So much for the resurrection of Italian fascism.
In a scathing speech receiving global attention, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni tore into one of her colleagues this week for evincing something less than zeal in support of Europe’s efforts to help Ukraine fend off the Russian invasion.
If Italy were to “stop” its support for Ukraine, Meloni said, Rome would tacitly condone the invasion. Moreover, such an initiative would be entirely at odds with the pursuit of “peace” on the European continent. “That doesn’t mean not working for a peace plan,” she explained. But, Meloni asked, “can you tell me what the conditions are to open a negotiating table?”
“Do you believe … we should or shouldn’t first of all ask Russia to stop the hostilities and withdraw troops from Ukrainian territory? Do you think that Ukraine’s borders should be reviewed and how? Do you think the territories it occupied and on which it held a referendum of self-determination should be given to Moscow or not? That’s what I’d like to hear if we’re talking seriously about peace. Otherwise, what is being done is propaganda.”
Meloni added that her more “irresponsible” colleagues advocate policies that would sacrifice “a sovereign nation” and “a free people” as well as “international law.”
Italy’s prime minister doesn’t just talk a good game. This week, Meloni vetoed a deal that would allow the Russian tech giant Yandex to assume control over an Italy-based cloud-services provider. Her government has approved arms transfers to Ukraine including sophisticated air-defense systems, and she has proposed the recognition of Stalin’s Holodomor atrocities as a “genocide.” Meloni has even savaged her predecessor and former boss, Silvio Berlusconi, for blaming the invasion of Ukraine on Volodymyr Zelensky’s refusal to accept the legitimacy of Moscow’s forceful capture of the Donbas.
All this must be profoundly confusing for the members of the Western foreign-policy establishment who insisted that Russia was the “big winner” of the election that Meloni’s coalition won.
That was the view expressed by Italian journalist Mattia Ferraresi in Foreign Policy, who dismissed Meloni’s “resolute anti-Putin stance” as a conviction that wouldn’t withstand the pressures of coalition politics. After all, she had to contend with parties composed of “Kremlin apologists” and moderates who “just can’t help justifying Russia’s aggression.” But contend with them she has.
Ferraresi’s skepticism was mild compared with the knee-jerk reaction to her election from Western journalists. To them, Meloni’s center-right populism was a façade that imperfectly concealed her affinities for outright “fascism.”
Meloni’s election was “part of a long tradition of white womanhood being central to fascism,” The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard opined. Okay, maybe she wasn’t a card-carrying national socialist, but she’s doubtlessly “fascist-adjacent,” the Guardian’s Van Badham insisted. Indeed, Meloni’s rise opened her eyes to the revelation that women can be “evil or just as hopelessly sh** as men.” NBC News characterized Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party as an organization “with neo-fascist roots,” which haunt it still even if Meloni herself broke with her coalition on the subject of Putin’s aggression. Meloni “comes from a post-fascist cultural background,” one Italian professor told the BBC, and she’s only softened her views in public to “build her credentials to be a legitimate candidate for prime minister.”
As Michael Brendan Dougherty chronicled, Meloni’s program was not fascist, fascism-curious, or fascism-adjacent. It just wasn’t leftist. From the first minute, Meloni failed to live down to her leftist critics’ expectations of her. Moreover, when it comes to Italy’s support for Ukraine’s defense, the Italian leader demonstrated that her coalition is beholden to her and not the other way around. Meloni is owed an apology, though that won’t be forthcoming. The chastened silence of her hysterical critics will have to suffice.