In Italy, a neo-fascist party at the gates of power

She is the one who writes it. In his autobiography published in 2021, Io sono Giorgia (I am Georgia), Italian politician Giorgia Meloni says she “met her real family” when, at age 15, she became a member of the local youth section of the Italian Social Movement, the political party founded in 1946 by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

We are then in the 1980s, in the popular district of Garbatella, in the south of Rome, and the young girl, raised by a single mother in a modest home in the Italian capital, then prepares to find much more within the group of nationalist identity activists. She is going to lay the first milestone of a political trip there which, next Sunday, could place her at the top of the Italian executive power. If the trend continues.

A meteoric rise for the 45-year-old politician, now head of the neo-fascist and far-right political formation Fratelli d’Italia – “Brothers of Italy”, in French, a reference to the first words of the Italian national anthem —, who would thus become the first woman to lead the country.

With it, for the first time in decades, a political party that has not totally rejected its fascist roots finds itself at the door of power.

Chance of the calendars, the ballot is held on September 25, almost 100 years after Mussolini’s march on Rome which preceded the establishment of the dictatorial regime of the Duce.

“It’s quite surprising, admits Jean-Guy Prévost, Italy specialist in the Department of Political Science at UQAM, in an interview. But Giorgia Meloni seems to be in the right place at the right time for her party. It is currently benefiting from a reorganization of forces within the centre-right coalition, which, in just a few years, has transformed Fratelli d’Italia from minor partner to main player in the coalition. »

The latest opinion measurement conducted by YouTrend confirms the analysis. A few days before the vote, the neo-fascist formation remains at the top of the polls with 23.4% of the voting intentions expressed for the political formation of this former Minister of Youth under Berlusconi. Just ahead of the Partito Democratico, whose social-democratic project is led by Paolo Gentiloni.

In total, the conservative, populist and far-right coalition, which has given itself the label of “center right” to make itself more acceptable, could collect 46% of the vote. In addition to Meloni’s party, the Lega (the former Northern League, of Matteo Salvini) and Forza Italia, of a Silvio Berlusconi who continues to decline, make it up.

In the 2018 elections, Fratelli d’Italia – whose logo proudly takes up the tricolor flame of Mussolini’s fascist party – was no more than a party on the sidelines, having collected barely 4.3% of the vote.

Capturing anger

“The rise of Fratelli d’Italia is no different from that of all the other Italian anti-system parties since the 1990s, analyzes the Brookings Institution, a rather liberal think tank with a storefront in Washington. The current development — though traumatic for Italian political culture — seems to be a new wave of the same phenomenon, with one party suddenly emerging, riding, after others, waves of endlessly protesting Italians. »

On television and on YouTube, the speeches of the new flame of the Italian electorate follow each other and resemble each other, exposing a young, skilful, clear and direct politician, who does not mince her words to bring criticisms reinforcing fears, the intolerances, misunderstandings, frustrations of its base: here, by firing red bullets at the “globalist left”, by demonizing Islam and by purposely associating criminality and immigration. There, by shouting down the “LGBTQ lobby”, denouncing borders that jeopardize the future of the country, according to her, and posing as a bulwark against “wokism” or even mass immigration, which she describes as “ planned and deliberate”, which seeks to replace good Italian workers — and their culture, their tradition, their identity… — with cheaper foreign labour. She calls this “ethnic substitution”, reformulating in her own way the far-right conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement” which is heard elsewhere in the world, including in Quebec, where it is carried by ideologues of the identity extreme right whose hate speech, like that of Giorgia Meloni, has also been trivialized there.

In 2019, in a seminal speech of her newfound popularity delivered to a crowd in Rome’s Piazza San Giovanni, she said, with the Roman accent she cultivates: “I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. You won’t take it away from me. »

“The rise of female figures at the head of far-right parties is not a new phenomenon. Populist forces see them as a good investment, which contributes to softening their image. And Mme Meloni is the Italian incarnation of this phenomenon”, emphasizes Jean-Guy Prévost.

The politician thus walks in the footsteps of Marine Le Pen in France, but also alongside Alice Weidel, in Germany, Siv Jensen in Norway and Pia Kjaersgaard in Denmark, none of whom will have succeeded in getting so close to the exercise of power as the Italian candidate.

Normalize hate

It is undoubtedly this perspective that has been pushing Giorgia Meloni for several weeks now to display a certain distance with Italy’s fascist past, which she nevertheless glorified in an interview granted to French television in 1996. She was then a young activist . She speaks of Mussolini as a “good politician” never surpassed in the last fifty years. The existence of the document was remembered fondly by Italian voters during this campaign. She now repeats having a “different opinion”, without ever being more precise.

Giorgia Meloni also seems to be seeking to tone down her criticism of the European Union, whose image has been restored to the Italian electorate in part by the pandemic and the economic recovery plans voted by Brussels, including Italy benefits. But she still remains very close to the Hungarian authoritarian populist Viktor Orbán and his model of “illiberal democracy” or even to the Law and Justice party of the Polish far-right populist Mateusz Morawiecki, an ally of Fratelli d’Italia in the European Parliament and whose respective trajectories could guide his own.

Populist forces see [les femmes] a good placement, which contributes to soften their image. And Ms. Meloni is the Italian embodiment of this phenomenon.

“Seating projections [au Sénat et au Parlement] Giorgia Meloni’s party and the center-right coalition are very strong, says Jean-Guy Prévost. If he manages to cross the bar of two-thirds of Parliament, they will be able to make changes to the Constitution without having to go through a referendum”, and thus bring about a reform of the voting system for the election of the president in Italy. Among others.

Conservatives have dreamed for years of having him elected by universal suffrage to concentrate more power in his hands and reduce the influence of small parties. “But it’s hard to see if it’s to move towards a more French model or a more Hungarian model,” continues Mr. Prévost.

A vast project, which the politician and her allies will however have to approach with caution in a democracy where populism has been anchored for many moons – and not only on the political scene -, but where the absence of consensus, born of a strong anti-elite sentiment, weakens alliances and complicates attacks that Giorgia Meloni might want to make against democratic rights.

“Electoral volatility is very high in Italy, and the turnover of political personnel is very significant,” says Jean-Guy Prévost, speaking of Beppe Grillo’s 5-Star Movement which, after rallying discontent in another era, “has entered into decomposition “. “The Meloni government is not going to change this reality”, even at the risk of suffering the consequences in the short term too.

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