On a warm October afternoon in 2019, Giorgia Meloni took to the stage set up in the large square in front of the Lateran Church in Rome. It was the right’s big gathering day, where dreams of Italy’s future were to be shared by three political leaders: One was the once popular businessman-politician Silvio Berlusconi. The other was Italian right-wing populism star Matteo Salvini, from the Lega party. The third was Giorgia Meloni, the rather young leader of the Brothers of Italy party. Berlusconi seemed tired. Salvini looked a little bored. Giorgia Meloni, on the other hand, sounded so energetic and angry that the effect was immediate. “I’m Giorgia!”, she roared. “I am a woman! I’m a mother! I am Christian!”. ON THE TEAM: Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini. Photo: Andrew Medichini / AP The speech was a roar of identity politics, a reformulation of a national conservative right-wing politics driven by opposition to cosmopolitan ideas, gay rights and the impact of foreign religions on Italy. “They are trying to erase our identity,” Meloni said. “They are not going to succeed.” Before, the Lateran Church was the place where new popes were installed. On this October day, it was easy to get the feeling that a new far-right queen had emerged. The difficult legacy Sunday 25 September there are elections in Italy. If the polls are correct, Giorgia Meloni will become prime minister and the first far-right leader in the country since Benito Mussolini. Meloni entered politics at the age of 15, when she joined a movement called the “Youth Front” in 1992. In the working-class district of Garbatella in Rome, where she grew up, it was not an ordinary choice. Here people voted to the left. The “Youth Front” was the youth organization of the party MSI, “The Italian Social Movement”, founded after the Second World War by those who wanted to build on the legacy of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In the autobiography “I’m Giorgia”, Meloni describes the Youth Front as a home, a place to find an identity. It was a male-dominated environment, but in Giorgia Meloni’s own narrative about herself, it only made her stronger. Moreover, there is an ever-recurring argument against gender quotas today, when Meloni speaks: “In our party, we choose candidates based on how skilled they are, not because of their gender,” she likes to say. The youth front was also the start of a fast career. The movement was everything to her, if we are to believe the autobiography – where her classmates spent their weekends eating ice cream and flirting in the center of Rome, only far-right politics mattered to Meloni: “When you have ambitions to change the world, there are no room for anything else. When you have a nation to save, taking into account your personal needs and desires becomes unforgivable,” she writes. ENERGY: Giorgia Meloni on the podium. Photo: ALBERTO LINGRIA / Reuters This is how Giorgia Meloni has often spoken and written – as if epic battles and battles are constantly being fought and won. Giorgia in fantasy land She was not alone in having the sense to weave politics into large, dramatic narratives. The youth front was obsessed with fantasy literature, especially JR R Tolkien’s universe. From the 1970s onwards, the neo-fascists’ summer camps were called Hobbit camps, where the aim was to create something that would compete with what they perceived as the left’s youth cultural dominance. During the years Meloni was involved, party members had Tolkien-inspired nicknames, and when it was time to call for debate meetings in the evening, it was Boromir’s horn that gave the signal. (Giorgia Meloni had the hobbit Sam as a personal favorite.) There is room for many interpretations of Tolkien, obviously, but for Meloni it seems a lot about identity that needs to be taken care of. Elves, hobbits and dwarves are happy to cooperate, but they should preferably cultivate their uniqueness in their own homelands – much like how Meloni has described the ideal cooperation between European countries. Something completely different from the EU, she writes, “an indefinable size in the hands of obscure bureaucrats, who want to overlook or perhaps best of all erase the national identities.” Meloni’s Italy Meloni quickly rose through the ranks in a move that changed him. Soon after Meloni’s entry into politics, the parent party MSI disappeared. The party leadership had come to terms with fascism and with the most overt worship of the country’s late dictator Mussolini, and changed its name to the National Alliance. Now the goal was to become a governing party, not a nostalgic movement on the fringes of political life in Italy. And pretty soon representatives of the far right, sometimes referred to as “post-fascists”, came into government, led by the businessman-politician Silvio Berlusconi. It was in this political landscape that Giorgia Meloni was elected to parliament for the first time. And in 2008, she became the youngest ever minister in Italy, in yet another government led