At 45, Giorgia Meloni could become the first woman to head Italy’s government.
On September 25, the Italians will be called upon to elect the next head of government. Who is Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Fratelli D’Italia party, who appears as the favourite?
Europe will be following the Italian general election very closely. Following the resignation of former Prime Minister Mario Draghi and his government last July, Italians are called to vote on September 25th to elect their new Prime Minister. A crucial choice for the country that has been in a historic economic and social crisis since the Covid-19 pandemic and the start of the war in Ukraine. Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right party Fratelli d’Italia, is leading the polls and could well become Italy’s new prime minister. Who is this 45-year-old woman who could succeed Mario Draghi?
From her adolescence, at the age of 15, Giorgia Meloni became involved in politics, joining the Youth Front of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), believed to be the heir to Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, before becoming councilor of the province of Rome in old age of 21 years. In 2006, at the age of 29, she held her first high office by becoming a deputy in Lazio, the region where Rome is located, and then became the youngest vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies in history.
Youngest minister of history in Italy
In 2008 she was elected youth minister in the 4th Cavaliere government by Silvio Berlusconi and at 31 became the youngest minister in Italian history. This highly published journalist was seduced by her youth and boldness during her reign. In macho Italy, she bears the brunt of sexism, particularly from Guido Bertolaso, the former director of Italy’s civil defense, who tells her that she had better concentrate on her role as a mother and refrain from campaigning while she breastfeeds.
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During her time in government, she fought above all against the “factual character of textbooks” which was too left-wing for her and resigned from her post in 2011 when Silvio Berlusconi resigned. A year later, tired of the discord within the Italian right, she founded the Fratelli d’Italia party with other dissidents of Berlusconism and became its president in March 2014. Her party decided to choose the green flame as their emblem. red love supporters of the MSI, Mussolini’s fascist party.
A work of demonizing his party
In 2016, while pregnant, she announced her candidacy for mayor of Rome. A decision that earned her criticism from Berlusconi, who claimed that she could not take on the responsibility of this post by raising a child. “In a town where there’s a symbol of a wolf nursing twins, that’s not a problem,” she replies. In the end she finished 3rd in these elections, but was elected to the municipal council, where she then sat.
Unlike other right and centre-right parties, his party refuses to take part in Mario Draghi’s national unity government in 2021, which will allow him to assert himself as the only leading opposition figure in the country and which will help to increase visibility obtain and advance Fratelli d’Italia.
In this general election campaign, she is working tirelessly to demonize her party by being less harsh on the European Union, which she nevertheless believes is too ambitious, the one that has long wanted to leave the EU and adopt the euro as a “a bad currency” judges Germany only enriched”. A long-time admirer of Vladimir Putin, she changed her position after the war in Ukraine and judged this invasion as “an unacceptable large-scale act of war by Putin’s Russia against Ukraine” before committing to the supply of weapons to Ukraine decided by the Ukrainian army.
Against immigration, same-sex marriage and abortion
The one whose motto is “God, Country and Family” defends the traditional family model and does not hesitate to criticize marriage and the right of homosexual couples to adopt, in particular attacking same-sex couples who want to adopt with “ogres who steal children ” ISS compares you. If she opposes abortion as a “woman, mother, Italian and Christian,” she will not reconsider abortion rights.
Not surprisingly, she defends an anti-immigration policy, wanting to end the arrival of migrants in Italy, particularly from Africa via the island of Lampedusa, and advocates measures in favor of employment and housing for Italians. In 2016, she declared she wanted to close the borders to protect Italy from the towers of “Islamization” by denouncing “the ethnic replacement taking place in Italy”. She recently caused controversy when she posted on social media a video of a Ukrainian woman being raped by a 27-year-old New Guinean asylum seeker in downtown Piacenza, to evoke her “security fetish” theme.
Mussolini ‘achieved a lot’
Although she denies being the heir to Italian fascist traditions, she still recognizes that Mussolini “achieved a lot”, without forgetting to mention his “mistakes”, especially in the anti-Jewish laws, but presents his party as the the Italian “Conservative”. In a trilingual video posted to Twitter, Giorgia Meloni tries to calm down her neo-fascist profile to reassure voters and Italy’s allies worried about a return of the far right.
This woman with undeniable oratorical talent is well placed to win the general elections in just over two weeks and would become the first woman to lead the Italian government and the first far-right figure to hold the position in the country.
VIDEO – “I’m not afraid”: Giorgia Meloni could become Italy’s future prime minister