It is one hundred years since Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1922 after his crusade against Rome and installed a fascist regime
The coincidence is significant because today the situation in the Apennines is such that in the early parliamentary elections in September a centre-right coalition looks set to take power in the country.
The party is dominated by the Italian Brothers party led by Giorgia Meloni, who in her youth was the leader of the youth movement of Giorgio Almirante’s neo-fascist Italian Social Movement. The party is now the leader in all opinion polls and Meloni is therefore tipped to be the next prime minister.
The Corriere della Sera says that the right’s victory in the forthcoming elections is so inevitable that the only dispute is whether it will manage to get two-thirds of the vote, which would allow the constitution to be changed. This conclusion is based on the latest opinion polls. Thus, according to the SWG, the right-wing coalition parties of Matteo Salvini’s Liga, Giorgia Meloni’s Italian Brotherhood and Silvio Berlusconi’s Go Italy could win in 90% of single-mandate constituencies. Overall, according to the SWG, the centre-right alliance secures 45% of the vote, while their centre-left rivals will gain no more than 30%. “The centre-right’s advantage at the moment seems irresistible,” the Corriere della Sera states in this regard. However, according to another service, the Cattaneo Institute, they will not manage to get two thirds of the votes in parliament.
A right-wing triumph
But there is an even bigger surprise in Italy when it comes to the candidate for prime minister to replace the acting head of government, Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, who is considered a protege of the globalist elite. Matteo Salvini, the chief partner of the Brothers of Italy, has already announced that the future prime minister will be the head of whichever party in the right-wing coalition gets the most votes. Meloni has also announced that she would not mind taking the post and becoming the first far-right politician since the Second World War and the first woman to head an Italian government.
This could prove to be the main sensation for Europe in the forthcoming vote on 25 September.
The meteoric rise of Meloni and her Brothers of Italy was unexpected. This is not the usual “fascist” bugbear that has repeatedly been used to smear fellow nationalist leader Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement Nationale, in France.
Meloni indeed has a “fascist” past because the PSD, from which she emerged, was seen in Italy as the heir to the ideas of Mussolini.
The evolution of the neo-fascists
The party was actively involved in the political life of post-war Italy and in the 1970s it was even elected to the national and European parliaments. Then the movement merged with monarchists to expand its electoral base, and in 1995 it split into the conservative National Alliance and the radical neo-fascist Social Movement-Tricolor Flame. “The National Alliance, which became the successor to the IUD, existed until the late 2000s, and then its leadership decided to merge with Silvio Berlusconi’s “Forward, Italy” and other right-wing parties into a single union called the “People of Freedom”. The new party won the vote and was able to form a government under Berlusconi. By 2013, however, the alliance collapsed due to internal divisions. National Alliance activists announced that they had left the People of Freedom and formed a new party called Italian Brothers. The party was initially led by former Defence Minister Iñancio La Russa, but in 2014 the leadership went to Giorgia Meloni, who was then Minister of Youth in Berlusconi’s cabinet.
“Just five years ago,” writes the English Guardian, “the Italian Brotherhood, a party of neo-fascist origin, barely won 4% of the vote. It is now leading in opinion polls and its leader Georgia Meloni’s inflammatory protests have filled squares across Italy ahead of the election.”
What is the reason for this unexpected success of this party with nationalist slogans? The same reason that brought Mussolini to power a century ago.
It is the growing dissatisfaction of the population with declining living standards, soaring prices and also new challenges – an uncontrolled influx of migrants, the inability to change of the left and the liberals who rule, the diktat of Brussels imposing norms and rules on the country that many people reject.
Globalist unease
But today’s Italian Brothers have little in common with Giorgio Almirante’s ISD and are trying hard to disassociate themselves from the label of “fascists”.
The movement has carefully retooled its programme to suit modern realities. But the party’s main slogans – nationalism, zero tolerance to migrants and adherence to traditional values are not in fashion with the globalists.
The Italian Brotherhood leader opposes same-sex marriages and advocates preserving the traditional family. She condemns the “Islamisation” of Europe, calls for the closure of ports to prevent migrants from disembarking on Italian shores and proposes an increase in the number of monitoring and deportation centres. On foreign policy, she does not demand Italy’s exit from the EU, but favours the sovereignty of European states.
“I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian, and you cannot take that away from me,” is how Giorgia Meloni herself described her position. And as we can see, these very slogans are becoming more and more popular in Italy.
On the other hand, it is clear that they run counter to the current “European values” and everything that is declared by Brussels and the world’s global elite, and therefore the prospect of a centre-right government in Italy with Prime Minister Meloni is a major concern for globalists. All the more so because the other two leaders of the right-wing coalition, Salvini and Berlusconi, have a strong reputation in the West as “friends of Putin”. Berlusconi, particularly when he was prime minister and later, was in close contact with the Russian leader, who was a guest at his villa. Salvini made a point of ostentatiously walking out onto Red Square wearing a T-shirt with Putin’s portrait on it during a visit to Moscow. But now the leaders of the center-right coalition, at least publicly, are trying to dissociate themselves from their old sympathies for Russia. They declare their adherence to Atlanticism and the EU.
So if a centre-right coalition wins and Meloni becomes prime minister it does not at all mean that Italy will abandon sanctions against Russia or return to the times of dictator Mussolini.
“Meloni and her proposals may not like them. But labelling them as fascists is wrong,” said Italian historian Giovanni Orsina. – Italy’s international commitments, particularly within the EU, leave little room for radicalism. This is one of the reasons why a right-wing government would not be a disaster.”
A shift to the right is evident
However, some remind us that even the future Duce did not at first look like a would-be dictator, who was then hung upside down in a petrol station in Milan by partisans. He was a member of the socialist party and editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti! Mussolini came to power on a wave of mass popular discontent with acute economic problems and horrendous unemployment and the humiliation of Italy after the First World War.
Today, despite all the problems, the situation in Italy, which has become one of the biggest economies in Europe, is still different, but under the blows of the energy crisis it is deteriorating rapidly, as in other Western countries. That is why signs of the dictatorship of the ruling elite and the brutal suppression of dissenters are clearly visible today, both in the US and in France and Germany. Is this possible in modern Italy, which has already learned its destructive lesson of fascism in its history? The debate on this issue is ongoing.
Many are convinced that a return to fascism in the country is no longer possible. But facts like Rachele, Mussolini’s own granddaughter, is now a councillor in the Italian Brothers party in Rome, and Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the neo-fascist ISD youth movement, is preparing to be prime minister, do make one wonder.
In any case, Italy’s shift to the right on the eve of the election is evident. The renowned Norwegian publicist Paul Steigan has no doubt that a new fascism in the West today is also quite possible. “But the new fascism,” he writes, “is so different in form from the old one that new concepts are sure to be introduced to describe it.
Vladimir Malyshev, Centenary
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