What a difference a few months can make.
Ahead of Italy’s election last fall, Giorgia Meloni was widely depicted as a menace. By this summer, everything — her youthful admiration for Benito Mussolini, her party’s links to neofascists, her often extreme rhetoric — had been forgiven. Praised for her practicality and support for Ukraine, Ms. Meloni has established herself as a reliable Western partner, central to Group of 7 meetings and NATO summits alike. A visit to Washington, which takes place on Thursday, seals her status as a valued member of the international community.
But the comforting tale of a populist firebrand turned pragmatist overlooks something important: what’s been happening in Italy. Ms. Meloni’s administration has spent its first months accusing minorities of undermining the triad of God, nation and family, with dire practical consequences for migrants, nongovernmental organizations and same-sex parents. Efforts to weaken anti-torture legislation, stack the public broadcaster with loyalists and rewrite Italy’s postwar constitution to increase executive power are similarly troubling. Ms. Meloni’s government isn’t just nativist but has a harsh authoritarian streak, too.
For Italy, this is bad enough. But much of its significance lies beyond its borders, showing how the far right can break down historic barriers with the center right. Allies of Ms. Meloni are already in power in Poland, also newly legitimized by their support for Ukraine. In Sweden, a center-right coalition relies on the nativist Sweden Democrats’ support to govern. In Finland, the anti-immigrant Finns Party went one better and joined the government. Though these parties, like many of their European counterparts, once rejected membership in NATO and the European Union, today they seek a place in the main Euro-Atlantic institutions, transforming them from within. In this project, Ms. Meloni is leading the way.
Since becoming prime minister, Ms. Meloni has certainly moderated her language. In official settings, she’s at pains to appear considered and cautious — an act aided by her preference for televised addresses rather than questioning by journalists. Yet she can also rely on colleagues in her Brothers of Italy party to be less restrained. Taking aim at one of the government’s main targets, L.G.B.T.Q. parents, party leaders have called surrogate parenting a “crime worse than pedophilia,” claiming that gay people are “passing off” foreign kids as their own. Ms. Meloni can appear aloof from such rhetoric, even suggesting unhappiness with its extremism. But her decisions in office reflect zealotry, not caution. The government extended a ban on surrogacy to criminalize adoptions in other countries and ordered municipalities to stop registering same-sex parents, leaving children in legal limbo.
[…]
Journalists, too, are under pressure. Sitting ministers have threatened — and in some cases pursued — a raft of libel suits against the Italian press in an apparent bid to intimidate critics. The public broadcaster RAI is also under threat, and not just because its mission for the next five years includes “promoting birthrates.” After its chief executive and leading presenters resigned, citing political pressure from the new government, it now resembles tele-Meloni, with rampant handpicking of personnel. The new director general, Giampaolo Rossi, is a pro-Meloni hard-liner who previously distinguished himself as an organizer of an annual Brothers of Italy festival. In the aftermath of his appointment, news outlets published scores of his anti-immigration social media posts and an interview with a neofascist journal in which he condemned the antifascist “caricature” hanging over public life
This is not his concern alone. Burying the antifascist legacy of the wartime Resistance matters deeply to the Brothers of Italy, a party rooted in its fascist forefathers’ great defeat in 1945. As prime minister, Ms. Meloni has referred to Italy’s postwar antifascist culture as a repressive ideology, responsible even for the murder of right-wing militants in the political violence of the 1970s. It’s not just history to be rewritten. The postwar Constitution, drawn up by the Resistance-era parties, is also ripe for revision: The Brothers of Italy aims to create a directly elected head of government and a strong executive freer of constraint. No matter its novelty, Ms. Meloni’s administration has every chance of imposing enduring changes in the political order.
[…]
Success is hardly inevitable. Ahead of last week’s election in Spain, Ms. Meloni addressed her nationalist ally Vox, declaring that the “patriots’ time has come”; in fact, its vote share fell and right-wing parties failed to secure a majority. Even so, Vox has become an enduring part of the electoral arena and a regular ally for conservatives. Despite their growing success, such forces have for years been painted as insurgent outsiders representing long-ignored voters. The more disturbing truth is that they are no longer parties of protest, but increasingly welcome in the mainstream. For proof, just look to Washington on Thursday.
