Giorgia Meloni not sounding like Donald Trump. In a sort of "make Italy great again" speech she calls for uniting the country, governing for all Italians, and doesn't sound like some sort of cheap badly done rendition of Goodfellas. Indeed, her articulate nature comes across, even if you don't grasp Italian, in comparison to Trump's nearly complete lack of it.1Her victory message is certainly different, but the proof, of course, is in the cannolis, not in the menu presentation.
Does the election of Giorgia Meloni tell us something about what's going on in the US right now?
I think it does, or at least did, and therefore explains in part how we got to where we now are.
More than that, does it tell us what isn't going on, and what Trump's backer's might get, or rather the country, if we keep going down this road?
It probably does.
First, we'll note, her victory has already been heralded in parts of the English-speaking world as a non-fascist victory for true conservatism.
At the same time, the American usual suspects, probably none of which actually would be comfortable with Meloni's actual world view, rolled into congratulate her:
Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ted Cruz under fire for celebrating Italian far-right victory
Italian politician Giorgia Meloni’s party traces its roots to the Second World War-era fascist movement founded by Benito Mussolini
All of this tells us a few things.
The first is that the FdI's rebranding of itself as a non-neo fascist party is taking root successfully, but it remains challenged. The party certainly had its roots there, and its symbol is made up of flames from Mussolini's grave, after all. But maybe it has reengineered itself as a right wing populist party that's no longer an anti-democratic fascist one.
Secondly, the English-speaking right is switching its attention from Viktor Mihály Orbán to Meloni, and maybe that's a good thing, if the FdI is no longer fascist and is democratic.
Of course, at the same time, the populist American right remains basically captive to a large degree to Donald Trump and his acolytes.
Finally, it really shows us what the populist Trumpite wing of the GOP, which anymore we might as well just call the GOP, is, and isn't.
So, what is Meloni's platform?
Well, I'm not Italian and I hadn't heard of the FdI until just the other day, or if I had, I hadn't paid all that much attention to it. Italy has had more than one neo Fascist party over the years. But it's easy to find videos of her giving really fiery speeches. A lot of those have been condensed into snippets, but if the full speech is listed to, they go in directions that you don't really expect. As far as I can tell, and I may be way off, the FdI, under Meloni, is hugely and unapologetically traditionalist and right wing populist, by it retains some syndicalist economic views. It also has dabbled, to some surprising extent, in social legislation which would be regarded as left wing in the United States, as trying to pass a bill regarding child care for working mothers.
So what caused more Italians to vote for it than any other party?
Probably that traditionalism, which is grounded in a sort of philosophy of nature, or new essentialism, or even a combination of classical Western thought and evolutionary biology. It appears, at least in its Italian form, to be of deeper thought than that of the normal American version. Indeed, American conservative intellectualism is of a much different type, and really hasn't evolved in any concrete form since Buckley's day.
What it might simply boil down to is what we've already mentioned. The FdI and Meloni are enormously anti-Woke and aren't apologetic about it in the least. They are also very nationalist in the "Italy for Italians" sense of things. And all that instinctively appeals, all around the globe, to people who aren't keen on being as multicultural as progressives assure them they should be and who, deep down, don't believe that a species that is male and female and has had marriage as its central fundamental societal element needs to now change that view.
It's a huge reaction to 1968 and the things 1968 foisted upon Western Society.
It's also, we might note, a reaction to the 1970s and the Greed is Good ethos that a triumphant capitalism brought in everywhere in the 1980s and 1990s. That part of Meloni's public platform seems missed. Meloni, however, has attacked modern globalism, and therefore that part of capitalism, pretty openly as well.
These themes all appeared in the far right before. Mussolini's original fascism was actually extremely radical in a left wing sense, reflecting a radicalism he'd grown up with, and his original membership in the Socialist Party. The Italian Fascist, however, combined some really left wing concepts with some extreme right wing ones, which was common to early fascist movements in many, but not all, places that it took root, that being one of the things that has made fascism so difficult to define. Because it did that, however, it also appealed to societal voters in the countries where it took root, who would adopt some of its views while blinding their eyes to others, and indeed blinding their eyes to the most radical elements of it.
