In this Italian electoral campaign, a video has spread like wildfire on social networks. It is a French television report from 1996. It talks about Giorgia, a 19-year-old girl who was active in the National Alliance, a new version of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). She distributes pamphlets against the left, and has a very clear opinion: “I think Mussolini was a good politician. Everything that he has done, he has done for Italy, and we do not find that in the politicians that we have had in the last 50 years”.
Today that girl is a 45-year-old woman who is all set to be the next prime minister of Italy, the first woman to do so. Now he denies fascism, he says that it is something that the Italian right has relegated to oblivion for decades, although from time to time they appear nostalgic among his party, Brothers of Italy (HdI), the formation that has just won the early elections in Italy , according to exit polls. Meloni no longer presents herself as a fan of Mussolini, but as a classic conservative, a "patriot" who wants to defend the interests of Italians in Brussels. In the last elections of 2018, she achieved 4% of the votes, but with patience and a certain consistency she has managed to convince the majority of voters.
To understand Meloni's thought it is very interesting to read his autobiography, Io sono Giorgia, which was a bestseller in Italy. He wrote it – and hence the title – after a famous speech in Rome's St. John Lateran square, a trade union stronghold, which went viral when two young men pimped him out with electronic music to tease him. Instead of going against her, he did her a favor. In all the clubs that catchy sounded “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am a Christian”. Meloni was already a pop icon.
In the book, Meloni tells of the abandonment she felt when she was very young and her father decided to leave her mother, Anna, her beloved sister Arianna and her and go to the Canary Islands. From time to time she went to visit him in La Gomera. Until one summer, she decided that she was not going to have any more contact with him, and so it was until her death, that she left him indifferent. It is a topic that she talks about repeatedly to explain that she is not in favor of homosexual adoptions. She considers that her experience has allowed her to understand that “the ideal” for a child is “a father and a mother”.
His childhood was not easy. After burning down her mother's house in the elegant Camilluccia neighborhood of Rome playing with her sister, they had to move to the popular Garbatella, along with their grandparents, and start from scratch. At school, she was bullied because of his weight. He writes that when he was nine years old he weighed 65 kilos. She was a serious girl, with a difficult character. When some young people did not let her play volleyball with them, she had two things clear. The first, that she was going to lose weight. The second, that "enemies are useful."
It was at the age of 15 that he decided to knock on the doors of his neighborhood section of the Youth Front, the youth organization of the MSI, a party founded by supporters of Mussolini after World War II. It was 1992, Italy was experiencing a great political convulsion due to the Clean Hands process that was ending the great parties. She had begun to go to some demonstration of the Front, accompanied by a schoolmate. For her those boys meant much more than a political group. According to her account, she found a group of people who came from particular family situations, a point of support.
She combined activism weekends with jobs of all kinds, from babysitter to waitress. From that time is a photograph of her dressed as Sam Gamgee, one of the hobbits from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, who for the offspring of the extreme right represented a holy book rather than an epic fantasy. They visited schools in disguise, and all the militants had to choose a character. They gathered under the call of Boromir's horn. Her favorite was always Sam, simple gardener and loyal companion of Frodo, without whom she could not have accomplished her deeds.
Shortly thereafter, thanks to her charisma, she was elected as leader of the Alianza Nacional youth movement, the new party that MSI had become, and elected provincial councilor in Rome. The continuation is already known. She climbed up, little by little, until she reached the Chamber of Deputies at the age of 29, and she was elected its youngest vice president. At 31, Berlusconi named her Youth Minister, again the youngest to do so. In 2012 she formed her own party, Brothers of Italy. She tried to become the mayor of Rome in 2016, but although she did not succeed, the fact that she campaigned pregnant against the wishes of men on the right who thought that she should focus on being her mother gave her great popularity. . "She is the only woman who has made herself, who has built herself with her effort, who studies, who has consistency and who has shown that she does not have to thank any man for putting her in the right place," highlights one of their candidates, Elena Leonardi. She has a girl, Ginevra, six years old, with a television journalist, with whom she is not married.
Meloni is not a great opportunist like Matteo Salvini who changes his ideals as the wind blows in the polls. She has always had everything very clear, although she used to launch anti-euro messages before. She speaks of a Europe of the peoples, with less sovereignty in Brussels and more in the nations. Her allies are the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, Santiago Abascal or the Pole Mateusz Morawiecki. She wants to stop immigration and reform the Italian Constitution to make it more presidential. She defends the "natural family" and "sexual identity" against "gender ideology" and "LGTBI lobbies", although this campaign has promised that it will not limit abortion. The big question now is whether ultra-nationalism or institutional loyalty to the EU will prevail. Europe will find out very soon.
