Italy's New Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, is Showing Her True Colors
She's off to a pretty rocky start.
If there is one thing I am willing to be, it’s wrong.
That’s because you can’t serve your art and your ego at the same time. One or the other, but not both. I would rather suffer the indignity of a correction than labor under false assumptions, especially when it comes to the things I care about.
And one of the things I care about is Italy.
The minute we feel superior—about anything—we’re already in over our heads. That’s the problem with letting the ego take over. It gives us a false sense of being better than other people. We know more than they do. We have taken an unassailable position. We might even, gasp, have some kind of intellectual advantage.
That, in a nutshell, is fascism in its ultra-nationalist form: the erroneous belief that one race or culture is better than another. The Nazis, for example, held a unwavering belief in the superiority of the German race and the depravity of Jews. To them, superior races had the right to pursue aggressive expansionist foreign policies. This led to the murder of six million Jews and almost as many Poles—Poles whom the Germans considered Slavic and therefore impure.
This odd belief in the racial purity of Germans baffled Italy’s dictator, Benito Mussolini, who knew them to be an admixture of several different races, including Celtic and Slavic. But therein lay the difference between Nazi fascism and Italian fascism. Mussolini believed in the superiority of Italy over other countries; Hitler believed in the superiority of the German race.
There’s that word again: superiority. It always, always, always gets us in trouble. So, I want to make it perfectly clear when I dig into recent actions taken by Italy’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni—actions that are objectively reprehensible—I am not thinking, feeling, or implying that America is a better country. Far from it. We have much to atone for, and even a glance at Cappuccino’s archives will show that I have been vocal in my detractions.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the ultra rightwing party, Fratelli d’Italia, or Brothers of Italy, was sworn in as prime minister of Italy on October 22, 2022. She’s been in office less than a month, and already there are troubling signs of what lies ahead not just for Italy, but for democracy in Western Europe.
By November 2nd, Meloni had already enacted a law meant to punish organizers of illegal raves with hefty jail sentences—at first blush, not too alarming, right? But opponents are describing the measure as “a freedom-killing monster,” raising fears that this law would give authorities the power to potentially crack down on peaceful protests, such as workers’ protests and labor unions, which could soon be deemed illegal. They’re not wrong. Riccardo Magi, president of the small leftwing party More Europe, described the law as having “a distinct Putin flavor”.
Meloni saw her opportunity when 3,000+ young people attended a Halloween rave at an abandoned warehouse in the outskirts of Modena. Because the event was advertised on social media, revelers came from overseas, prompting Meloni to describe it as an “invasion.”
In truth, it was anything but, and Meloni’s statement betrays a laughable ignorance of rave culture. While there is a decided off-the-books vibe to these events, they attract all comers not because of “lax enforcement,” as Meloni insisted, but because ravers will travel any distance to attend a rave. And yet all the ultra-nationalist dog-whistles used during her presser, particularly the word “invasion,” have a Trumpian feel to them.
No wonder then that Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is a close personal friend of Meloni’s. As you can see in this photo of Bannon at his most charming and avuncular, he enjoys playing an outsized role at Fratelli d’Italia events.
Critics are right to question her administration’s motives. On the same weekend ravers descended on that warehouse in Modena, 2,000 Benito Mussolini supporters converged on the fascist dictator’s home town of Predappio, including great-great granddaughters Ottavia and Vittoria Mussolini, and hundreds of Fratelli d’Italia members, all of whom performed the stiff-armed salute that sends a chill up the spine of democracy. Meloni herself was lauded as a hero to the cause.
You might say freedom of speech shouldn’t be illegal and the marchers did nothing wrong, but that’s not actually the case here in Italy. Displays of fascist sympathy are banned under Italian law. So are re-formations of fascist parties.
Meloni adroitly denounced fascism during her maiden speech in parliament after her swearing-in, insisting that she had always considered Mussolini’s anti-Jewish racial laws and his decision to send thousands of Italian Jews to death camps to be the “lowest point in Italian history”. But her reassuring words fall a little flat when fascists are not only allowed to illegally converge in Rome and elsewhere, but are allowed to hold two separate masses given by a virulently ultra-fascist excommunicated priest.
Her response? A deafening silence.