Indeed, that's what made and still makes fascism really dangerous. We can see it in this example, maybe, and we can now see it in the U.S.
Indeed, we'll turn to the U.S. here, with this entry by some conservative journalist:
Republican voters face a clear choice in the 2024 presidential cycle. Those who think the conservative movement has the solutions to the nation’s crises should vote for a conventional GOP candidate. But those who believe the conservative movement is part of the problem should support Donald Trump.
Only Trump defied the deep state empowered by his Republican predecessors. Only Trump has broken from the disastrous foreign policy championed by the conservative movement. Only Trump has taken on the mania for free trade and outsourcing. No other figure of the right has shown the same willingness to break with his own side’s orthodoxies.
We've noted it here before, but we'll start with this and add in the Meloni element.
What's causing this hard right turn?
Well, in the U.S. and in Italy it's a feeling by rank and file, working people, that their politicians have completely abandoned them and their concerns combined with a reaction to modifying millennia old, and DNA rooted, institutions. That's pretty much it. The FdI promises to do something about that. American Conservatives have promised to do something about that since at least 1976, if not earlier, failed to do so, and even basically lied, in some instances, about their devotion to really doing so. They've started to do something, and ironically it's really Mitch McConnell, through his Supreme Court appointments, whose really started to change the social aspect of this around, in part.
The part where this isn't true had to do with unchecked illegal immigration. Trump, once again, did do something about that. Progressives and many others hated what he did, but he did do something, and that made him the first President since Teddy Kennedy's immigration reforms altered what had been in place to do so.
Economically, Trump had a good three-year run until COVID-19 came by plane, most likely, and ran through the country killing people and destroying the economy. Trump never acted like an economic conservative, however, and the GOP was pretty comfortable spending money like sailors on a three-day shore leave. As, by and large, people are happy with a good economy, it didn't really matter.
A person is free to view this anyway they wish, but Trump's far right policies, which appealed to many rank and file Republicans of the far right, and appealed to rust belt Democrats who came into the GOP, were nativist, traditional WASPish, and very socially conservative. To a very large degree, if they had been advanced by a more conventional politician, that individual would have been regarded as a huge success.
They were not advanced, however, by a conventional politician, but by Trump. It can be doubted, quite frankly, the extent to which Trump believed in any of the things he advocated for, or believes in anything at all other than himself, whom he appears to believe in obsessively. Trump is not an admirable man.
Trump may simply have picked up, as a salesman, on what his demographic wanted to buy. If he had done nothing more than that, he could not be criticized for it. Indeed, politicians of all stripes do that and in a democratic system, they must. There's no reason to believe, for example, that Harriet Hageman really thinks the election was stolen. Her base believes that, and so she must. It's an irony of the democratic system that really effective advocates of certain positions, truly believed by a politician's base, might find no real sympathy with the politician themselves. Indeed, that's why we find advocates of traditional family values caught up in sex scandals of all sorts, or advocates of law and order involved in crime.
Selling to your base, we note, is probably also why we find Kyrsten Sinema a Democrat looking out for monied interests. For that matter, it also may very well explain why politicians in certain regions seem to take positions that are contrary to their educations and backgrounds. They likely don't believe what they're saying, they believe they need to say it.
All of that is how democracy actually works, in part, but only in part.
Trump departed with that, however, in a truly fascistic sense. Appearing to believe principally in himself, he created a personality cult, some of which adopted the worst beliefs and inclinations of his supporters. And he became his movement, which is what Mussolini became, for example, to Italian fascism. His supporters still believe in him, but he believes in himself more. He essentially advances the concept that he, and only he, can save the nation against forces which are illegitimate.
And that is the core of fascism. FWIW, it's the core of Communism, too.
We said there may be lessons here. If so, what would they be?
The principal ones are the ones that Trump learned before he ever took office, and what Mitch McConnell, for all his differences with Trump, also knows. 1968 is over and much of what it brought has been ruinous. People look back instinctively to core societal traditional values and do not want change forced on them from above, or at all.
