• Giorgia Meloni is the first far-right leader in Italy since World War II and the first woman to lead the country.
• She has been a professional politician since she was a teenager and has built her politics around appeals to traditional national identity.
• Her government has tried to impede humanitarian ships’ ability to dock at the closest Italian ports after rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean.
• Meloni has a conspiratorial bent and rails against globalization, political correctness, and cancel culture.
• She has positioned herself as the voice of a middle class that feels left behind by elites and has pushed symbolic issues such as using fewer English and French terms.
• She draws inspiration from the French thinker Renaud Camus’s “Great Replacement” theory, which posits that nonwhite and non-Christian immigrants will eventually supersede white Europeans.
• Meloni’s rise to power was enabled by Silvio Berlusconi, who gave mainstream respectability to conservatives like her.
• Her party, Brothers of Italy, is rooted in postwar incarnations of the fascist movement and has a flame representing the spirit of fascism in its symbol.
• Giorgia Meloni is an Italian neo-nationalist politician who has been gaining popularity in recent years.
• She is the leader of the Brothers of Italy party and is the current president of the European Conservatives and Reformists.
• Meloni is known for her hardline stance on immigration and her opposition to the “citizens’ income”, a monthly subsidy for unemployed people.
• She has drawn inspiration from fantasy fiction, such as The Neverending Story and The Lord of the Rings, to find new heroes for a conservative cultural identity.
• Meloni has been criticized for her close ties to far-right European parties, such as Poland’s Law and Justice party and Spain’s Vox party.
• Despite her harsh rhetoric, Meloni’s party is to the left of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in its support for a welfare state.
• Meloni is currently managing her two junior coalition partners, Berlusconi and Salvini, who both crave the spotlight and envy Meloni.
• Meloni has been criticized for her dismissive terms towards her political opponents, and for appointing archconservative and anti-abortion/anti-gay-marriage figures to prominent positions.
• Meloni’s program is largely defensive, and she has proposed harsh prison terms for people who organize illegal raves, and has adamantly pursued defamation suits against journalists.
• Critics fear that Meloni’s leadership could lead to an “illiberal democracy” and the shrinking of public space for adversaries.
• Meloni has requested more support from the EU to share the burden of contending with migrants, but her greatest obstacle may be the inertia of Rome’s bureaucracy.
Published February 12, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Rachel Donadio’s original post Can Giorgia Meloni Govern Italy?