by Berlusconi. Later, the parties merged, in the Berlusconi-led movement “Freedom’s People”. For many of the veterans in Meloni’s party, it was a misstep, indeed, almost a betrayal. Was there really nothing left of the far-right legacy? The identity? Didn’t they have a nation to save? When the Berlusconi government collapsed in the wake of the financial crisis, Giorgia Meloni seized the opportunity. Queen of the brothers The new party “Brothers of Italy”, founded in 2012, was supposed to take care of the legacy of the far right, without surly interference from Berlusconi or others. At the same time, the legacy had to be managed in a way that did not scare away voters. Meloni was supposed to nurture the roots of the far right, but at the same time she had to insist that those roots were not the same as fascism. Or at least that fascism is a closed chapter in a book that is closed. It was a difficult balancing act. In the first years, there was nothing to suggest that Italy’s Brothers would become a dominant force in Italian politics. The opinion polls suggested that only a couple or three percent of the country’s population would give them their vote in an election. READY: Giorgia Meloni and her party are ready to lift Italy up again, says the slogan. Photo: VINCENZO PINTO / AFP Giorgia Meloni nevertheless had strong supporters and admirers, not least abroad. The man who was once Donald Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was often in Rome, both to bond with the most conservative forces in the Catholic Church and with Giorgia Meloni. In 2018, he was the guest of honor at Meloni’s far-right festival Atreju (named after the protagonist of another adventure book, “The Neverending Story”.) The following year, it was Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary and inventor of the idea of ”illiberal democracy”, who was the main attraction. WEEKEND IN ROME: Steve Bannon was the main guest at Giorgia Meloni’s far-right festival in 2018. Photo: ALESSANDRO BIANCHI / Reuters When the opposition in Italy today warns against Giorgia Meloni, it is not necessarily the ties to fascism that are held up, but rather the connections to Orbán’s national conservative, illiberal mindset. The fatherland, the family and the church are core points for both. When they talk about a shrinking population, they are not worried about students leaving the country, but declining birth rates among those who “really” belong to the nation. Abortion is another important point for Meloni. She does not want to change the law that guarantees the right to abortion – just “give women the right not to have an abortion”, she said earlier this week, before a long debate about what she really meant by that followed. Russian dilemmas The opinion polls give Meloni great chances of winning the election next weekend. The challenges have perhaps primarily been about convincing voters that the changes under her will not really be that dramatic. She has emphasized that she does not want to leave the EU, she has maintained her faith in transatlantic cooperation. She has done this in speeches in several languages, because foreign warnings and the markets’ reactions to an unproven far-right leader are also worrying. Giorgia Meloni has undergone a remarkable change in profile only since June, when she gave a fiery speech to far-right colleagues in the Spanish party Vox, using language reminiscent of a call for new crusades. After Prime Minister Mario Draghi had to resign this summer and the election campaign got under way, far more moderate tones have dominated. It may be reminiscent of the “demonization” French Marine Le Pen has had as a strategy for a number of years, but experimentally carried out in record time by Meloni. PARTNER AND PROBLEM: Matteo Salvini smiles in the background. Photo: ALBERTO PIZZOLI / AFP At the same time, her coalition partners can present problems. Where Meloni’s position on Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine has been clearly condemnatory, Matteo Salvini’s Lega struggles more with old admiration for and agreements with Vladimir Putin. At the latest this week, the accusations that Lega has received financial support from Russia got a new round in the debate. The idea that a government with Salvini and Berlusconi will give Putin the victory he needs is problematic for Meloni. For now, however, the right in Italy is holding together. If everything goes Giorgia Meloni’s way, the coalition government may even manage without Silvio Berlusconi’s support. In that case, it would be natural to remove “centre” from the designation “centre-right”, which is constantly used for Meloni’s government alternative in Italy. The country will get Western Europe’s only pure far-right government. What it means for Italy – and for Europe – could quickly become the autumn’s most exciting epic tale from reality, with plenty of room for different interpretations of who are brave heroes and who are dangerous opponents.
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