But what is also there is that there's a major society wide rejection of the consumerist economic revolution. People everywhere are wealthier than they used to be, but they are also more tied to their occupations than ever, and they don't want to be.
And people look at their countries and communities differently than capitalist do, and they don't want to look at them differently. They don't really want ever expanding this and that, and they often would just as soon have things be as they once were, rather than where they seem to be going.
All of those things can be advanced democratically. Meloni claims that she will now do that.
We'll see.
But this raises another question, particularly for American populists. Are you really wishing to buy the entire package?
Footnotes:
1. Meloni has a very direct and highly pithy form of delivery. In contempoary American politics it would be nearly impossible to find an analogy, in part because she very clearly means what she says. An interesting contrast would be to Trumpite Harriet Hageman, who is articulate enough, but who lacks the element of sincreity that Meloni obivously has. Perhaps only Liz Cheney, whose delivery is different, is comparable.
Trump's style nearly defies description, but it's odd and sort of oddly childish, as if he's delivering a rambling address to himself, or to a group in a children's club. That he's gained a wide following is surprsing in part for that fact, as people generally don't like being talked down to. He doesn't come across as consdesencing, but as not too bright. Interestingly one realy diehard fan of his that I spoke to some time ago, who couldn't imagine anyone not admiring him, related that "he speaks like us". Of note, that person was of a highly blue collar background from the East, which gives some creedance to the theory that New York politicians of recent years have learned their speaking style from dealing with East Coast mobsters.
Meloni says she's not a fascist, and compares her party to the British Tories, the Israeli Likud, and the GOP. The American GOP aside, which is in turmoil and which we'll discuss a little in round two of this fascinating series, the FdI, whatever it is, definitely isn't the British Conservative Party or the Israeli Likud.
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.
G.K. Chesterton, in Heretics
This quote, but not in its full length, is getting a lot of traction right now as it shows up, in Italian, being quoted by Giorgina Meloni, in a truncated form, which takes from the following:
Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.
I was surprised to find Meloni quote Chesterton, as I don't think of Chesterton as being a fan of, or useful to, fascists. But perhaps this puts us on the uncomfortable slope where Falangist slide into a certain type of conservatism and trying to define the difficult differences between the Mediterranean post World War Two far right, and Hungarian one, and the American one.
Italian and Spanish fascists were corporatists or syndicalists, which is a hard concept to explain to Americans. They didn't eliminate free enterprise but rather controlled it, with a concept that everything was subordinated to the good of the state which was supposed to work for the good of the people. By the people, it usually meant only the nation in the ethnic sense. In other words, Italian fascists might make common cause with, let's say, Spanish fascists, but that didn't mean that they thought of themselves as the same by any means. The Italian fascists worried principally about ethnic Italians only, which of course ultimately lead to an attempt to expand the Italian empire at the expense of non Italians. Spain's Franco era (Franco was not a fascist, or a Carlist) pretty much started off that way right from the onset, i.e,. Spain's empire was for the Spanish, not for Moroccans.
Falangist are a subset of fascist, with some distinct beliefs. Their basic core tenants were set out in the Twenty Six Points they issued, which stated the following:
NATION - UNITY - EMPIRE
1. We believe in the supreme reality of Spain. The strengthening, elevating, and magnifying of this reality is the urgent collective goal of all Spaniards. Individual, group, and class interests must inexorably give way in order to achieve this goal.
2. Spain has a single destiny in the world. Every conspiracy against this common unity is repulsive. Any kind of separatism is a crime which we shall not pardon. The existing Constitution, to the degree that it encourages disintegration, weakens this common destiny of Spain. Therefore we demand its annulment in a thundering voice.
3. We have the determination to build an Empire. We affirm that Spain's historic fulfilment lies in Empire. We claim for Spain a pre-eminent position in Europe. We can tolerate neither international isolation nor foreign interference. As regards the countries of Hispanic America, we favour unification of their culture, economic interests and power. Spain will continue to act as the spiritual axis of the Hispanic world as a sign of her pre-eminence in worldwide enterprises.
