By Ishaan Tharoor
with Karina Tsui
Italy is on its way to being run by ‘post-fascists’
Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy, and League Party leader Matteo Salvini in Rome. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)
The Brothers of Italy is not a fascist movement, as the far-right Italian party’s charismatic leader Giorgia Meloni has repeatedly insisted. But they are not not fascist either. Like European neo-fascists elsewhere, the Brothers revile immigration and grandstand over a cloistered, narrow vision of national identity. And like neo-fascists elsewhere, the party draws its origins from a distinctly fascist past — in this instance, from the Italian Social Movement, which was founded out of the ashes of World War II defeat in 1946 by supporters of executed dictator Benito Mussolini.
Meloni counts some of Mussolini’s descendants as her direct allies and still uses the same emblem once adopted by the inheritors of his politics. A few years ago, such connections would have been merely part of the atmospherics of the political fringe, where the Brothers of Italy languished. But Meloni and her party are now polling ahead of all other rivals in Italian politics. When voters elect a new government on Sept. 25 — a consequence of last week’s dramatic collapse of the coalition led by technocratic Prime Minister Mario Draghi — they may confirm Meloni as the country’s first female prime minister.
This state of affairs is largely due to the dysfunction of the unwieldy coalition government that has held sway in Rome since 2018. Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank and a deeply respected political independent who stands somewhat athwart Italy’s polarized scene, was invited to office 18 months ago amid various squabbles and crises. He presided over what was widely viewed as a competent, stabilizing administration, but chose to quit last week after a number of coalition members — including the far-right League led by former interior minister Matteo Salvini, the populist Five Star Movement, and Forza Italia led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi — withdrew their support.
This is, of course, par for the course in Italian politics.
“If Draghi’s resignation was abrupt and undesirable, it was nonetheless entirely consistent with political practice in Italy’s post-1945 democratic era,” noted Tony Barber in the Financial Times. “His national unity administration lasted 17 months, slightly longer than the average term for the 69 governments since the Second World War.”
Meloni’s Brothers, unlike the other major right-wing parties, remained in opposition throughout the past few years. They have capitalized on a morass of public discontent over Italy’s long-running problems, including entrenched youth unemployment. Like other far-right leaders in Europe, Meloni rages against the country’s perceived inexorable decline.
“Yes to secure borders! No to mass immigration!” she declared earlier this summer at a rally for Spain’s far-right Vox. “Yes to our civilization! And no to those who want to destroy it!”
Now, the prospect of the rabble-rousing Meloni taking power seems more likely than ever. The Brothers are polling narrowly ahead of the center-left Democrats, but may count on the support of Salvini’s and Berlusconi’s factions as part of a broader right-wing coalition. If she does emerge as the biggest standard-bearer of the Italian right, it’ll mark one of the most significant journeys of a far-right politician into the European mainstream, outpacing veteran campaigners like France’s Marine Le Pen.
“Meloni has been an activist in post-fascist politics since her youth,” said Piero Ignazi, a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna, to France24. “The party’s identity is, for the most part, linked to post-fascist traditions. But its platform mixes this tradition with some mainstream conservative ideas and neoliberal elements such as free enterprise.”
Italy has seen numerous cycles of establishment-breaking elections and waves of political fragmentation and is proving fertile ground for the migration of “post-fascists” into the corridors of power. The Brothers are “the beneficiary of a much wider breakdown of the barriers between the traditional center-right and the insurgent far right, playing out across Western Europe and America,” wrote David Broder in the New York Times. “Heavily indebted, socially polarized and politically unstable, Italy is just the country where the process is most advanced. If you want to know what the future may hold, it’s a good place to look.”
Questions loom over what sort of disruptive presence a far-right government in Italy would represent for Europe’s liberal establishment. The continent’s nationalist, illiberal, Euroskeptic right — so far only in power on its eastern periphery — would have a striking new regional leader. A Meloni government may be considerably less enthusiastic about supporting the Ukrainian war effort against Russia than Draghi was, though she has been at pains in recent weeks to stress her Atlanticist credentials. It may be regressive on gender and minority rights; Meloni is an outspoken critic of the “LGBT lobbies” in the West.
It also may be rather meek. “If you are hoping that she will lead the revolution — against ‘Europe’ or ‘the establishment’ — you are likely to be disappointed,” Italian journalist Francesco Borgonovo wrote for Unherd, a right-leaning online publication. “Might she vex the EU establishment like [Hungarian Prime Minister Victor] Orban does? Possibly. But will the center-right allies whose support she needs to get into government — first and foremost Berlusconi — allow her to go down that road?”
Meloni is “popular these days because opposing policy is easier than making tough choices in government. As often happens in politics, once you actually have to make policy, public support dissipates quickly,” wrote Maria Tadeo for Bloomberg Opinion. “Italy also has an extraordinary ability to build and burn politicians. In fact, for Meloni, becoming the next premier — if that were indeed to happen — may prove a poisoned chalice.”
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