Rise of the far-right in Italy

The Italian elections of 2022 have resulted in one of the most shocking results that the international community has ever seen. Giorgia Meloni, member of the Deputy of Chambers and President of the Brothers of Italy party, secured a whopping 26 percent of the vote in an election marred by a low voter turnout. Meloni, leader of the far-right known for her vociferous denunciation of immigration, LGBTQI rights, Islam and leftist ideals such as social welfare, has become Italy’s most divisive and controversial politician. She is also slated to become the Prime Minister of the country with her coalition including the firebrand leader of the Lega party, Matteo Salvini and scandalous former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party. The results of this election and the rise of the far-right is a harrowing sign for the future of Italy which, as an integral member of the Group of Seven (G7), the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and the European Union (EU), could easily slide into fascism.

This is the first time since 1945 that Italy has seen a far-right government come into power. Giorgia Meloni, a forty-two-year-old nativist ideologue will also be the first female Prime Minister of the country. The far-right coalition still needs to pass a confidence motion in the Italian Parliament and have their credentials approved by President Sergio Mattarella for them to set up a government. The electables would also include leaders of both houses as well as appointments to key ministries. The failure of the liberal or leftist elite to ameliorate some of the most pressing issues for average Italians such as rising unemployment, shockwaves from the Ukraine war in the form of a lingering energy crisis and a mass influx of refugees fleeing from the Middle East due to conflict and turmoil in Syria and Yemen.

Meloni’s campaigning has centred on these issues where her Christian supremacist ideology resonated with the working-class segments of Italian society. She called out the duplicity of the leftist government, mocked the fall of former Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government and invoked racist and xenophobic beliefs to appeal to the average Italian voter. Her admiration for dictator Benito Mussolini, whom she famously considered to be the ‘best politician that Italy has had in 50 years’, is alarming and her involvement as a youth volunteer for the neo-fascist, Italian Socialist Movement (ISM) has made her a de-facto neo-Nazi. Meloni disputes such labels where in a campaign trail she scoffed at being called either a traitor of Nazism or a neo-Nazi as labelled by the leftist elite in Italy. Yet few can doubt that admiration for dictators who had a key role to play in proliferating Nazi ideologies across the world from 1915-1939 is reductionist, controversial and brazenly racist.

Her views on Islam have been equally controversial. Meloni has endorsed Renaud Camus’s ‘white genocide theory’ in the ‘Great Replacement’ where incoming Muslim, Arab and Middle Eastern immigrants will systematically replace the majority Roman Catholic population. The killing of Nigerian immigrant, Alika Ogorchukwu in the elite town of Civitanova Marche in 2022 revealed the fissures that have emerged in Italian society. While the fringe has always existed in Italian society and the majority of the population including conservatives denounce racism against immigrants, the response of the authorities was to downplay the incident and question the racial motivations of the attack. Meloni’s campaigning, which expressed strong anti-immigrant sentiments, reignited the fringe and allowed them to enter the mainstream, similar to how Hindutva groups in India became more prominent under the Modi government or white supremacist organisations became more vocal under the Donald Trump era in the United States. The far-right, which is responsible for most of the attacks on citizens ranging from school shootings to lone wolf crimes, becomes politically active due to controversial ideologues such as Giorgia Meloni gaining power.

This presents a gloomy picture for Europe which has often touted itself as a progressive harbinger of democracy, pluralism, peaceful coexistence and inclusivity. Meloni, like her Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orban, is openly ‘eurosceptic’ who endorses Brexit and calls out the open-door policies of many EU member states. Her partners such as Matteo Salvini have openly endorsed Russia although many, including Meloni herself, has distanced from the Kremlin after the Ukraine war. Yet, Salvini has gone on to present the Romani population of Italy which has been stereotyped for rising crime rates, unemployment and lack of integration into European societies as ‘national security threats’ to the point of calling for census data to be carried out by local authorities and have them deported. Ideally, such hate filled policies are inconsistent with EU values, but massive gains for the far-right in countries such as France, Sweden and Spain indicate many of these values are being slowly eroded.

Meloni will try to place herself as a centre-right rather than a far-right politician. For her political survival, she may eschew, albeit temporarily, some of her political firebrand image which includes endorsement of Nazi ideology. Yet, for her supporters, her continuation of policies such as amending the Italian constitution and support for the presidential system may pave the way for a populist wave which could result in the betterment of all Italian citizens.

Either way, the far-right coalition government can disrupt the Italian system, become an affront to the EU and ensure that neo-fascism takes hold in one of the most important countries in Europe.

The writer is an Assistant Research Associate at the Islamabad Policy Research Institute