4. Our armed forces- on land, sea, and in the air- must be kept trained and sufficiently large to assure to Spain at all times its complete independence and a status in the world that befits it. We shall bestow upon our Armed Forces of land, sea, and air all the dignity they merit, and we shall cause their military conception of life to infuse every aspect of Spanish life.
5. Spain shall once more seek her glory and her wealth on the sea lanes. Spain must aspire to become a great maritime power, for reasons of both defence and commerce. We demand for the fatherland equal status with others in maritime power and aerial routes.
STATE - INDIVIDUAL - LIBERTY
6. Our State will be a totalitarian instrument to defend the integrity of the fatherland. All Spaniards will participate in this through their various family, municipal, and syndical roles. There shall be no participation in it by political parties. We shall implacably abolish the system of political parties and all of their consequences- inorganic suffrage, representation of clashing groups, and a Parliament of the type that is all too well known.
7. Human dignity, integrity, and freedom are eternal, intangible values. But one is not really free unless he is a part of a strong and free nation. No one will be permitted to use his freedom against the nation, which is the bulwark of the fatherland's freedom. Rigorous discipline will prevent any attempt to envenom and disunite the Spanish people or to incite them against the destiny of the fatherland.
8. The National-Syndicalist State will permit all kinds of private initiative that are compatible with the collective interest, and it will also protect and encourage the profitable ones.
ECONOMY - LABOUR - CLASS STRUGGLE
9. Our conception of Spain in the economic realm is that of a gigantic syndicate of producers. We shall organise Spanish society corporatively through a system of vertical syndicates for the various field of production, all working toward national economic unity.
10. We repudiate the capitalistic system which shows no understanding of the needs of the people, dehumanises private property, and causes workers to be lumped together in a shapeless, miserable mass of people who are filled with desperation. Our spiritual and national conception of life also repudiates Marxism. We shall redirect the impetuousness of those working classes who today are led astray by Marxism, and we shall seek to bring them into direct participation in fulfilling the great task of the national state.
11. The National-Syndicalist State will not cruelly stand apart from man's economic struggles, nor watch impassively while the strongest class dominates the weakest. Our regime will eliminate the very roots of class struggle, because all who work together in production shall comprise one single organic entity. We reject and we shall prevent at all costs selfish interests from abusing others, and we shall halt anarchy in the field of labour relations.
12. The first duty of wealth- and our State shall so affirm- is to better the conditions of the people. It is intolerable that enormous masses of people should live wretchedly while a small number enjoy all kinds of luxuries.
13. The State will recognise private property as a legitimate means for achieving individual, family, and social goals, and will protect it against the abuses of large-scale finance capital, speculators, and money lenders.
14. We shall support the trend toward nationalisation of banking services and, through a system of Corporations, the great public utilities.
15. All Spaniards have the right to work. Public agencies must of necessity provide support for those who find themselves in desperate straits. As we proceed toward a totally new structure, we shall maintain and strengthen all the advantages that existing social legislation gives to workers.
16. Unless they are disabled, all Spaniards have the duty to work. The National-Syndicalist State will not give the slightest consideration to those who fail to perform some useful function and who try to live as drones at the expense of the labour of the majority of people.
LAND
17. We must, at all costs, raise the standard of living in the countryside, which is Spain's permanent source of food. To this end, we demand agreement that will bring to culmination without further delay the economic and social reforms of the agricultural sector.
18. Our program of economic reforms will enrich agricultural production by means of the following:
By assuring a minimum remuneration to all agricultural producers.
By demanding that there be restored to the countryside, in order to provide it with an adequate endowment, a portion of that which the rural population is paying to the cities for intellectual and commercial services.
By organising a truly national system of agricultural credit which will lend money to farmers at low interest against the guarantee of their property and crops, and redeem them from usury and local tyrants.
By spreading education with respect to better methods of farming and sheep raising.
By ordering the rational utilisation of lands in accordance with their suitability and with marketing possibilities.
By adjusting tariff policy in such a way as to protect agriculture and the livestock industry.
