As soon as she came to power three years ago, the post-fascist Giorgia Meloni toned down her ideological radicalism and adopted softer, more pragmatic approaches, although internally she has not slackened her ultraconservative agenda. With this attitude, she has consolidated her hold on power and carved out a niche for herself in Europe, where she soon found the complicity of Commission President Ursula von del Leyen, who even held her up as a model for addressing immigration. Two other factors have made her indispensable in continental geopolitics: her commitment to supporting Zelensky's Ukraine against Putin's Russia and her rapport with US President Donald Trump, who saw her as the best ideological ally in Europe. Thus, Meloni has become indispensable and has managed to normalize, both domestically in Italy and externally on the international political scene, the rise of a far-right party to power. This has also helped to put an end to the endemic internal political instability in Italy.
If in the late 1990s and early 2000s Berlusconi paved the way for the entry into politics of super-rich businessmen with media dominance, a model that, if evolved, would eventually lead Trump himself to the US presidency, today Meloni is an example in Western Europe of the rise to power of the post-faith far right. He is closely watched as a reference point by groups from France (Le Pen) to Spain (Vox, but also the PP), as well as extremist parties in the Nordic countries and Germany itself. Because unlike Hungary's Viktor Orbán, who was too close to Putin, Meloni has managed to unambiguously position himself on the Atlanticist side. In Spain, indeed, Meloni is being challenged by the PP—Feijóo has said that "he is not comparable to other far-right parties"—and Vox, which, although Abascal eventually joined Orbán's group in the European Parliament, maintains a good personal rapport with the Italian party.
But how is Meloni governing Italy after three years? Trained from a young age in post-fascism, and leader of the Fratelli of Italy, once at the head of government, despite not making much noise, she has advanced her ultraconservative agenda: she has not allowed the children of same-sex couples to be registered in the Civil Registry and has allowed anti-abortion associations to enter public family clinics. She has also not hesitated to launch stigmatizing speeches about poverty. She has insisted on an identitarian and xenophobic anti-immigration narrative, embracing the conspiracy theory of the Great Replacement and limiting the work of NGOs that rescue people in boats at sea.
Regarding historical memory, she has sought, with a sweetened reconciliatory narrative, a false equidistance between fascism and anti-fascism. And regarding institutional architecture, she is currently pursuing a law to restrict the autonomy of the judiciary and intends to introduce—so far without success—a constitutional reform that would allow for a change in electoral law to reward the representativeness of the winning party and strengthen presidentialism. Meloni, therefore, normalized in Europe, firmly pursues a polarizing and regressive path regarding rights and freedoms.
