On Tuesday, Giorgia Meloni will be the first woman in Italy to ask a vote of confidence in Parliament and will probably be confirmed in office. A woman who never distanced herself from her days as an activist in a neo-fascist party leads Italy's government. How could that happen?
In 2006, as Vice President of the Italian House of Representatives, the woman who governs Italy today was asked what her relationship to fascism was. The question was no accident.
At the time, Giorgia Meloni belonged to the Alleanza Nazionale, a party that had emerged from the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI): The MSI was a party in which fascists of all stripes had gathered from 1946 onwards. The name alone was a direct allusion to Mussolini's "Repubblica Sociale Italiana". In the 1940s, they led a pseudo-rule at the mercy of Hitler in the part of Italy occupied by German troops. She was partly responsible for massacres that killed 25,000 civilians.
At a party congress in 1995, the MSI renounced the legacy of fascism in its ranks as "absolutely evil". But it was still considered to be "outside the democratic constitutional arc", not capable of forming a coalition, as the successor party to the fascists. Meloni herself was the leader of the youth organization of the MSI, the "Fronte della Gioventù". So it was a legitimate question as to how the young politician felt about fascism.
And how did Giorgia Meloni answer? She has "a relaxed relationship". And to Mussolini? "A personality that must be seen in historical context." Not a word of distancing. But at the time, nobody in Italy was particularly upset about Meloni's lack of condemnation of the Mussolini regime. She was far too unimportant for that.
When Silvio Berlusconi formed the government in 2009, he appointed her youth minister. She does not leave a lasting impression on the political stage. At a congress of the Popolo delle Libertà party, a merger of Berlusconi's Forza Italia and the right-wing Alleanza Nazionale, Berlusconi calls out, "Dov'è la piccola?", looking for Meloni, "Where's the little one?"
Giorgia Meloni is said to have noticed. She no longer lets herself be called "the little one". One day he will have to remember your name. As Prime Minister, 13 years later, she will attach importance to not being addressed as "la" Presedente del Consiglio, i.e. as Prime Minister, but as "il", as the Prime Minister.
But until then, the road still seemed far for Meloni. Their political luck soon begins with the relegation of Berlusconi in November 2011. The head of government has to resign because Italy can no longer pay the interest on its national debt and bankruptcy is in sight. Italy's first grand coalition is formed.
Berlusconi's Popolo delle Libertà, the Social Democrats and a number of center parties elect former EU Commissioner Mario Monti as prime minister. The polls for the social democratic party, the Partito Democratico (PD), are dazzling at this point. Berlusconi's coalition has collapsed.
But the PD does not have the courage to ask for the dissolution of parliament. The Monti government has to implement tough austerity measures in order to save Italy's budget from difficulties. Pensions are being reformed, and Italians are also only supposed to be able to retire at 67, not at the end of 50, as was customary up to then. All of this creates social resentment.
Giorgia Meloni collected this anger when she founded her party at the end of 2014, albeit with moderate success at the beginning. In the parliamentary elections of 2013, the newly founded Fratelli d'Italia party received just 1.9 percent. The party calls itself Brothers of Italy, after a line from the national anthem, "Brothers of Italy, we are ready to die."
But Meloni perseveres. She suspects that the policy of austerity measures, supported jointly by left and right, will sooner or later drive voters to her on the extreme right. But she still has to be patient. First, the protest votes go to two parties that have been on the market for some time.
When comedian Beppe Grillo's radical populist movement Five Stars, Movimento cinque Stelle, achieved a victory of over 20 percent in the elections in 2014, the Social Democrats of the PD once again allied with Berlusconi's PdL to form a grand coalition.
Many voters are now under the impression that the real election winners, i.e. the five stars, are not allowed to govern because "foreign powers", "international finance capital", a code for "world Jewish conspiracy", are forcing an externally controlled government on Italy.
However, when PD leader Matteo Renzi got 41 percent of the votes in the European Parliament elections that same year, everyone expected him to request new elections: the polls show the Social Democrats to have a secure majority. But the PD is backing down again and prefers to continue governing with Berlusconi. But he also brought down the Renzi government.
Another cabinet is reshuffled, this time with PD politician Paolo Gentiloni. The result, in subsequent elections, is a triumphant victory for the first major protest movement, the Five Stars, in the 2018 general election, taking nearly 33 percent. The next "grand coalition" is formed between Grillo protesters and Matteo Salvini's party, the Lega, which at least has jumped to 17.5 percent. Giorgia Meloni, always in opposition to everything and everyone, meanwhile has worked his way up to four percent.
It is remarkable that the half-life of Italy's protest parties is becoming even shorter. While the Five Star Movement doubled its result to 34 percent in the subsequent elections to the European Parliament, the "triumphators" of 2018 lost half of their voters within a year, falling to 17 percent.
Salvini tries to convert the European election victory in 2019 nationally, but that goes wrong. In the transition from the government of Giuseppe Conte 1 (Salvini on board) to Conte 2, the Lega votes are replaced by the center parties and the Social Democrats. All these power games in the government palace are grist to Giorgia Meloni's mill.
It doesn't have to do anything but uphold its classic right-wing conservative program and can sell the compromises that first Berlusconi and then Salvini have to make as "betrayal" of the principles of the right: identity, sovereignty, the fight against German and French dominance in Europe, against the bondage to interest that Europe had imposed on Italy, protection from immigrants, especially foreigners.
The Lega Salvini falls from the EU Parliament high to eight percent, the protesters of the Five Star Movement land at a third of their high of 35 percent, the Social Democrats continue to languish at under 20 percent and have lost their core electorate among the workers. The left today is only the party of the educated, wealthy people who live in good neighborhoods. Success practically falls into Meloni's lap.
