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Giorgia Meloni, PM, loves her county and wants to defend it with her party’s slogan — God, County, Family!

In this, my third piece on Globalism and Nationalism, I would like to examine Giorgia Meloni’s place on the world stage after becoming Italy’s first female Prime Minister on 22 October 2022.

An Introduction to Giorgia Meloni

Meloni’s father left her family when she was a child, and Meloni was raised by her mother in the working-class neighbourhood of Garbatella in central Rome. When Meloni was 15, she joined the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano; MSI), a right-wing party founded by supporters of former fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

In 1998 Meloni was elected as a councillor to the provincial government of Rome. She was a councillor 1998 – 2002, when her political fortunes were lifted by the return to power of media magnate Silvio Berlusconi. Meloni was assigned the youth portfolio in Berlusconi’s cabinet; at age 31, she was the youngest minister in postwar Italian political history.

In 2012 Meloni and fellow National Alliance veterans Ignazio La Russa and Guido Crosetto founded the Brothers of Italy. Its platform was similar to other Euroskeptic political blocs of that time: it was populist, it was broadly opposed to immigration, and it rejected the supremacy of European Union laws. Meloni was elected leader of the Brothers of Italy in 2014.

Meloni ran for mayor of Rome in 2016, but she finished third. In the 2018 general election, the Brothers of Italy captured just 4 percent of the vote, but this still marked an enormous improvement on the party’s 2013 showing. In 2019 the Brothers of Italy won more than 6 percent of the vote in an election for the European Parliament, and that year Meloni became a viral video sensation when she declared at an address in Rome, “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. And you can’t take that away from me!” She became president of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a Euroskeptic bloc within the European Parliament.

During the 2022 campaign, Meloni softened her Euroskeptic rhetoric and pledged to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia. The vote on September 25, 2022, was in record low numbers, less than 64 percent. However, the result was a resounding victory for Meloni, and the Brothers of Italy who captured 26 percent of the vote. Although Meloni’s coalition claimed just 44 percent of the total vote, Italy’s electoral mix of “first past the post” majority rule and proportional representation guaranteed that the Brothers of Italy-led government would command a comfortable majority in both houses of the Italian parliament. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

I found a discussion between Ralph Schoellhammer and Freddi Sayer very helpful in understanding Meloni. Ralph is an eminent researcher on right-wing populism from the private Webster University, Vienna:

• The mainstream media, almost to a man, labelled Meloni a far-right neo-fascist when she came to power. Then, a couple of days later Meloni issued her strongest condemnation of fascism, saying:

… that Mussolini’s racial laws in 1938, which led to the deportation of thousands of Jewish people to concentration camps, were “the worst moment in Italian history.” She said she “had never sympathized with anti-democratic regimes, including fascism” and would fight “every kind of racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination.” (Roberts, 25 Oct 22, Politico)

• Ralph described her leadership like Trump, she is authentic. She comes from a working-class background, proclaiming passionately that gender is real, family is real, they are not terms that you can ‘ascribe’. I am a woman, I am a mother and I am Italian!
• Ralph recognised that Meloni has some huge challenges leading Italy, with its very volatile politics and an economy dependent on the EU. He believes that Meloni is a leader with firm convictions, somebody willing to lose the next election for those convictions, or nothing would be done.

National Conservatism Conference 2020

Giorgia Meloni was invited to open this conference, held in Rome, Italy, 3-4 February 2020. I am sure it would have been a great honour for her do this, as the aspirations of the conference were so close to her own heart. I have transcribed a selection of paragraphs from Meloni’s speech; the three ellipses (…) indicate big chunks omitted! Please watch the whole video if you have the time.

I wish to thank Yoram Hazony and our friends of the Edmund Burke Foundation for inviting me to open this important event, and for having chosen Rome and Italy as the venue for this second edition of the National Conservatism Conference.

I entirely agree with Yoram’s views on the need to put conservatism back into its traditional sphere of national identity. The great challenge facing us today is defending national identity and the very existence of the nation-states as the sole means of safeguarding peoples’ sovereignty and freedom. This is why I find the title of Yoram’s latest book, “The Virtue of Nationalism”, so effective, because in a few words it clearly sums up the fact that our worldview is the exact opposite to what they would like to force on us. Dear Yoram, your book will scandalise Italy, and I will gladly make my contribution to this effect, because I intend to quote it frequently.

