What a difference a few months can make.

Ahead of Italy’s election last fall, Giorgia Meloni was widely depicted as a menace. By this summer, everything — her youthful admiration for Benito Mussolini, her party’s links to neofascists, her often extreme rhetoric — had been forgiven. Praised for her practicality and support for Ukraine, Ms. Meloni has established herself as a reliable Western partner, central to Group of 7 meetings and NATO summits alike. A visit to Washington, which takes place on Thursday, seals her status as a valued member of the international community.

But the comforting tale of a populist firebrand turned pragmatist overlooks something important: what’s been happening in Italy. Ms. Meloni’s administration has spent its first months accusing minorities of undermining the triad of God, nation and family, with dire practical consequences for migrants, nongovernmental organizations and same-sex parents. Efforts to weaken anti-torture legislation, stack the public broadcaster with loyalists and rewrite Italy’s postwar constitution to increase executive power are similarly troubling. Ms. Meloni’s government isn’t just nativist but has a harsh authoritarian streak, too.

For Italy, this is bad enough. But much of its significance lies beyond its borders, showing how the far right can break down historic barriers with the center right. Allies of Ms. Meloni are already in power in Poland, also newly legitimized by their support for Ukraine. In Sweden, a center-right coalition relies on the nativist Sweden Democrats’ support to govern. In Finland, the anti-immigrant Finns Party went one better and joined the government. Though these parties, like many of their European counterparts, once rejected membership in NATO and the European Union, today they seek a place in the main Euro-Atlantic institutions, transforming them from within. In this project, Ms. Meloni is leading the way.

Since becoming prime minister, Ms. Meloni has certainly moderated her language. In official settings, she’s at pains to appear considered and cautious — an act aided by her preference for televised addresses rather than questioning by journalists. Yet she can also rely on colleagues in her Brothers of Italy party to be less restrained. Taking aim at one of the government’s main targets, L.G.B.T.Q. parents, party leaders have called surrogate parenting a “crime worse than pedophilia,” claiming that gay people are “passing off” foreign kids as their own. Ms. Meloni can appear aloof from such rhetoric, even suggesting unhappiness with its extremism. But her decisions in office reflect zealotry, not caution. The government extended a ban on surrogacy to criminalize adoptions in other countries and ordered municipalities to stop registering same-sex parents, leaving children in legal limbo.

[…]

Journalists, too, are under pressure. Sitting ministers have threatened — and in some cases pursued — a raft of libel suits against the Italian press in an apparent bid to intimidate critics. The public broadcaster RAI is also under threat, and not just because its mission for the next five years includes “promoting birthrates.” After its chief executive and leading presenters resigned, citing political pressure from the new government, it now resembles tele-Meloni, with rampant handpicking of personnel. The new director general, Giampaolo Rossi, is a pro-Meloni hard-liner who previously distinguished himself as an organizer of an annual Brothers of Italy festival. In the aftermath of his appointment, news outlets published scores of his anti-immigration social media posts and an interview with a neofascist journal in which he condemned the antifascist “caricature” hanging over public life

This is not his concern alone. Burying the antifascist legacy of the wartime Resistance matters deeply to the Brothers of Italy, a party rooted in its fascist forefathers’ great defeat in 1945. As prime minister, Ms. Meloni has referred to Italy’s postwar antifascist culture as a repressive ideology, responsible even for the murder of right-wing militants in the political violence of the 1970s. It’s not just history to be rewritten. The postwar Constitution, drawn up by the Resistance-era parties, is also ripe for revision: The Brothers of Italy aims to create a directly elected head of government and a strong executive freer of constraint. No matter its novelty, Ms. Meloni’s administration has every chance of imposing enduring changes in the political order.

[…]

Success is hardly inevitable. Ahead of last week’s election in Spain, Ms. Meloni addressed her nationalist ally Vox, declaring that the “patriots’ time has come”; in fact, its vote share fell and right-wing parties failed to secure a majority. Even so, Vox has become an enduring part of the electoral arena and a regular ally for conservatives. Despite their growing success, such forces have for years been painted as insurgent outsiders representing long-ignored voters. The more disturbing truth is that they are no longer parties of protest, but increasingly welcome in the mainstream. For proof, just look to Washington on Thursday.

  • SamirCasino@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    This attitude of “all politics and politicians are equally dirty” is straight out of the russian propaganda playbook. This is the narrative they’ve pushed in my country for decades, and it’s chillingly effective. It closely resembles whataboutism, whenever you criticize a politician, people yell “AS IF THE OTHER SIDE IS BETTER.”

    Why push this narrative, you ask? So that people become so disillusioned and apathetic that they don’t vote, so it takes less votes for Russia to get the parties it wants into power. It also breeds internal dissent, malcontent, instability, leads to low voter turnout.

    Russia also pushes a version of this at home, and in allies like Belarus. The gist being, all politics is dirty and corrupt, don’t get involved, don’t vote, nothing matters, it doesn’t concern you.

    So yeah, sorry about the rant, but when i see variations of that quote “if your vote mattered, they’d make it illegal”, i get really annoyed. If your vote mattered, they’d make you think it doesn’t so you don’t vote.

      • SamirCasino@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I made absolutely no mention of Ukraine and i would have written this comment with no changes ( and i probably have ) years before the invasion. It’s a strawman on your part to assume i uncritically support Ukraine ( or the US or EU for that matter ), just because i’m criticizing Russia. And if anything, i feel like we echo the same sentiment in both our comments, that just by criticizing one side doesn’t mean that the other doesn’t have flaws.

        It just doesn’t mean they’re equally bad either.

    • zer0@thelemmy.club
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      1 year ago

      Sound like you are being brainwashed to stupidity, the thread is about Italy not Russia. Since you seem obsessed with it i suggest you to read Bakunin thoughts on Mazzini.

      • SamirCasino@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        At the very start, i point out that this worldview of all politics and politicians are dirty and corrupt is being pushed by Russia in many countries. I didn’t think i need to mention that i’m including Italy.

          • djtech@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I am not going to lie I don’t understand what is your problem with the discussion about Russia.

            The context of the thread is the same, so it’s actually useful for the discussion

      • djtech@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, that’s exactly the idea behind state’s propaganda.

        Anyways, I keep my opinion that not all politicians are bad, in my case I only know well about Italy and the US.

        Also, the discussion made from the other user references to the Russian history, but the argument is the same, so I don’t understand what the problem is, being the thread about the same concept.

        • zer0@thelemmy.club
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          1 year ago

          name 2 politicians who have been in power in the past 20 years either in italy or US who you don’t think are bad

          • djtech@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Not bad as in “ovverral good” or not bad as “never wrong”?

            Anyways I’d say Marco Pannella and Mattarella. (not always good, but overall not that bad)

            The US president in the 20 years are either racists, kill children’s with drones or they lie and starts war in Iraq, so no I don’t want to select any US politician for the role of “not bad”.

            • zer0@thelemmy.club
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              1 year ago

              Don’t think the italians are any better. Mattarella is in charge right now, he’s part of the government the post is about