Read More: How Giorgia Meloni Became Europe’s Trump Whisperer.
From all these contradictions, Meloni is constructing a new kind of nationalism: populist, nativist, and pro-Western, but committed to European and Atlantic alliances. “First of all, we have to defend what we are, our culture, our identity, our civilization,” she says, sitting with arms and legs crossed in front of an Italian flag. Where exactly that leads matters beyond Italy. From Portugal to Romania, once ostracized extremists on the far right are overtaking traditional conservative parties, much like the MAGA movement in the U.S. That has presented a crisis for centrist European governments whose populations for decades after World War II shunned far-right parties.
Meloni’s admirers say she has found a way to incorporate those rising far-right forces into the democratic process, neutralizing their threat. “We are the heirs of the right-wing party,” says Meloni’s top political adviser Giovanbattista Fazzolari. But the offshoot she founded, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), has, Fazzolari says, “become the party grouping together people from the right, people who are patriots of our country, people who are moderate, regardless of their previous political background.”
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