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A FAR-RIGHT PARTY is set to take power in Italy after winning around one-quarter of the vote in the country’s general election.
At the head of the Brothers of Italy, which has neo-fascist roots, is Giorgia Meloni, who has been the party’s leader since 2014 and now appears likely to be Italy’s next Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri – its prime minister.
Outside of Italy, she is probably most known for her comments in an interview in 1996 where she called dictator Benito Mussolini a “good politician” and for a video that went viral in which she described herself as: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian.”
As her party prepares to take power, here’s your breakdown of Meloni’s political career and policies.
Giorgia Meloni
Born in Rome in 1977, Meloni was active in right-wing politics from her teenage years. At the age of 15, she joined the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist party. Four years later, she became the national leader of Student Action, the student branch of the National Alliance party, which was the successor to the Italian Social Movement.
She was elected as a councillor in Rome in her early 20s and then to the Italian parliament in the 2006 general election as a member of the National Alliance. She was made Minister of Youth for 2008, a role which she held for three years until the prime minister at the time was pushed to resign amid Italy’s debt crisis.
In 2012, Meloni founded the Brothers of Italy along with Guido Crosetto, an anti-EU politician and businessman who became the party’s first leader.
Their party merged shortly afterwards with a new National Centre-Right party that had been founded at the same time by Ignazio La Russa, who was the Minister of Defence in the same Cabinet that Meloni was Minister of Youth, to form the Brothers of Italy – National Centre-Right party (usually known as simply Brothers of Italy).
She was re-elected in the 2013 general election and became the party’s president in March 2014. The following month, she made an unsuccessful bid for the European elections to become an MEP.
She is the chair of the right-wing European Conservative and Reformist group in the European Parliament, which includes the Brothers of Italy, Poland’s Law and Justice Party, Spain’s Vox and the Sweden Democrats.
Just five years ago, in Italy’s 2018 general election, her party tripled its seats compared to 2013 but still received only 4.4% of the total vote. Personally, Meloni was elected in Latina, a single-seat constituency in central Italy, with 41%.
In contrast, yesterday’s election saw the Brothers of Italy win around 26%, putting it ahead of both its rivals and its right-wing coalition partners.
Under the current Italian coalition government, Meloni’s party has been the only one in Opposition, affording it more airtime than it might otherwise have received and boosting its performance in polls.
The prospective prime minister brings with her stances against abortion, immigration, and same-sex marriage.
In her early campaigning for the National Alliance at age 19, she told a French television programme that “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy”.
After being elected to parliament for the party in 2006, she said Mussolini had made “mistakes”, notably around racial laws, authoritarianism and entering World War Two on the side of Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
Meloni has made other attempts since to distance her public persona from extreme far-right elements of her party, but she came under fire again in 2020 when she publicly praised Giorgio Almirante, who was a Nazi collaborator, the editor-in chief of an antisemitic magazine, and the co-founder of the Italian Social Movement.
She has aligned herself with anti-LGBT+ and anti-Muslim policies, including opposing same-sex marriage, adoption by same-sex couples, and immigration to Italy from outside the EU. She has described wanting to reverse the decline in Italy’s population by encouraging birth rates, but not by allowing immigrants to naturalise.
In her autobiography, she wrote that she “does not belong to the cult of fascism”. However, she expressed sympathy for neo-Fascists who were killed in the political violence that wracked Italy in the 1970s.
As a Eurosceptic, she has echoed anti-EU populism similar to that in Hungary and Poland, but she is pro-Nato and backed the EU’s support for Ukraine after Russia invaded in February. She has allied herself with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has pushed anti-LGBT+, anti-migrant and anti-academic freedom in his country.
She has said Rome must assert its interests more and has policies that look set to challenge the EU on a range of issues from public spending rules to migration. Her coalition also wants to renegotiate Italy’s portion of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund.
So far, her party’s performance in the election has attracted praise from other nationalist parties in Europe, including Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Spain’s far-right party Vox.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares, however, warned that “populist movements always grow, but it always ends in the same way — in catastrophe”.
The incoming right-wing coalition partners have a joint programme for government, including tax cuts and promises to cut mass migration. Meloni has called for a naval blockade to prevent boats carrying migrants from leaving the shores of north Africa.
Despite her opposition to the EU, Meloni is expected to put up less resistance to it than what she may have under different circumstances given the economic windfall Italy is receiving in Covid-19 recovery funds.
It’s expected that Italy’s current foreign policy, particularly around support for supplying Ukraine with weapons, will remain mostly the same under Meloni, though her coalition partners are known to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which may lay ground for future discord.
