It was a meeting of minds, kindred souls, timed to perfection for Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni. Celebrating together the magnificent restoration of Notre Dame in Paris, the far-right Meloni apparently dazzled Donald Trump, who described her as “great” and a “real live wire” with “a lot of energy”. He has invited her to his inauguration next month.
For Meloni, who reportedly aspires to act as a European interlocutor with Trump – a “horse whisperer”, is how the Economist puts it – a friend at court who shares much of his politics, it was not a first encounter. She has met him several times and addressed the conservative CPAC conferences which regularly host him.
And she has a particular “in” with his current “bestie” Elon Musk, an admirer of her tough migration stance who recently spoke glowingly of the “incredible job” she’s doing. He provoked uproar in Italy when he denounced judges for ruling against her plans to deport immigrants to Albania. “These judges need to go,” he posted, echoing the Trumpian anti-judicial rhetoric that all three share.
Meloni’s star is in the ascendant. Politico has named her the “most powerful politician” in the European Union. A most untypical Italian leader, one with longevity, Meloni has been running the third-largest economy in the euro zone successfully for more than two years and is carving out a niche as the “acceptable” face of the far right.
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She is breaking long-standing taboos about co-operating politically with the rising tide of ultranationalists by skilfully courting EU leaders to convince them she’s a trusted partner, unlike her troublesome political bedfellow Viktor Orban. One who will back them on key issues, most notably Ukraine – she earned their gratitude by prevailing on Orban to lift his veto on a €50 billion aid package. She has also toned down her coalition partners’ strong anti-EU rhetoric.
In return, instead of decrying the erosion of civil liberties in Meloni’s Italy, EU leaders have been increasingly willing to brush it aside as an internal matter.
Far-right parties such as the one Meloni leads, Fratelli d’Italia, with its roots in fascism, are now involved in governments in seven EU countries and are on the rise almost everywhere, including in France and Germany.
Meloni serves as president of the Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists Party – a pan-European group that includes Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice party and the far-right Sweden Democrats, and is linked to the US Republicans.
They are a force to be reckoned with in the new European Parliament, and were most “helpful” in the recent ratification of Ursula von der Leyen’s new commission, with its own first far-right commissioner. The willingness of von der Leyen and the centre-right European People’s Party to play footsie with them has provoked anger among the parliament’s democratic parties.
Meloni’s project is all about making ultranationalism and populism an acceptable and ‘mainstream’ partner for democrats
Yet Meloni’s international rebranding should not be allowed to conceal the reality of democratic backsliding at home.
International organisations such as the Council of Europe and the EU’s annual rule of law report have warned against the erosion of media freedom, specifically the repeated use of the courts to silence journalists with defamation writs and the use of state media as disinformation platforms for the government. Her attacks on the judiciary for ruling her actions illegal are threatening the rule of law, the Council of Europe warns. Several judges have also received death threats and required police protection.
The authoritarian Meloni is also planning to use her coalition’s parliamentary majority to shift power from MPs to her own hands, in a reform called the “premierato”. A draft security law will increase penalties, up to and including prison sentences, for demonstrations, blockades or picketing. She has also targeted minority groups such as the LGBTQ+ community, derided as a “lobby” attempting to impose its “gender ideology” on her country. Among other measures, mayors have been forbidden from issuing birth certificates to children born of surrogate mothers or to lesbian couples who used artificial insemination.
Political scientist and former MP Carlo Galli argues that the Meloni regime is not a fascist takeover, as some have argued, but the final political phase in the crisis of neoliberalism, a “post-democracy”. The right “sees this process as irreversible,” he warns in an interview with Jacobin, “and intends to see it through to the end”.
“In so doing, it does not even have the hypocrisy to pretend that it is giving parliament a role. It believes that all powers should be concentrated in the hands of the prime minister,” Galli says.
“It’s important to understand that post-democracy is already present in Italy. What the right is doing with the premierato is putting it in black and white in the constitution.”
In reality, Meloni is not bringing Fratelli and Italian post-fascism back to the centre ground and moderating it, but is polishing up a dangerous anti-democratic throwback to another age. Her project is all about making ultranationalism and populism an acceptable and “mainstream” partner for democrats. No more than Trumpism, it is not that.