“God, Country, Family” Is What Italy Will Be, says Georgia Meloni, the country’s new and first female prime minister

Georgia Meloni, Italy’s new and first female prime minister, has said that the country would put “God, country, and family” first.

Without completely erasing its post-fascist origins, Giorgia Meloni has effectively remade her Brothers of Italy party as the country’s major conservative movement. Her right-wing coalition was on set to win a majority of seats following Sunday’s general election, making her the frontrunner to become Italy’s first female prime minister – and its first far-right leader of the postwar period.

The rising star of Italy’s conservative movement summed up her image in a protest speech that went viral after being turned into a dance song in 2019.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian,” a fired-up Meloni told fans in downtown Rome. “No one will take it away from me.”

This slogan has become a rallying cry for Meloni as he has made an incredible ascent from the head of a small party with ties to Italy’s neo-fascist right to the position of future prime minister.

It reflects the seeming dichotomy at the heart of Sunday’s election, a high-stakes vote expected to usher in the most historic shift in decades — a first female PM – while simultaneously giving power to the most conservative administration since World War II.

Early projections indicated that Meloni’s Brothers of Italy would get over 25% of the vote, which would be more than five times as high as the party’s performance in the previous general election in 2018. She will easily beat the combined vote totals of her right-wing allies, Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi.

The three right-wing parties are on track to defeat the splintered center-left and secure a commanding majority in both houses of parliament, thanks to Italy’s complex election rules that favors wide coalitions.

Europe is being attacked.

Meloni’s “Christian mother” harangue, which she delivered verbatim in Spanish at a rally for Spain’s extreme-right party last year, ended with this statement, highlighting the anxieties of an arch-conservative camp that feels under assault in a globalized, rapidly-changing world.

In Meloni’s perspective, the besieging forces include immigration, Islam, European integration, “woke ideologies” and what she defines as “LGBT lobbies”. This is an opinion she shares with people like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, whom she has championed vehemently in his fights with Brussels over democracy and the rule of law.

Until recently, her ideological inspirations also included Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whom she lauded for “defending European ideals and Christian identity” in her 2021 book, “I am Giorgia”. In contrast, she has recently distanced herself from the guy in the Kremlin, strongly opposing his invasion of Ukraine and backing Western sanctions against Moscow.

She taped a video message in three languages last month to reassure Italy’s allies that Rome will remain committed to its old ties, including NATO. She also denounced as “nonsense” accusations that her far-right party with neo-fascist origins will lead an authoritarian administration.

“We vehemently resist any anti-democratic tendency with words of strength that we do not always see in the Italian and European left,” Meloni, 45, said in the letter addressed to international media in English, French, and Spanish.

“The Italian right has given fascist over to history for decades now, firmly rejecting the repression of democracy and the shameful anti-Jewish legislation,” she said.

origins after fascism

Meloni was canvassing for an electoral campaign in her hometown Rome when she was first interviewed by international media at the age of 19. In an interview with French reporters, she defended fascist leader Benito Mussolini, saying, “[fascist dictator Benito] Mussolini was a good politician, in that whatever he did, he did for Italy.”

Later, she changed her tune, stating the tyrant had “made errors.”

When Meloni was two years old, her father abandoned the family and they moved to the Garbatella neighborhood of working-class Rome, where her mother reared her. Despite the fact that Garbatella was a stronghold of the left, young Meloni sided with the right.

She became involved in the MSI Youth Branch, a far-right organization founded by wartime Mussolini loyalists. When Berlusconi’s administration took office in 2008, she was assigned the youth ministry at the age of 31. She had won her first municipal election when she was only 21.

After Berlusconi’s final government fell, she and other MSI veterans started their own party and called it Fratelli d’Italia, after the first words of the Italian national song.

According to Gianfranco Pasquino, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Bologna, “Meloni came from a party immersed in macho culture, where she learnt to combat with males – and she triumphed.”

