This week, Italy prepared to welcome a new prime minister: 45-year-old Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party since 2014. Meloni is a populist conservative on issues ranging from marriage to immigration; she is a nationalist by philosophy and combatively passionate by temperament. A clip of a speech she gave at the World Congress of Families in 2019 has now gone viral with American conservatives; she explained, “Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening? There is a single answer to all these questions. Because it defines us. Because it is our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy for those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves. And so they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity….We will defend God, country, and family.”
This speech, according to much of the media, represented an indicator of incipient fascism in the land of Benito Mussolini. Never mind that former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi scoffed at such a notion, calling the “risk of fascism…absolutely fake news.” The Intercept promptly called Meloni the “latest fascist womanhood icon.” Ishaan Tharoor of The Washington Post railed, she’s “set to be her country’s most ultra-nationalist premier since fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.”
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