It happened here, once again. Almost a hundred years after the March on Rome, last Sunday (25) Italy voted for a right-wing coalition headed by a party directly descended from the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
This is worrying to say the least. But the biggest fear is not that Giorgia Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy, will reinstate fascism in Italy, whatever that might mean. It is for a government led by Meloni to convert the country into an “electoral autocracy” in the style of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
During the campaign, the center-left Democratic Party – the main opponent of the Brothers of Italy – obsessively evoked Hungary, indicating that this would be the fate of Italy under a government headed by Meloni. The dispute, the party reiterated, was between democracy and authoritarianism.
In the end, the Democrats’ anguished “alarm call for democracy” failed to persuade voters: according to an initial calculation, the party would have received 19% of the vote, against 26% given for the Brothers of Italy. There are many reasons that explain this fact. One is certainly that the portrayal that the Democrats painted of Meloni – as a candidate for tyrant who would end Italian democracy and usher in an era of illiberalism – was not convincing enough.
For all the rhetorical radicalism and historical extremism of his party, the truth is that the Brothers of Italy will not operate in the circumstances of their choice. Linked to the European Union and limited by the Italian political system, Meloni will not have much room for manoeuvre. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t convert Rome into Budapest.
The main bulwark against autocracy in Italy can be summed up in one word: Europe. Our fragile economy (expected to grow by only 0.7% in 2023, in the best possible scenario predicted by the IMF) is heavily dependent on European institutions. In addition to the usual web of economic ties, Italy is the biggest beneficiary of the European Commission-led recovery fund, which over the next four years is expected to distribute more than €200 billion in grants and loans.
A fundamental fact is that this saving aid for the economy, without which Italy could very well fall into recession, is conditional on respecting democratic norms. Any advance in a similar direction to Orbán’s would endanger the entire Italian economy, something that would certainly be completely unfeasible for the new government.
Playing by European rules won’t be as big of a concession as it might seem. After all, over the years the Brothers of Italy have progressively moderated their Eurosceptic instincts. In 2014 Meloni announced that “the time has come to tell Europe that Italy needs to leave the eurozone”. She promised that the party would advocate a “unilateral withdrawal” from the monetary union.
In 2018, she introduced a bill that would remove references to the European bloc from the Italian Constitution. But as the prospect of power approached, these goals were excluded from the party’s platform. Last year Meloni admitted: “I don’t think Italy needs to leave the eurozone. I think the euro will stay.”
Also in the area of foreign policy, Meloni is in line with the dominant view on the continent. Formerly cordial towards Russian President Vladimir Putin — she urged the Italian government to stop supporting sanctions in the wake of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and in 2018 congratulated Putin on his undoubtedly fraudulent re-election — since the Russian invasion at large. scale of Ukraine it reinvented itself, today characterizing itself as a defender of Atlanticism and a staunch defender of NATO.
Meloni is now a leading proponent of imposing a European cap on the price of gas, the continent’s most potent economic weapon against Putin (which, incidentally, Hungary is opposing so far). Whether opportunistic or outspoken, these initiatives signal how willing Meloni is to take a conventional, pro-Europe stance, allaying the fears of Italy’s international partners and investors alike.
And then there’s the country itself. For starters, the right-wing coalition – which also includes the Liga and Forza Italia parties – failed to achieve the two-thirds majority in parliament that would have allowed it to amend the Constitution without resorting to popular vote. Meloni’s dream of converting Italian parliamentary democracy into a presidential system, something that critics saw as the first step towards a dangerous extension of executive power, has already been ruled out.
Controlling the turbulent government coalition will not be easy either. On the one hand there is Matteo Salvini, the exuberant leader of the League. Irreducibly pro-Putin and resentful of Meloni’s rise at his expense, Salvini can cause endless trouble. On the other hand, there is Silvio Berlusconi, who has already warned his partners that Forza, Italy “will break with the government if it takes an anti-EU position”.
In this environment full of disagreements, it will be extremely difficult for Meloni to implement any policy that truly revolutionizes the situation. If she does, the already audible calls for the reinstatement of Mario Draghi, who led the government of national unity that fell in July, will gain traction.
The notoriously volatile Italian political environment is also balanced by democratic institutions created to foster democracy and prevent authoritarian slippage. The decentralized system is made up of 20 semi-autonomous regions and nearly 8,000 municipalities, which act as firewalls to curb centralized power.
The Constitutional Court, whose overall legitimacy has never been in doubt, is largely independent of political influence, and the justice system has recently undergone a sweeping reform urged by the EU. Any attempt by Meloni to arrogate powers to herself would be resolutely opposed.
Of course, there are legitimate reasons for concern. Meloni is the first post-Fascist leader to win an Italian national election since World War II, and her party is heir to the Italian Social Movement, the reincarnation of the Fascist Party, dissolved years ago and banned by the Constitution.
The process of “de-demonization” that the Brothers of Italy went through, which included the open repudiation of the fascist tradition, did not stifle the deep ties with neo-fascist circles. Party officials have often been caught living and working with the most dubious far-right groups out there.
Furthermore, even if Meloni’s current political orientation does not bring her closer to Europe’s illiberals, her sympathies do. As recently as Sept. 15, she led her party to vote against a European resolution censuring Orbán, and she is a close ally of the Polish ruling Law and Justice party, which is mired in a fierce dispute with the European Commission over government control over the Judiciary.
Militantly anti-migrant, socially reactionary and steeped in a culture of patronage and tribalism, Meloni’s platform is unequivocally nativist and radical.
All of this is problematic, of course. But not all problems lead to autocracy.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
