The Normalisation of Giorgia Meloni

So, is she or isn't she? A fascist, that is.

Since Giorgia Meloni became Prime Minister of Italy, I’ve been asked a version of this question a lot: “So, is she a fascist??”

If you’re having a busy day and don’t have time to read the long version, here’s the short answer: “No. But….”

The longer answer is in this analysis piece I wrote for the American foreign affairs publication ‘New Lines Magazine’ which you can read here. It’s pretty thorough, but I know that many of you subscribe to this newsletter specifically because you’re interested in the Far Right and the work I do around fascism, so I wanted to add a few personal thoughts around the original article.

BFFs Giorgia Meloni and Rishi Sunak at the Atreju conferece in Rome, Dec 2023. According to reports there is a genuine rapport between them. And they’ve both staked their credibility on stopping migrant boats heading for their respective shores.

Whenever I write anything around fascism or neo-fascism, I am always incredibly conscious of who my audience is. Writing about this topic for an Italian audience, or even a wider continental European audience, is very different to writing for an anglophone, mainly British and American, audience.

History is the major dividing line between the two groups. The former has fascism, nazism, dictatorship, invasion, occupation and collaboration in their recent history. Many will literally have fascism in the family like I have.

The latter obviously don’t. Their countries were on the right side of history and defeated nazism and fascism. But it also means they often have less detailed and personal knowledge of how these movements managed to take such a strong hold on society, and how that memory lives on to this day.

This dynamic was in full display in the run up to the Italian elections. From an Italian lens, Meloni leads a party with roots in neofascism and plenty of members that still regularly meet for full-on fascist gatherings with hundreds of men in Black shirts (historically the early fascist ‘uniform’ - the Nazis were known as brown shirts) making the fascist salute at a commemoration in Rome (more details in article above, as this topic alone would warrant a whole other newsletter. But look at this viral video if you want to see what fascism looks like in 2024 ).

Those same stories created an impression abroad that Italy was on the brink of dictatorship. And now that, more than a year in, Italy’s democracy is still intact, there is a sense among certain parts of the (centre-right wing) anglophone press that Meloni is fine, just your avarage traditional conservative with a definite gift for impassioned oration. Both Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden refer to her as a ‘friend’.

But not so fast. There are still aspects that set the Meloni government apart and are a source for concern.

After her election, the initial focus on the spectre of fascism created a blinding effect. Fears of Italy returning to its dictatorial past have proved unfounded, but they masked the real danger of a lurch toward a more authoritarian style of governance, a revision of the country’s fascist history and a subtle intimidation of dissenting voices.

But this rarely makes headlines that are quite as impactful as the ‘fascism’ ones.

And then there is another, more awkward, explanation for her political rehabilitation in the eyes of the international community: that the political conversations in the very countries that once defeated the fascism that Meloni’s party stems from have themselves inched closer to the language and policies of her ideology.

Rishi Sunak was one of the star guests at Meloni’s Atreju right-wing festival in Rome in December 2023. He used the platform to warn that illegal migration will “overwhelm the West” and that failure to tackle it will “destroy British democracy.”

Overwhelm. Destroy. Invasion. Such language is exactly what used to get Meloni branded “extremist.” And yet these days, we’re not just hearing it in Italy but in the UK, the US and many other nations. With elections coming up, we’ll hear it more and more.

On a final note, this Saturday is Holocaust Memorial Day, the annual commemoration to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp on January 27th 1945 and the beginning of the end of the Holocaust (though countless more Jews and other captives of the Nazis died in forced ‘death marches’ out of concentration camps in the following weeks and months).

The theme this year for the British-based Holocaust Memorial Day Trust is ‘Fragility of Freedom.”

Freedom is fragile. So is democracy. Being alarmist can be counterproductive but, as is the case with Giorgia Meloni’s Italy, we need to go past the headlines to see what the real threats are. Because the devil, as usual, is in the details.