Following an electoral victory in late September of 2022, an alliance of Italian conversative parties formed a new government to be headed by Giorgia Meloni, the first woman to ever serve as Italy’s Prime Minister. The problem? Her politics and party are rooted in Italy’s prolific history of fascism. While this case alone is cause enough for concern, what implications does it have for European politics? Are we witnessing the onset of another fascist scourge over the continent and globally, or will the Meloni government fail to have any larger significance?
Giorgia Meloni heads the far-right nationalist Fratelli d’Italia party, which originates from a group formed by ex-fascists following World War II called the Italian Social Movement, or MSI. It should go without saying that any party with a direct link to the original Italian Fascist movement is worrisome. Fascist Italy was a time of authoritarian rule by the far-right characterized by crackdowns on all political dissent and an imperialist and racist agenda. Despite its legacy in Italy, Meloni has shown herself dedicated to the far right since her youth, having joined the neofascist Italian Social Movement at the age of 15 and led the student branch of the far-right National Alliance, according to her 2021 autobiography titled “I am Giorgia”. She entered politics in 2006 after being elected to the Chamber of Deputies on a nativist and nationalist platform. Two years later, she was a minister in the scandal-plagued and backward-looking right-wing government of Silvio Berlusconi.
Outside of her history of Italian Nationalist associations, Meloni has also made countless comments expressing her support for fascism and a fascist agenda. Reuters reports that as a teenager, she praised Benito Mussolini, the infamous fascist dictator of Italy, as a “good politician.” Though she has since offered half-hearted renouncements of her explicit fascist sympathies, her government does not seem to be radically distant from these sympathies. This reality is made apparent by Meloni’s appointment of Galeazzo Bignami as deputy minister for infrastructure, who has been pictured wearing a black shirt, the marker of Mussolini’s fascist paramilitary units, and a swastika armband. Other ministers she has appointed to her administration have proposed naming parks after Mussolini’s brother, attended Italian SS memorial services, and made pilgrimages to the grave of the Fascist dictator. No matter how often Meloni may have verbally backtracked from her fascist associations, her government is a testimony to her continued efforts to bring fascism and fascist sympathizers into the political mainstream.
Meloni’s policies are not much better. Her language is rooted in homophobia, nativism, racism, and a host of other hateful positions. Reuters reports some of Meloni’s questionable stances as expressed in her own words: “Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death.” Opposition to protections for the LGBTQ+ community and fluidity of gender and social structures is not novel in terms of 21st century right-wing positions, though her association of these ideas and certain groups with “life” and “death” certainly points toward rhetoric that is more clearly fascist.
The original fascist movements supposed themselves to be revitalizing a decadent society that had been bogged down by liberal capitalism, socialism, intellectualism, and a host of other dominating philosophies of the day. In Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism, Italian fascist poet F.T. Marinetti expounds a sentiment similar to that of Meloni in declaring that “For too long Italy has been a marketplace for junk dealers. We want to free our country from the endless number of museums that cover her like graveyards.” We should be extremely critical therefore of Meloni when she proposes reinvigorating Italy with a “culture of life” in opposition to an “abyss of death.” This life force that she claims to seek, when heard in combination with her bigoted attacks on marginalized groups, seems awfully similar to the nationalistic sentiments of Fascist Italy that uplift the unthinking party ideologue over anyone not fitting within the narrow definition of a true Italian or a “Brother of Italy.” Any modern-day leader preaching “a culture of life” and exclusionary language, especially one originating from a country like Italy with a historical period of fascism during which “Homosexuals, ‘career’ criminals, and the so-called socially degenerate would all be excluded, along with ethnic minorities such as Slavs, and later, Jews,” is grounds for alarm.
Though Giorgia Meloni may be the most recent right-wing leader whose party has explicit ties to the fascist regimes of the early 20th century, she is not alone among European politicians denounced for having fascist ideas or tendencies. Marine Le Pen, who has finished second in the past two presidential contests in France on platforms of Islamophobia and nativism and whose father is an on-record Holocaust denier and antisemite, is another right-wing nationalist whose positions have been called fascist. Though Le Pen has attempted to distance her father and dissociate her party, Le Rassemblement national (formerly Le Front national), from its fascist and antisemitic history, many of her voters continue to believe in the conspiracy theories about Jews which are inseparable from the irrational appeal of fascism. Another troubling example of the resurgence of right wing nationalism is the case of Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of Sweden Democrats, which is a party founded by Neo-Nazis and has recently become a part of the governing coalition and the second largest party in Sweden. He is likewise no stranger to Islamophobia and accusations of fascism, even if he, like Le Pen and Meloni, has sought to distance himself and his party from explicitly fascist associations.
What exactly has driven this Fascist resurgence in Europe? The nativist rhetoric and agenda of many far-right politicians like Meloni and Le Pen, suggests that increased migration into Europe could be one contributing factor. For instance, Marine Le Pen and the RN have long associated immigration with economic problems and an erasure of French identity amid historical surges in immigration to France from North Africa. Similarly, Le Monde reports that Italy has recently become the main point of entry for migrants entering Europe at a time when Meloni touts policies which would criminalize migrants. She even called for a naval blockade against migrants during her 2022 electoral campaign. When coupled with economic problems like rising energy costs, inflation, and national debt, immigrants serve as a persistent scapegoat for potential fascists to blame and use to rise to power.
It is impossible to say for sure how far these leaders will get in realizing modern Fascist regimes. But the selection of a politician like Giorgia Meloni, whose party has roots in neo-fascism, as the Prime Minister of a formerly fascist country should be cause for concern. When viewing her new government in the context of other far-right governments across Europe like Sweden and nearly France as well, it seems as though we are witnessing the onset of what could be called contemporary fascism. But this fascism need not look like the fascism of the past to be fascism. It will not necessarily use swastikas, military uniforms, and parades to get its hateful and nationalistic agenda across. It will adapt itself to modern culture and take advantage of uniquely 21st-century discontents to reach power. Media outlets, voters, and left-leaning opposition parties alike must therefore be diligent in recognizing and refuting the rhetoric and tactics of this modern sprout of fascism and rooting it out before it can return to power.
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