Additional reporting by AFP and Press Association
Important to remember that it’s a legal requirement on the part of the school, they’re only doing their jobs in terms of safeguarding, isn’t that what we want? tusla will then follow up on each one and if covid was the reason then that’ll be that. No need to assume tusla is going to copy and paste a load of care orders and take a pile of kids away from their parents. Let’s see in 6months time what actually happens.
@TomTraubert: I agree completely, my daughter has missed a lot of days due to the department of health. Headache, sore throat for example. She’s in 6th class so was chancing her arm. A few antigen and pcr tests have stopped that. Although she was a close contact twice so that was 10 days gone
@TomTraubert: At the same time people were told to stay home from work if sick and keep the kids home from school if sick, rather than spread the virus, which was the correct thing to do. If TUSLA are taking it on themselves to chase down parents who followed health advice, they need to have a chat with the minister of health, who to my knowledge, is who they answer to, rather than take on tasks to justify their jobs. Thankfully, I’ve had no dealings with them, but I know several families that had, and what I have been told is they usually work on the assumption of guilty until proven innocent.
@Joe_X: If It is the schools that are doing the reporting as per the headline, then the Minister for Health needs to pull the Minister for Education on it since the teachers are going against public health advice and wasting everyone’s time.
@Joe_X: no. But let’s for a minute consider what would happen if schools didn’t report or just took the word of parents that kept their kids at home etc. There’s no way of then knowing what kids were legitimately off school or those that weren’t. Some kids with serious problems would then fall through the cracks. Then we’d have people like you demanding the minister and all in Tusla be hung drawn and quartered on O’Connell bridge. Don’t look at everything as being a big bad corrupt wanting to destroy the ordinary man arm of the state. Nobody can ever win with that attitude.
@TomTraubert: and it’s sad that I have to clarify this but I’m neither a teacher nor do I work for Tusla.
Doesn’t take much to stress some people these days.
@Justin Gillespie: can you blame them with the way our government operates.
You can be sure anything to do with the public service will be a mess.
It is a legal requirement on the part of the school to report absences over a set amount of days. They are just doing their jobs.
These parents need to get a grip and apply some common sense. Article should be about Schools following their legally required protocols and how it’s a good thing.
@me: how many teachers weren’t doing their job ‘teaching’ but out with ‘Covid’ !!!
The headline should say parents have no need to be stressed. It explains it all in the article. Typical journal trying its best to turn into a rag.
My child had missed over 20 days precovid due to illnesses. So we were reported as per regulation. I never heard anything from Tusla because guess what? They have bigger problems to deal with! If your child has been out for genuine reasons nobody is coming knocking on your door. They are looking for the child who misses every ‘payday’ because the parents are on the piss. Or just never goes to school. There are enough true neglect & abuse cases out there to keep them busy. I wish this rule had been in place when i was a child.
No mention of reporting the teachers for so many absences with no replacements in important exam years.
@Tom’s: Well ‘Tom’s’ if you have evidence that a teacher is behaving in a fraudulent manner then there are mechanisms to report them. I’d imagine it’s the evidence part you’re stuggling with is it?
@Sorcha Ní Shúilleabháin:
What are you on about “fraudulent”.I’m talking about many teacher absences with no replacements.
Your very defensive I must have touched a nerve.
Typically Teachers making a hash of things
Look at our government……full of teachers and still making a hash of things
@Mark Walsh: Try reading the article!
@Mark Walsh: Cupid Stunt.
@Mark Walsh: Eh?? What article did you read?
I had to read the first part twice. All it says basically is parent totally oblivious to school policy and legal obligations. Issue is with the rule. I actually emailed norma on this a year ago as we missed 17 days for one isolation period following a household covid outbreak. She “has recieved my email and taken the content into consideration”. My point to her was reporting all the covid leave makes the safety net for kids who need this system less effective. Not the stress on the parents.
So parents need to be spoonfed now as well as their children.
The traditional family is no longer supported by capitalist greed so the state is creating bodies such as Tusla. Bit by bit the state will gain more control of our children.The traditional family with one parent working and the other surrounded by a big flock of children was nature’s way and provided the most stable happy children.
@John Moloney: hilarious that you think women can be forced back into the kitchen to surround herself with a ‘big flock of children’ and to be beholden to misogynists like yourself. I’d ask the children born ‘out of wedlock’ how stable and happy their childhoods were.
@EillieEs: I never mentioned women.
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