Our main enemy today is the globalist drift of those who view identity, in all its forms, to be an evil to be overcome, and constantly acts to shift real power away from the people to supranational entities headed by supposedly enlightened élites. Let us bear this clearly in mind, because we did not fight against, and defeat, communism in order to replace it with a new internationalist regime, but to permit independent nation-states once again to defend the freedom, identity and sovereignty of their peoples…

John Paul II, the “Patriot Pope”, knew perfectly well that nations, and the fact of belonging to a people sharing the same historical memory, were the bedrock of the freedom of every man.  He never tired of repeating that “there is no Europe without Christianity“, a teaching which is more topical than ever today, when the Christian identity of Europe is under attack by a distorted secularism that even attacks the symbols of the Christian tradition, while throwing open the gates to the most intransigent form of Islam that wants to apply Sharia law in our European homelands, and which lies at the heart of the Islamic terrorism that has caused bloodshed in Europe and the United States.

John Paul II’s patriotism also enabled him to view today’s historical events in the light of a Christian realism shorn of all rhetoric, as in the case of immigration. He considered that the right to immigrate had to be preceded first and foremost by a right not to emigrate “to live in peace and dignity in one’s homeland”. Christian, patriot, and also a critic of mass immigration. When you think about it, today John Paul II would be on the EU’s blacklist as a dangerous subversive…

They would like us to give up defending the family, considering it to be an archaic and backward concept to be superseded. They would like to convince us that a family is any emotional bond between sentient beings, that it is a sign of great civil and moral progress to pay a poor mother to keep her child in her womb for nine months and then snatch it from her arms to give it away to whoever has bought it. We reject all this, without a moment’s hesitation, even though today it is considered highly scandalous and even revolutionary to say that a family is made up of a man and a woman, and any son they may have.

Meloni, a Nationalist on the Global Stage

Is the story of Meloni an aberration? Is it a story of a woman’s rise to power in a man’s world? Or is she yet another far-right extremist that must be ousted as soon as possible from the globalists’ stage?

Yes, she is an aberration — the first woman Prime Minister in Italy. Yes, she has broken through for women everywhere. But no, she is not a so-called far-right extremist that will be ousted any time soon.

Rather, she is an inspiration for us all. All of us who share her values and all of us that believe that righteousness exalts a nation (Proverbs 14: 34).

You may be wondering how Italy is doing under Meloni. I did some digging and picked up a few indicators.

For example, in April this year, her government were setting out to scrap China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative). Italy had been the first G7 nation to sign up for this back in 2019, but now they can see the wider implications of the deal are not good for Italy, so they want out. Meloni was also working on expelling China from Italy’s most strategic naval port, Trieste.

Additionally, as of 16 June this year, the international financial markets were reportedly raising Italy’s credit rating. Meanwhile, Meloni has been seeking to inject renewed life into their manufacturing industry, holding talks with Elon Musk about the prospect of Tesla car manufacture in Italy.

She has also begun to address their nation’s population crisis, the EU’s most aging population, by introducing tax incentives for families.

All these initiatives have boosted Meloni’s popularity in the polls since her election last year, to the extent that if there was an election today, she would be able to form government without the need for a coalition.

It seems that Meloni’s values and associated policies have found a resonance with the Italians. Nationalism seems to be exalting a nation!

Where has Nationalism gone in Australia?

As I look back on Australian politics, federal and state, over the last two decades. I think the last nationalists I can remember are Howard and Anderson, followed all too briefly by Abbott. They spoke with authenticity and were unashamedly pro-Australian.

Since then, we seem to have drifted globally. We have become beholden to agendas from beyond our shores. For example; the climate change-driven net-zero policy with no viable alternatives for fossil fuel, the widespread support of Pride celebrations and perhaps the most significant of all, the same-sex marriage acceptance, December 2017.

Our parliaments are populated with great men and women who want to serve our nation. But where are the leaders of our major parties standing up for Australians and Australia? The international demands have quashed our nation, our culture, and our people.

Those few who do stand up for God, County, Family, sadly, do so to near empty chambers, and their voice is usually drowned out by the silence of the majority.

I believe two ingredients are needed in Australian politics today: more and more courageous leadership, and the introduction of a mechanism to dismantle the factions that control our political parties, designed to ensure that individual members rarely have the opportunity to use their own voice and to vote according to their own core beliefs.

I believe that Meloni is showing us that nationalism based on God, County, Family works. She says that all of us are attached to the things we love and that we will defend what we love.

Speaking of the EU, Meloni quotes Pope John Paull II who claimed that there is no Europe without Christianity. They are right. If we dismantle Christianity we will no longer have any community or national values, as we will be simply homogenised into one people group with no memory of our past, as George Orwell’s 1984 graphically portrays.

Here is Meloni’s political platform:

I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian. And you can’t take that away from me!

What is yours?

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons