Italy's Next Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Is Being Compared to Mussolini

Incoming Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni shoulders right-wing political views, but how far is she willing to go to push her agenda?

As the country’s first far-right leader since dictator Benito Mussolini, whose fascist reign ended in 1943, Meloni is ruffling feathers in and out of Italy.

Still, she says she’s become more moderate toward the EU, but the proof will be in the budino.

Meloni is set to become Italy’s first-ever female prime minister, and also its most conservative since Mussolini.

Meloni is the leader of the political party Fratelli d’Italia, or Brothers of Italy. Her party dominated the election, with 44 percent of voters aligning with the Brothers of Italy.

While Meloni says her anti-European Union views have cooled, it’s possible she will align with previous statements that position her against European involvement.

She has previously made herself known as a Eurosceptic of sorts, even threatening to cease usage of the euro currency. However, she has positioned herself as more against the EU and friendlier toward NATO.

In 1996, Meloni (now 45 years old) praised Mussolini for being “a good politician, the best in the last 50 years.”

Mussolini is considered to be responsible for the deaths of about 1 million individuals. Decades later in May 2020, she maintained these extreme views by celebrating Giorgio Almirante, who co-founded the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement and was a known Nazi collaborator and antisemite until his death in 1987.

In a 2019 speech, Meloni said, "I am Giorgia. I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I’m Christian.” Much like many far-right politicians in the U.S., Meloni has utilized her Christian views to serve as the backbone of her politics.

Meloni has helmed the Brothers of Italy party for a decade since co-founding it with Ignazio La Russa and Guido Cresetti.

Meloni and her coalition partners hold nationalist and socially exclusionary views.

Meloni has been accused of homophobia (claiming nuclear families should be led by male-female partnerships), xenophobia, and Islamophobia. However, she has also overtly criticized human rights violations in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, among other places.

The main concern across the globe is whether Italy will retain its status as an EU nation under Meloni’s leadership.

While she has claimed to become more moderate over the years regarding European involvement, her past echoes loudly. The reality is that Meloni could carry that Euroscepticism into policies that impact the connectivity of the Italian government.

According to European expert at the Council on Foreign Relations Charles A. Kupchan, “The direction of political momentum is changing — we had a wave of centrism before and during the pandemic, but now it feels like the political table is tilting back in the direction of the populists on the right.”