Back to black in Italy
A century ago, at the end of October 1922, Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts marched toward Rome, which they took over. At the end of September 2022, Italy’s takeover by the neo-fascists or post-fascists of Giorgia Meloni, who dominate the extreme right and the Silvio Berlusconi-style right, was achieved through the vote.
The distaste of the rejected masses toward politics and the consequent abstention from the vote, the loss of ideology by the blurred center-left, the expectations born of polling verbosity and mainly the intensively cultivated fears about Brussels – which is supposed to be against national identity – and about refugees and migrants – who are rumored to be aiming at the erosion of Christianity and an insidious Islamization of Europe – allowed the Brothers of Italy to increase their power sixfold in just four years: 4.3% in 2018, more than 26% now, a percentage that brings them to the top.
Meloni has come a long way in the past 15 years. Today’s vote-hunting self-description recalls the well-known Greek conservative slogan “Country, Religion, Family.”
“I’m Giorgia,” she proclaims, betting on her first name, like many “greats” in history, and gives the details of her political identity. “I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian.” She says “I’m a woman,” but she means a “normal” woman, with children – not some “irresponsible” anarchist or some LGBTQI activist. And “I’m Italian,” but a “normal” Italian, meaning a Christian. Of course, she also means a Catholic, not Orthodox or Protestant, and of course not Muslim, Jewish, agnostic or simply indifferent. Meloni knows that the last “ideology” to die out in her country is Catholicism.
In 1992, at the age of 15, Meloni became a member of the Youth Front, the youth wing of the neo-fascist political party Italian Social Movement (MSI), led by Giorgio Almirante, a supporter of dictator Mussolini. Her fanaticism facilitated her rapid rise within the party ranks. In her 30s she was the youngest vice president of the former neo-fascist National Alliance (AN), and now, aged 45, she is preparing to become prime minister of Italy, adding the strongest link in the chain of European far-right successes.
All types of far-right parties in Europe, including the Greek ones, are celebrating. The rest should be troubled and worried. Even now.
