Who might be Italy’s next Prime Minister?
By Raja Waqas Raza
Giorgia Meloni, the far-right firebrand and Steve Bannon ally who might be Italy’s next prime
minister?Only a few weeks ago, for those unfamiliar with Italian politics, the question was:
Giorgia who? But as the country nears a vote to install a new government its 70th since the
end of World War II it is increasingly becoming: Really? Giorgia Meloni?Polls suggest the
45-year-old leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, a political descendant of the
neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) founded by Benito Mussolini’s allies, will likely be
the country’s first female prime minister. Meloni’s party dominates a coalition that looks set to
win the Sept. 25 vote.A century after Mussolini’s infamous March on Rome and the
beginning of fascist rule in Italy, the possibility has turned an international spotlight on Meloni
and what she stands for and what the choice of this self-professed fan of Steve Bannon
might mean not just for Italy, but for Europe writ large.“He is an ally,” Meloni once said of the
recently-indicted former Trump adviser, adding, in an interview with the Daily Beast, that she
hosted Bannon at a far-right political event in Rome “because we share ideals. We need to
hear what he says.”Meloni has bashed the migrant population and praised Benito Mussolini.
What are Meloni’s ideals? She has railed against LGBTQ rights and called for a naval
blockade of the African continent to prevent migrants from setting sail for Europe.She has
blasted left-wing politicians for financing “an invasion” to “replace Italians with immigrants.”
That invasion, she claims, has left Italy facing “demographic emergency.” Such rhetoric is a
staple of far-right politicians in the U.S. and Europe, and of the racist Great Replacement
Theory that has animated them.Meloni says she is for the European Union but against the
idea of Europe-wide bureaucracy, a position that many fear could threaten European unity.
Above all she positions herself in another favorite trope of right-wing reactionaries in
Europe, the U.S. and beyond as anti-woke. At a 2019 rally she complained of pressures
from the other end of the political spectrum “to call us parent 1, parent 2, gender LGBT,
citizen X, with code numbers. But we are not code numbers … and we’ll defend our
identity.”Given her political party’s roots, a main focus of Meloni’s critics has been on the
F-word—“fascist” — a label that Meloni has been working overtime to refute as she becomes
the center of attention in the campaign. So much so that last month she issued a video
message — in Spanish, French and English — telling the new legion of outside experts (and
reporters) now following her career that, no, she’s not a fascist.“For days, I have been
reading articles in the international press about the upcoming elections that will give Italy a
new government, in which I am described as a danger to democracy, to Italian, European
and international stability,” she said. “None of this is true.”But Meloni’s past statements
haven’t helped, including the emergence on social media of a video from her teenage years,
when she was already an activist for the Italian far right. Asked about Mussolini, Meloni told
a French TV crew that “everything he did, he did for Italy,” according to a Financial Times
translation. “And there have been no politicians like him for 50 years.”Her history and her
current rhetoric which places her firmly on the right wing of the European political spectrum,
with allies including the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orban have raised questions about how
she might govern amid a European war and a worsening cost-of-living crisis on the
homefront.No one should be in any doubt as to the threat she represents to what Europe is
supposed to stand for,” Britain’s left-leaning Guardian newspaper warned in an August
editorial.Meloni’s chief rival in the election, the former premier and leader of the center-left
Democratic Party, Enrico Letta, put it more pointedly.A win for Meloni, he said in an interview
with The Associated Press, would mean “danger for the future of Italy.”Meloni has a long
history on the right flank of Italian politics. Brought up by a single mother in a working-class
area of Rome, she was a teenage activist for the youth wing of the MSI, the old
pro-Mussolini party. She won her first local election at the age of 21.As for Meloni’s political
party, it was established in 2012. Until the year before, Meloni was a junior minister in the
scandal-prone government led by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. She left
with a group of other right-wing politicians to set up the Brothers of Italy; the name is taken
from the opening lines of the national anthem. Their insignia? The same flame symbol as the
fascist MSI.The background [of her party] is one which has its roots in the postwar fascist
nostalgias,” Carlo Bastasin, a leading Italian commentator based in Rome and a nonresident
fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Grid. “The novel thing with Meloni and her party is
that it would be the first time that a party reflecting these opinions will come to have such
political responsibilities. Some members of parties that have these kinds of roots have been
ministers but they were really marginal figures.”So what might it mean for Italy and for
Europe were Meloni to move from the margins to the helm of a new Italian
government?Throughout the campaign, Meloni has said again and again that she supports
standing with Ukraine as it resists Russia’s invasion, telling the Reuters news agency in a