Since then, she hasn’t exactly been generous with her success. Despite its name, Brothers of Italy does not include many influential women. Meloni believes that women, like herself, should get to the top of organizations based solely on their talent, and hence is opposed to diversity quotas intended to increase the number of women in legislative bodies or on corporate boards.

Waving flags, Brothers of Italy partygoers at Milan’s piazza Duomo, led by Giorgia Meloni.

Meloni has recently been successful in introducing Brothers of Italy to a wider audience, despite the fact that the group has never totally abandoned its post-fascist ideology. Notably, she has ignored demands that the tricolor flame, a symbol of the MSI that has ties to fascism, be removed from her party’s design.

Meloni has downplayed the party’s ideological roots in conversations with international journalists, comparing it to the British Conservative Party. She has been cautious not to offend her most loyal fans by straying too far from the tricolor flame while campaigning.

“I dream of a society where individuals who have had to bow their heads for many years, pretending that they have different opinions in order to not be ostracized, may finally express what they believe,” she said at a rally earlier this week.

Separated from the crowd,
Meloni’s rise in favor among the general public is due more to her pragmatism and strategic political actions than to the philosophy that continues to motivate her party’s rank and file.

In contrast to Salvini and Berlusconi, who last year joined forces with the center-left to create a unity government under Mario Draghi, Meloni rejected, calling Draghi’s nomination as undemocratic.

According to Maurizio Cotta, a professor of political science at the University of Siena, her choice to abandon the national unity alliance made her a logical beneficiary of Italy’s protest vote.

Cotta said in an interview this week, “Meloni has effectively utilized her position as the leading opposition force.” She has taken advantage of people’s animosity for Draghi’s administration, which is “competent, efficient, but also came off as stern and technocratic,” as the article puts it.

The once-popular Salvini has seen her popularity drop since since a bungled power grab in 2019, which the far-right leader has taken advantage of to win her supporters.

According to Cotta, “she has come out as savvier and more credible than Salvini,” providing responsible opposition while also keeping amicable connections with Draghi.

In the meanwhile, she has used billboards around the nation to reassure voters with the phrase “Ready,” presumably aimed at those who are skeptical of her due to her lack of experience.

“God, Country, Family”

Meloni has attempted to strike a balance between conciliatory gestures and strong language geared at galvanizing her supporters, even on European concerns.

While her coalition has advocated for tax cuts and more social expenditure, she has emphasized fiscal caution out of concern about Italy’s massive debt. She has committed support for the EU’s sanctions on Russia — in striking contrast with Salvini, who is still battling to shake off the fallout from his former fawning over Putin.

Meloni has warned that she would begin “defending Italy’s national interests,” reminding EU leaders that “the free ride is gone.”

Concerns about human rights, especially with regard to the treatment of migrants and minorities, are expected to be raised in the event that Meloni becomes the next administration. She wants a naval blockade of the African coast of the Mediterranean to prevent refugees from reaching Italy.

Her group, like many others on the extreme right, has combined a nationalist and anti-immigrant platform with a defense of traditional family values and a staunch opposition to adoptions by same-sex couples. God, Country, and Family serves as its slogan.

Brothers of Italy has already sought to limit the abortion law’s applicability in areas it governs, despite Meloni’s insistence that she won’t eliminate it. Party leaders have made allusions to the “Great Replacement” idea, which is a conspiracy positing that global elites aim to replace Europeans with immigrants, in order to support their insistence on the need to increase Italy’s low birth rate.

The far-right leader of France, Marine Le Pen, was quick to respond to Meloni’s victory on Sunday, calling it “a lesson in humility” for the European Union. Polish and Hungarian governing parties, who have been at odds with Brussels on the rule of law, also voiced their approval.

All of this, Pasquino said, pointed to tense ties with the EU, but he downplayed the likelihood of a full-scale rupture.

Fears of a Meloni administration are overblown, he argued, despite what the international press may say. Clashes with Europe are inevitable, but Meloni is a politician, not an ideology, so she won’t seek a clean rupture.