26/09/2022
"
Brothers of Italy’s victory represents several firsts. Italy will have its first woman prime minister. And both Italy and Western Europe will have their first far-right majority government since the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War.
Meloni’s trajectory owes much to that history. Beginning as an activist of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement in the Roman working-class district of Garbatella in the early 1990s, Meloni rose to prominence in a political milieu that didn’t deny its heritage.
She stated in an interview with French TV in 1996 that Mussolini was a “good politician” and “all that he did, he did for Italy”.
While Meloni now says Italy has consigned fascism to history, vestiges of her party’s political roots remain. For example, the flame in the party’s symbol is taken from the post-fascist Italian Social Movement, and there have been recent instances of its politicians and supporters performing fascist salutes."
Within the overall success of the right, there are winners and losers. Meloni is obviously the former, and Salvini is the latter.
For the main party on the Left, the Democratic Party, it’s yet another bad day. Having dropped to under 20% in the 2018 general election, they look unlikely to do much better than that this time. Their failure to find a campaign narrative beyond “stop the far right” and to create a broader coalition underlined the strategic ineptitude that has long undermined the Italian left.
[theconversation.com]
Italy will have its first woman prime minister. And both Italy and Western Europe will have their first far-right majority government since the fall of Mussolini and the end of the Second World War.