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The Return of Fascism in Italy
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/09/giorgia-meloni-italy-election-fascism-mussolini/671515/https://archive.ph/YqYAE
The Return of Fascism in Italy
With Giorgia Meloni’s party leading in polls ahead of Sunday’s election, the Italian far right is edging closer to power.
By Ruth Ben-Ghiat
September 23, 2022, 7 AM ET
Brothers of Italy, which Meloni has led since 2014, has an underlying and sinister familiarity. The party formed a decade ago to carry forth the spirit and legacy of the extreme right in Italy, which dates back to the Italian Social Movement (MSI), the party that formed in place of the National Fascist Party, which was banned after World War II. Now, just weeks before the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome — the October 1922 event that put Mussolini in power — Italy may have a former MSI activist for its prime minister and a government rooted in fascism. In the words of Ignazio La Russa, Meloni’s predecessor as the head of the Brothers of Italy: “We are all heirs of Il Duce.”
Meloni in many ways sounds more like other modern national-conservative politicians such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and America’s MAGA Republicans than Il Duce. “There’s a leftist ideology, so-called globalist,” she told The Washington Post recently, “that aims to consider as an enemy everything that defined you — everything that has shaped your identity and your civilization.”
Meloni’s enemies list is familiar: “LGBT lobbies” that are out to harm women and the family by destroying “gender identity”; George Soros, an “international speculator,” she has said, who finances global “mass immigration” that threatens a Great Replacement of white, native-born Italians. Meloni shows affinity for authoritarian strongmen: Like Marine Le Pen, until recently the leader of the National Rally party in France, Meloni has expressed support for Russian President Vladimir Putin — although she has muted that enthusiasm since his invasion of Ukraine.
Meloni is comparable to Le Pen in other ways. Both are examples of what political scientists call “genderwashing,” when female politicians adopt a nonthreatening image to blunt the force of their extremism. Meloni’s signature look involves flowing outfits in pastel shades. To uninformed foreigners, her ascent could look like female empowerment; she poses as a defender of women, even as her party has rolled back women’s rights. In localities it governs, Brothers of Italy has made abortion services — the procedure has been legal in Italy since 1978 — harder to access. Municipal authorities in Verona, where the party has shared power with Salvini’s League, declared the city “pro-life.”
Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon (left) arrives with Giorgia Meloni to attend a congress of the Brothers of Italy party in Rome in September of 2018. Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images
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