“Mussolini was a good politician” and other controversial situations by Giorgia Meloni

Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy, will be the country’s far-right prime minister since the era of Benito Mussolini.

His stance on the fascist dictator is just one of the controversies that surrounded his figure.

Here, a review of some of the sayings and actions that marked Meloni’s career and the Italian campaign, in which his party had a meteoric rise.

1. “Mussolini was a good politician”

“I think Mussolini was a good politician. In other words, everything he did, he did for Italy. And that is not found in the politicians that we have had in the last 50 years,” Giorgia Meloni said in an interview, when he was 19 years old. By then, he had already spent four years in a right-wing militancy initiated in the Italian Social Movement, a group created in 1946 by followers of Mussolini.

Since then, Meloni has sought to move away from that claim. This year, according to Efe, she published a video during the election campaign in which she distanced herself from the fascism of dictator Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s ally in World War II.

“The Italian right has relegated fascism to history for decades, unequivocally condemning the deprivation of democracy and the infamous anti-Jewish laws. And obviously our condemnation of Nazism and Communism is also unequivocal,” she said, 26, after her first statement, according to the newspaper.

Reuters explains that, in an interview with the agency last month, it denied any nostalgia for fascism and walked away from its own comments. “Obviously I have a different opinion now,” she replied without elaborating.

2. “Yes to natural family, no to LGBT lobbyists”

Meloni’s political views appear to have been condensed into a minute of a speech she gave in Spain in June.

“Either you say ‘yes’ or you say ‘no’. ‘Yes’ to natural family, ‘no’ to LGBT lobbyists. ‘Yes’ to sexual identity, ‘no’ to gender ideology.

‘Yes’ ‘to the culture of life, ‘no’ to the abyss of death, ‘yes’ to the universality of the cross, ‘no’ to Islamic violence,” he said at a rally of the Spanish far-right VOX party, in a speech that transcended so much for its content and the tone it used, as can be seen in the video that the Spanish group shared on their networks.

His impassioned speech, met with applause from a crowd, also read: “’Yes’ to border security, ‘no’ to mass immigration. ‘Yes’ to the work of our citizens, ‘no’ to big international finance”. Yes’ to people’s sovereignty, ‘no’ to Brussels bureaucrats. And ‘yes’ to our civilization and ‘no’ to those who want to destroy it”.

3. The publication of the video of the rape of a woman

Giorgia Meloni was heavily criticized after publishing during the campaign a video of a Ukrainian woman being raped by an asylum seeker from Guinea in the city of Piacenza.

“One cannot remain silent in the face of this terrible episode of sexual violence against a Ukrainian woman perpetrated in broad daylight in Piacenza by an asylum seeker. Hugs to this woman. I will do my best to restore security in our cities,” Meloni wrote in his networks.

The tweet sparked a flurry of criticism online, as well as from Meloni’s political opponents.

“It is indecent to use rape images. Even more indecent to do so for electoral purposes,” Enrico Letta, leader of the center-left Democratic Party, wrote at the time. Igiaba Scego, a prominent Italian writer of Somali descent, accused her of exploiting the rape victim. “Offered as clickbait voyeurism rather than protected. This election campaign is horrible,” she wrote.

Meloni, who has called for a naval blockade of North Africa to prevent migrant boats from setting sail, said on Facebook that her rivals used rape to target her while ignoring the victim to avoid addressing what she called a migration emergency.

4. His attitude towards Putin

Among the controversies surrounding Italy’s future prime minister is her attitude towards President Vladimir Putin. In recent days, a message circulated from March 2018 when, after the elections in Russia, she congratulated Putin on the result.

“The will of the people in these elections seems unequivocal,” Meloni wrote after an election in which the Russian won nearly 78% of the vote, but in which his most prominent opponent, opposition leader Alexey, was barred from running.

Also repeated was a quote from her autobiography published in 2021, “I am Giorgia. Le mie radici le mie idee”, in which she says: “Russia is part of our European value system, defends Christian identity and fights Islamic fundamentalism”.

This phrase was interpreted as a compliment to Putin, something she denied. The book goes on to say that the European giant must make this defense “in peace with neighboring nations”, and Meloni spoke out against the invasion of Ukraine.

5. Invest in sport to combat “deviations”

In a video released during the election campaign, Giorgia Melonia insisted on the need to invest in sport as a way to “fight drugs, deviance and form generations of new healthy and determined Italians”.

Faced with the controversy generated by the use of the word “deviance”, the Brothers of Italy released a list reaffirming the concept that included “drugs, alcoholism, smoking, gambling, self-mutilation, obesity, anorexia, bullying, babygang, hikikomori”, according to the report by the state agency ANSA.

The post that featured medical conditions as “deviations” was later deleted, but that didn’t calm the debate.

“It is not enough, we need an apology to those who have been insulted and considered deviant as obese or anorexic. Come and tell the families who are experiencing this in their own skin,” said MP Dem Filippo Sensi.