What’s missing is what a huge difference the media makes. Once you control the media, you basically control the country, as can be seen in Hungary, Poland and Russia. All of these states have put in massive efforts to install their own cronies as media leadership, and you can see this happening in other countries too. Now it’s Italy.
Then on the other hand, you have billionaires that flood the people with cheap tabloid bullshit, of course to paralyze honest debates around things that actually matter (climate change, wealth inequality, etc) and instead refocus the populace on scape goats (LGBTQ rights, abortion, etc).
Far too often, „serious“ media fails to defend against the bullshit, and at some point will also report on these „issues“ as „this is what the country is talking about“. What they are ignoring is that this conversation is deliberately led by bad actors, and by picking it up they are legitimizing their positions.
Then they invite complete lunatics to discussion to provide a „balanced viewpoint“, when there is no balanced viewpoint to be had for certain issues: the earth is round, climate change is happening, and it is our fault. Period. There can be no further discussions on the facts.
The misinformation campaigns are massive, the astroturfing is massive, and is probably happening even here. It is too cheap and works too well to not do it.
The misinformation campaigns are massive, the astroturfing is massive, and is probably happening even here. It is too cheap and works too well to not do it.
Yes, the power of stories is incredible - and human’s likeliness to believe stories over facts, setting aside critical thinking over immediate feelings. Ref. Yuval Noah Harari.
Also:
“the earth is not round”
Flat. The earth is not flat.
I sincerely believe that the right wing populism in Europe is the inevitable backlash to Angela Merkel’s open door policy on immigration and “refuges” in the EU.
Religio-Fascists led by a megalomaniac took over India in 2014. People ignored their fascism and voted for religion :(
Removed by mod
Germany’s neo-nazi party AfD is polling scarily well too. All of EU is turning into an authoritan hellscape. My wife and I are seriously considering leaving.
Italy sure does love fascism
Tl;Dr ?
Ahhh fascism. Is this 1923 or 2023? Fucking people
Italian here: she is not far right as our left it is not left. Meloni is the most pro immigration government in italy in decades. She open the border and we have a massive regular/irregular immigration. She simply lied to her voter base posing as anti immigration party. The far left and m5s were much more strict about new people entering the country. The left and the right in italy are pro capital and pro usa parties so we have mass immigration to lower wages. Both sides.
Italian here too: I agree. The number of work permits for foreigners has been almost x3 last next year and x5 next year. And I agree too concerning the fact that left parties here are pro-capital exactly like the right wing. The working class felt betrayed and switched to populist parties mostly no matter their political horizons. The democratic party has completely lost its “identity” and the popular party too after Berluscon’s death, extremists (far and right) are gaining more and more power.
I’m sorry but does that say to weaken anti-torture? Did I read that right?
Yes, Meloni and Salvini see anti-torture laws as an unnecessary obstacle to the work of police officers. Here is an article (in Italian).
very very big yikes
The world is changing, the golden decades of our parents’ post-war reality are over, the sun is setting once again on European soil.
I don’t know exactly what kinds of nightmares await us in the darkness, but I do know that the bloodlust of the European populace will not be sated easily.
Expect extraordinary efforts to subdue, abuse and eventually exterminate people once again. The European populace will not be a bastion of humanitarian ideology in the face of climate migration. It will instead declare war on them, and brutalize them.
I don’t speak italian, could you tell me what stuff the article covers?
Basically a reform of the Italian penal code that would delete the dedicated articles in penal code and leave only an aggravating circumstance
Yes, it is. Well done for describing what’s happening. What do you think we should do about it, now we know it’s happening?
Don’t vote fascists into power?
classic eu
The left fuck themselves by chatting a lot of shit people don’t care about.
The right are the only ones talking about reducing immigration so they are going to win.
If there was a party that was left economically and for the people in the country. Far right parties wouldn’t be winning.
It’s not something new that is spreading, it has been the case for over a century. We have always been ruled by corrupted politicians, they always lies during elections and then push for authoritarian measures that benefits the elites. People seem to realize this only when the party they don’t like gets elected, “left” and “right” is a trick to keep these two up in power in a cycle. This Meloni scum is nothing new, they are a puppet of people who have been ruling the country since 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli
Saying that ALL politicians between the 1920s to the 2010s in Italy is wrong. You can search about De Gasperi, Berlinguer, Giolitti (I know, different eras) and others. I’m not saying everything they did was right, but they not all politicians are as bad as your comment is depicting.
deleted by creator