Is Italy's Next Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, A 'Fascist'? Hardly

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://thefederalist.com/2022/09/26/is-italys-next-prime-minister-
giorgia-meloni-a-fascist-hardly/

The Italian right is illiberal within the normal illiberal standards of
modern Europe.

Giorgia Meloni, as you’ve doubtlessly heard, is the “far-right” next prime
minister of Italy. So says virtually every news outlet in the United
States. And anyone familiar with the left’s perfunctory use of “ultra-
conservative,” “far-right,” “hard-right,” or “semi-fascist” to describe
those who take positions to the right of the Democratic Party’s latest
platform, should be skeptical.

Then again, trying to decipher European elections through the prism of
American politics is a frustrating endeavor. But here is a cataloging, as
best as I can pull together, of the claims used to portray Meloni as
fascist:

Meloni “bemoans” the chronically low birthrate in Italy and wants to
implement pronatalist policies. Now, I think the prospect of technocratic
policy curing low birthrates is dubious, but if incentivizing social
behavior is now a fascistic endeavor, what does that say about the left’s
agenda?

Meloni defends Europe’s “Christian identity.” The American left acts like
the mere mention of “Christian” is xenophobic and fascistic. People get
furious when this atheist points out that nearly every Christian-majority
nation in the world can boast of democratic institutions and high levels
of freedom—with a few exceptions of a few places like Russia—while most
non-Christian-majority nations can’t. There are thorny ideological and
historical reasons for this reality, but reality it is. When Europe
embraces a competing faith—be it secular universalism, multiculturalism,
communism, fascism—things tend to go poorly.

Meloni opposes gay marriage, which isn’t legally recognized in Italy. (Nor
is gay adoption.) Instead, there are same-sex civil unions, which offer
gay couples nearly the same legal protections as marriage—laws that Meloni
does not propose overturning. Recall that most Democrats, including Barack
Obama, held the same position on the matter until 2012. Wrong or right, I
don’t recall reporters referring to it as fascistic, or ideologically
“far-right wing.” Did the definition of “fascist” change in the past
decade?

Meloni opposes abortion and euthanasia. Every story mentions the
protection of life as an evident sign of democratic backsliding. It took
some digging to ferret out the official right-wing coalition’s position.
Outside nebulous language about life, Meloni promises to fund
“alternatives to abortion.” Using state power to shut down pregnancy
centers (and looking the other way when political terrorists firebomb
them) is quite fascisty. Offering pregnant women the means to keep their
babies, not so much.

Meloni opposes illegal immigration.

Meloni is a moderate Eurosceptic. (She is also pro-NATO, and supports the
West’s military backing of Ukraine and closer relations with Taiwan.)

Meloni is a critic of “wokeness” and the idea of malleable gender
identity, the position of basically the entire world until a few minutes
ago.

Unlike the Tories of Britain or Likud in Israel, contends The Washington
Post, Meloni is a “norm-wrecker.” Anyone who spends five minutes studying
postwar Italian governance will probably tell you the country could use
some norm-breaking.

Meloni’s party uses a tricolor flame logo that “harks back to an earlier,
more extreme political movement formed shortly after Mussolini’s death,”
the Post notes. Numerous outlets inform us that the populist right-center
coalition, including a party led by former prime minister Silvio
Berlusconi, has its “roots” in Italy’s postwar fascist movements. In and
of itself, this is meaningless. It’s like saying Democrats have their
“roots” in preserving slavery and segregation. Meloni has denounced
fascism, contending Italy had “handed fascism over to history for decades
now.” The National Alliance shed its fascistic views long ago. In the
2000s, its leader Gianfranco Fini visited Yad Vashem in Israel and called
Mussolini’s regime “absolute evil.” Maybe it was all just a decades-long
ruse to gain power, but it’s a context worth noting. Many did not.

Meloni refused to vaccinate her daughter, arguing that the probability of
someone aged 0–19 dying from Covid-19 is the same as being struck and
killed by lightning. (To be fair, it’s probably lower.)

Meloni is, believe it or not, also a fan of Tolkien, and even attended a
“Hobbit Camp” in 1993, when she was 16. In Italy, The New York Times
explains in a 1,500-word deep dive, “The Lord of the Rings” has “for a
half-century been a central pillar upon which descendants of post-Fascism
reconstructed a hard-right identity” for people “looking to a
traditionalist mythic age for symbols, heroes and creation myths free of
Fascist taboos.” Really, a central pillar? I’m not a scholar in Italian
politics, but this seems unlikely.

Meloni has defended Viktor Orban, “the orchestrator of Hungary’s
autocratic turn.”

Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow Meloni will have the trains running on time
and embrace a corporatist economic system like so many “liberal” Eurozone
nations. I’m a minarchist at heart, so everyone looks like a fascist to
me. More likely, though, the Italian right will be illiberal within the
normal illiberal standards of modern Europe. It will be no more illiberal
than “democratic” socialist parties, and no less authoritarian than the
present German government, which regularly sends police to break down the
doors and arrest citizens for saying stupid things on the internet. The
difference is that like Orban, the Italian right promises to use state
power to blunt the European left’s agendas on social policy and
immigration, rather than use state power to enforce them. And that will be
enough reason to call them “fascists.”



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