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.
You sure write a lot for saying so little. I suggest to step out of your bubble for once and actually talk to people. Why do you think so many people upvoted? Because everybody is brainwashed except you? Oh lord.
Also, I know who the AfD is, but thanks for the lecture. I know about their ties to Russia, their capitalist views, and that Weidl is married to a Sri Lankan woman and yet yells “Festung Europa” and hates on gays. But all these facts don’t matter. People don’t vote AfD for their program, they vote them for their talking points, and because of the political climate, that they party create themselves. The other parties need to adress the points that AfD uses and dismantle them. There are ways how you can critically discuss immigration, climate change politics, and economic imbalance without a right wing perpective. That’s basically all I wanted to say. You misinterpreted way more in my answer then there actually was.
That graph with the gender mentions actually is really nice. But still, this doesn’t matter. What matters is what the public sees and hears about them. Sure, in part it’s the (social)media that fires against the left for i.e. the gender discussion, but the bigger part is that the left is totally aimless, leaderless and profileless, lost on it’s track.
Sadly, the tone in your reply is really hateful and annoys me to hell, otherwise I would really like to dicuss with you.
Also, just to have it said, I fucking hate Wagenknecht.
Good riddance!
Because populism works. You invent or change facts to create simple problems or simplify complex problems ad absurdum and then present easy solutions. People like easy solutions and tend to believe it when it would be to much work to actually fact check the whole premise.
Which is exactly what you did there. For this reason a lot of people just quickly read through it decided “yeah, sound logical” and upvoted. And for exactly the same reason I picked the most bullshit claims from your comment in order and described how and why they are bullshit.
Your response? Not only ignoring the facts I mentioned but explicitly saying that it “doesn’t matter. What matters is what the public sees and hears about them.”… Fine, so you reject reality for narratives and actually think the latter is what matters. Good to know.
That also explains why you feel attacked by facts and perceive me as hateful… you do know that there actually is a medical term for people choosing the fantasy they want to believe in over factual reality, don’t you?