So, do I, as an American, have a right to criticize? You bet I do. American blood was shed during WWII. Lots of it. To see the same violent ultra-nationalism that swept Benito Mussolini to office rise from the ashes at least bears mentioning. It has always been the writers, artists, academics, and intellectuals who are the first to sound the alarm. Consider the alarm sounded.
Unfortunately, it won’t be enough to save Italian writer Roberto Saviano, a hero if there ever was one. Since October 13, 2006, Saviano has been living under police protection. His groundbreaking book, Gomorrah, which exposes organized crime in Italy, in particular the Camorra syndicate, led to threats being made on his life. He’s on trial right now for calling Giorgia Meloni a “bastard” after she stated that Rome ought to “repatriate migrants and sink the boats that rescued them.”
Meloni’s response was to sue Saviano for criminal defamation. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison where the Camorra crime family will almost assuredly kill him.
Tempers run high on the subject of immigration here in Italy, which provides ultra-nationalist organizations like Fratelli d’Italia all the ammunition it needs to push its fascist agenda. Two years ago, however, a six-month-old infant named Joseph died onboard a rescue boat after the dinghy carrying his mother and 100 other migrants capsized off Libya’s coast. According to eyewitnesses, his mother’s cries were heartrending. Many Italians were deeply bothered by the way authorities handled the situation.
On an Italian talk show called Piazza Pulita, Saviano had became observably upset when shown images of the immigrants drowning. “All I can say is: they’re bastards – Meloni, [Interior Minister] Salvini … How is it possible, over such desperation? They have a policy, legitimately, which opposes that of reception [of migrants] – but surely not in the case of an emergency in mid-sea.”
Article 21 of the Italian Constitution enshrines the right to freedom of expression, but more recently, SLAPP suits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) in Italy have served as a de facto gag rule, silencing journalists and writers. When a criminal defamation lawsuit comes from the highest-ranking member of government, that threat is serious. A phalanx of journalists, writers, and human rights’ organizations have joined forces, calling on Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to immediately withdraw her charges against Roberto Saviano.
So far, her response has been lukewarm. “On that boat were migrants, not shipwrecked people,” she insisted. “The banana republic in which citizens are so vexed, but which is so popular on the left, is over.”
This is where we’re at now in Italy: SLAPP suits and illegal fascist tolerance. It doesn’t help that Italy already has the lowest press freedom ranking in western Europe.
For a country that has one foot firmly in the past, Italy sure has a hard time remembering it. Now, matters are worse. Immigration isn’t going to end anytime soon. This country isn’t equipped to handle giant influxes of people. So, yes, the problem is real and at least we can all agree that there is one, but leaving migrants to die in the waters of the Mediterranean isn’t a solution.
We’d sure as hell better come up with a solution—and fast. Failure to provide a way to handle the migrant problem is going to lead to more Meloni, more Fratelli d’Italia, and a far more disturbing journey into the heart of darkness that lies inside all of us, regardless of political affiliation.
We have all of the last century to show us where that path goes: genocide, hatred, and despair. The past must never be prologue.
Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin
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"The minute we feel superior—about anything—we’re already in over our heads." Wherefore are thou, Elon Musk??
You state that the past must never be prologue, but past is all too often just that. If we learned from history, we wouldn't have this problem, but, alas, humanity has never been good at that. We react, but seldom from experience- more often from anger and hatred.
Sadly, compassion and fascism go together like Donald Trump and integrity. They occupy different and mutually incompatible universes, like opposite poles of a magnet. I doubt that will change anytime soon, not as long as hatred can be weaponized.
Lest anyone think the use of the term "fascism" is out of place with people like Meloni or Trump, it helps to refer to what experts like Robert O. Paxton tell us about fascism.
Fascism is:
"... a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
-- Robert O. Paxton, 'Anatomy of Fascism' [4267] Kindle edition.
(The "cult of victimhood" (my phrase) was on full display with Florida Man's recent announcement.)
In addition, there are these supplementary points on Fascism, and what Paxton calls its “mobilizing passions:”
-- A sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions.
-- The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it.
-- The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external.
-- Dread of the group's decline under the effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences.
-- The need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
-- The need for natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's historical destiny.
-- The superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason.
-- The beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success.
-- The right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle.
(I keep these texts on hand for easy sharing.)