Giorgia Meloni is currently sharing a video on all her channels: “Don’t underestimate us,” says the Italian politician in it. “We are blood, flesh, passion”. The past needed for the future. “When we are gone, our children will be there. And when our children are gone, our grandchildren will be there.” This story never ends.
Just five years ago, Meloni’s “Fratelli d’Italia” (ie “Brothers of Italy”) was still a political underdog, and shortly after won just 4% of the vote in the parliamentary elections. Today they are leading in the polls – and Meloni could become the first female prime minister in Italy’s history after Mario Draghi resigned.
Who is the 45-year-old who may soon set policy in Europe’s third largest economy? And how radical is the post-fascist party that Meloni herself helped build?
Draghi did not use social networks and gave almost no interviews in the last year and a half. With Meloni, a completely different style will move into Palazzo Chigi, the prime minister’s official residence, after snap elections at the end of September. She updates her 1.2 million Twitter followers daily. “This nation must urgently regain its conscience, its pride and its freedom,” Meloni said on the day of Draghi’s resignation.
Her articles are packaged like a tabloid newspaper: bold headlines, shrill sound. On Instagram (almost a million followers), she sometimes shows herself donating blood or holding a rabbit. Two years ago, she was photographed for a magazine in a green, white and red swimsuit – the national colors.
Against immigration, homosexuality and Europe
Her political program is above all a program of exclusion: she fights against Islam, which for her does not belong in Europe. He fights for the classic image of the family – and is against abortion, gays and the gender movement. She is also critical of immigration, especially from Africa. He is against the further deepening of the EU – and prefers to promote a “Europe of patriots”.
Racism, conservatism and national pride. Meloni has built her party on these three pillars. And she does not deviate from them – her supporters love her above all for this directness.
Meloni grew up in Rome in modest circumstances, her mother was a single parent. At the age of 15 he joined the “Youth Front”, the youth organization of the Italian Social Movement – a neo-fascist party. He later joined the successor party “National Alliance”, for which he has been a member of the provincial council of Rome since 1998. Even today, the symbol of the neo-fascists, a flame in the national colors, also adorns the logo of Meloni’s party.
She didn’t work much outside politics: At the age of 19, she completed language courses – on her website she describes herself as a journalist. At the same time, she worked as a babysitter, waitress or barmaid, as she once said in an interview.
In 2006 he was elected for the first time to the House of Representatives of the Parliament. In 2008, under Silvio Berlusconi, she became Minister of Sport and Youth – then the youngest woman to hold a ministerial post. He stayed for three years, but increasingly found himself at odds with Berlusconi’s leadership style. At the end of 2012, he founded the organization “Fratelli d’Italia” together with other competitors. He has been the leader of the party since 2014.
During Draghi’s broad “coalition of national unity”, Meloni was leader of the opposition, with her party the only major opposition force. Meloni could easily rally behind her all those on the right who were unhappy with the government – because the Lega and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia were in the coalition until the end. Until a few years ago, League leader Matteo Salvini was still considered the leader of the right-wing camp. This has now turned in Meloni’s favor.
Mussolini’s granddaughters descended on the party
Her approach to fascism is ambiguous: she herself would never go on stage with a Hitler salute. She accepts that the outstretched right arm may be visible to the public at times during her performances. They are not the core of the party, but there are those nostalgic for fascism who glorify the era of Benito Mussolini. Again and again, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the “Duce”, who led Italy from 1922 to 1943 and made deals with Adolf Hitler, were candidates for “Fratelli d’Italia”.
It has a “slight connection to fascism,” Meloni once said. She prefers to present herself as a democrat and emancipated woman who managed to find her way in male-dominated politics. There is no place for “racists, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis” in her party, she said recently.
Whether after Draghi, the reformist, realist and pro-European, a nationalist and Eurocritic will come to power, has not yet been decided. The election campaign in Italy has just begun. According to the latest poll, Meloni’s party has 22% of the vote. The social democratic PD, which supported Draghi to the end, is a hair behind.
Source: Capital
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