WION Spotlight | Sister at the helm of Mussolini’s born-again brotherhood

Fascist forces worldwide, including in India, are bound to welcome Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party being voted to power in the elections held on September 25. Meloni’s party has its roots in the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI) formed by supporters of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after World War II. Founded in 2012, in four years, the party’s vote has grown from 4 per cent in 2018 to 26 in 2022.

Meloni is on record as having told a French TV channel that “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy”. She leads a party that is deeply divisive and, in its strident nationalism, has been railing against the European Union, mass migration, Islamist violence and LGBT rights.

These children of Mussolini have set off alarm bells ringing in EU capitals, which were not unduly disturbed over the conservative right’s recent electoral victory in Sweden. Meloni has been dubbed the “new Mussolini” and would be leading the most extreme right-wing government in Italy and, perhaps, Europe, since the era of Hitler and Mussolini. And, she is perceived as a threat to Italy and Europe, and not only for the fact that neo-Nazi forces would get a big boost with her taking office. With its dangerous lurch to the far right, Italy, an economic power and a G7 member, would be reinforcing neo-fascist and divisive tendencies in Europe; and could emerge as the leading face of the nationalist bloc so far led by Hungary and Poland.

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However, while Europe may wring its hands and agonise over the continental scale of the challenge, it may not be able to, or even interested, in defeating the neo-fascist forces that are on the rise.

The critical test that Meloni has to pass, to appease a troubled and crisis-hit Europe in a funk, is to fall in with the West’s line on Ukraine in spite of her opposition to mass migration. That done, as a devout Catholic leading a country which is also Catholic and one with the other Catholic powers in Europe and the Catholic US president in backing Ukraine, the dangers that neo-fascist Meloni’s Italy poses to the liberal democratic order that the West avowedly stands for may even be overlooked.

It would be interesting to see how other major countries, including Russia, Israel and India react to the rise of Mussolini’s children.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)