recent interview that the war was “the tip of a conflict whose objective is the revision of the
world order.” Unlike Orban or for that matter, Steve Bannon Meloni has shown no sympathy
for the Kremlin.But things aren’t as clear cut within the coalition she heads. Among its key
partners is the right-wing League Party, led by Matteo Salvini, who has questioned the utility
of European sanctions against Moscow. “If we adopt an instrument to hurt the aggressor and
after seven months of war it has not been hurt,” Salvini said at a recent political conference
in Italy, “at least considering a change seems legitimate to me.”Those remarks came amid
growing concerns about rising energy prices across Europe. As Grid has reported, worries
about Russian energy imports have driven up European natural gas prices; in early
September, already-high prices climbed by roughly a third amid a shutdown of a key pipeline
connecting Russia and Europe. Italy is feeling the pain; the country depends on Moscow for
around a quarter of its gas needs, and ordinary Italians have seen their energy bills spike. In
Naples, the growing burden has already prompted protests.Analysts point out that Meloni
herself, though pro-Ukraine in her statements, is close to Hungary’s Orban, perhaps the
most shamelessly pro-Putin outlier in the anti-Kremlin European arena. In a letter to Meloni
last year, Orban highlighted the need for what he said were “reliable companions in battle
who have a common vision of the world and give similar responses to the challenges of our
times.”Her proximity to Orban and other figures on the European right touches another
controversial policy question: Meloni wants a weaker European Union, arguing for national
capitals to hold on to more political power, instead of transferring authority on key matters to
Brussels.Don’t let Brussels do what Rome can best take care of,” Meloni said recently in
Milan, adding that “if I win, for Europe, the fun is over.”To her critics, that attitude risks
European unity at a critical juncture, as Russia continues its brutal assault on
Ukraine.Domestically, there are concerns about what a Meloni premiership would mean for
the migrant population, and for the rights of women. Although Meloni herself has said she
would not abolish an existing law that legalizes abortion, many are worried about her public
statements on the matter.Yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death,” she said at a
right-wing rally earlier in the summer. The concerns don’t stem simply from her own words:
The Brothers of Italy party has a record of pushing to erode abortion rights, including putting
forward a proposal to designate Rome a “city for life” and allow anti-abortion groups into
family planning clinics, according to Politico Europe
Meloni’s popularity has soared recently and the fact that she and the Brothers of Italy are
now so close to power raises begs another question: What brought them here?A decade
ago, the party’s vote share in Italian elections stood at under 2 percent. As recently as 2018,
it was at a mere 4 percent. An August survey showed just how dramatically its fortunes had
changed: Brothers of Italy alone was polling at around 24 percent, according to a Bloomberg
report. The wider right-wing coalition that it leads, and which features Salvini’s party as well
as Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party, was registering almost 50 percent support among Italian
voters.
So what happened? One answer is an Italian version of an old political maxim: Throw them
all out.“Italians simply are in a protesting mood, and have been so for decades,” Bastasin
said. “And they are ready to write off politicians who take responsibility in government and
don’t deliver.”Brothers of Italy was the only major party that sat outside the broad unity
government led by technocrat Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who resigned over the summer,
setting the stage for the coming elections. Meloni’s party had the distinction of distance an
outsider status that might prove its biggest strength, according to Bastasin, particularly at a
time of growing economic pain.Inflation across the Italian economy is currently near a
four-decade high. In August, the country’s manufacturing sector saw factory production drop
for a second time in as many months. All this came, according to analysts at the financial
firm Standard & Poor’s, amid growing fears of a recession.To be sure, Meloni’s nationalist
rhetoric also fits into a broader public narrative on key topics such as immigration. A study
published last year by the London-based Overseas Development Institute showed that while
Italy, with an aging population and low birthrate, faced a “growing need for migrants,” public
attitudes toward immigration were often hostile amid a skewed understanding of the issue. In
a 2017, survey, for instance, most Italians said the proportion of non-European Union
migrants in their country stood at just under 25 percent. The real number was 7 percent. On
the issue of LGBT rights, a 2019 survey showed that while the majority of Italians some 68
percent supported equal rights for gay, lesbian and bisexual people, a significant minority
around 27 percent disagreed.This backdrop, combined with economic malaise and a
growing sense of disenchantment with the political establishment, could propel Meloni into
power.Italians are supporting, at the moment, the only political party that has had no political
responsibility in governing the country in recent decades,“They are looking for the next
possible option to express their criticism for how the country has been run. Brothers of Italy
is [at this moment] the last possible option available for them.