Giorgia Meloni’s Election Isn’t about ‘Fascism’

You are going to hear the F word a lot this week. I mean “fascism,” of course. The New York Times dropped it 28 time s this past Saturday in one short article on the likely new prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. You see, the latest crisis for democracy is upon us. The government of the technocrat Mario Draghi, which Italians had never voted for but which was beloved by the EU, fell. And a government led by the Brothers of Italy, the only party to oppose the Draghi government, appears to have been elected in its place.

The Brothers of Italy is a Euroskeptic party, of a sort. It wants to renegotiate aspects of Italy’s involvement in the EU, and champion the primacy of Italian law. It is populist and nationalist in orientation, allied at the European level with Poland’s Law and Justice party. Although at one time it had argued for better relations with Russia, since the invasion of Ukraine, it has supported sending arms to Ukraine. Even though it was itself formed as the result of a split in Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, it has many factions. These include market-oriented “liberal conservatives” and social conservatives, led by an anti-abortion politician who converted from Islam to Catholicism. Meloni’s slogan was “God, family, country.”

About the Author

Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

Featured Tags

You are going to hear the F word a lot this week. I mean “fascism,” of course. The New York Times dropped it 28 time s this past Saturday in one short article on the likely new prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. You see, the latest crisis for democracy is upon us. The government of the technocrat Mario Draghi, which Italians had never voted for but which was beloved by the EU, fell. And a government led by the Brothers of Italy, the only party to oppose the Draghi government, appears to have been elected in its place.

The Brothers of Italy is a Euroskeptic party, of a sort. It wants to renegotiate aspects of Italy’s involvement in the EU, and champion the primacy of Italian law. It is populist and nationalist in orientation, allied at the European level with Poland’s Law and Justice party. Although at one time it had argued for better relations with Russia, since the invasion of Ukraine, it has supported sending arms to Ukraine. Even though it was itself formed as the result of a split in Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party, it has many factions. These include market-oriented “liberal conservatives” and social conservatives, led by an anti-abortion politician who converted from Islam to Catholicism. Meloni’s slogan was “God, family, country.”