended, with violence if necessary, and the family is not the cradle of affection, but of imposition, obligation and prescription. The family is always heterosexual, its children born and recognised in the imposed form.

Meloni’s real beliefs and goals may not appear exactly the same, but her words can often carry echoes of Mussolini. Her speeches play on the need for identity, on the very human fear of being marginalised or going unrecognised. In her hands, identity becomes a propaganda tool for dividing the world into Us and Them, where “they” are LGBTQ+ communities, migrants or those who don’t see themselves represented in established structures or the labels imposed by others.

Although she denies any connection to fascism, Meloni appears to want to retain support from the wing of the radical right who consider her party too moderate.

On the other hand, continued association with neofascism would put Meloni in a very uncomfortable position internationally. She has opted therefore for a rebrand, but it is partial. During the election campaign she tried to pass for a moderate, muting her message and advancing what she claims are new ideas to solve the so-called migrant emergency and restore Italian spirit.

The far right can succeed in Italy because the left has failed, as in much of the world, to offer credible visions or strategies. The left asks people to vote against the right, but lacks a political vision or an economic alternative. The left sounds elitist when it communicates, while the right has found a hypersimplified discourse: keywords, slogans, concepts reduced to the most basic.

Meloni is, I believe, dangerous because she comes closest to the Berlusconi school of political lies and the populist playbook that says the more total a lie is, the more people will believe it.

Be careful, because where Italy goes, the rest of Europe will soon follow •