By accelerating reclamation projects. By rationalising the units of cultivation, so as to eliminate wasted latifundia and uneconomic, miniscule plots.
19. Our program of social reforms in the field of agriculture will be achieved:
By redistributing arable land in such a way as to revive family farms and give energetic encouragement to the syndicalisation of farm labourers.
By redeeming from misery those masses of people who presently are barely eking out a living on sterile land, and by transferring such people to new and arable lands.
20. We shall undertake a relentless campaign of reforestation and livestock breeding, and we shall punish severely those who resist it. We shall support the compulsory, temporary mobilisation of all Spanish youth for this historic goal of rebuilding the national commonwealth.
21. The State may expropriate without indemnity lands of those owners who either acquired them or exploited them illegally.
22. It will be the primary goal of the National-Syndicalist State to rebuild the communal patrimonies of the towns.
NATIONAL EDUCATION - RELIGION
23. It shall be the essential mission of the State to attain by means of rigorous disciplining of education a strong, united national spirit, and to instil in the souls of future generations a sense of rejoicing and pride in the fatherland.
All men shall receive pre-military training to prepare them for the honour of being enlisted in the National and Popular Army of Spain.
24. Cultural life shall be organised so that no talent will be undeveloped because of insufficient economic means. All who merit it shall be assured ready access to a higher education.
25. Our Movement incorporates the Catholic meaning- of glorious tradition, and especially in Spain- of national reconstruction. The Church and the State will co-ordinate their respective powers so as to permit no interference or activity that may impair the dignity of the State or national integrity.
NATIONAL REVOLUTION
26. The Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las JONS demands a new order, as set forth in the foregoing principles. In the face of the resistance from the present order, it calls for a revolution to implant this new order. Its method of procedure will be direct, bold, and combative. Life signifies the art and science of warfare (milicia) and must be lived with a spirit that is purified by service and sacrifice.
As can be seen, in the Spanish example, religion was mentioned, but suppressed as subordinate to the overall goals of the state.
Italian fascism did not even go that far, but regarded, oddly enough, the Church as a sometimes intellectual ally in that Italian fascism, while radical in many ways, argued for a return to cultural traditionalism, even though it did not regard that as supporting a religious state. Essentially, to a relatively small degree, Italian fascism regarded some of the Church's emphasis as traveling on a somewhat intersecting road.
That's not the point of this article here, however, but it serves to point out that while something is going on in the entire Western World right now, it's not really the same every place it pops up. Consider again the clip we had of Meloni from the other day.
That's one of the most Un-American speeches you can imagine, although a lot of Americans wouldn't realize it. Not that Meloni would deliver an American speech, she's Italian, but she's not only complaining of the post 1968 liberal changes to the accepted culture, which she is, she's blaming it principally on consumerism.
This view isn't completely unheard of in the United States. People will take shots at consumerism, but it's usually people on the left that do it, and they don't link it to feminism and the LBGQT movement like Meloni is. Not usually. About the closest I've ever heard of that is the essay that somebody wrote some time ago, I've forgotten who, that homosexuals were regarded as the prefect citizens by liberal elites, as they consumed, but didn't reproduce, and lacked the messy personal nature that the 98% of those with normal inclination have. That approaches this statement, but it doesn't go anywhere near as far as Meloni did.
Meloni is definitely tapping into something here, however, in that what she's espousing is the concept that post 68 liberalism is at war with human nature, and she's not wholly incorrect in that either. That's also what partially, but only partially, given rise to populism in the United States. The part of her speech here that doesn't deal with economics would find a sympathetic ear in some parts of the far right.
Indeed, it finds a sympathetic, if surprised, ear from some who are in the Chestertonian camp, or more appropriately at his stammtisch. One twitter commentator, for example, noted upon hearing this that in his view he wasn't saying anything that was fascistic, but rather a string of things in line with Catholic social teaching, with which he approved. This definitely isn't the case for the American Trumpist wing of the GOP.
Is she therefore not a fascist, but rather somebody who would be more comfortable with Chesteron and Belloc?
Frankly, we really don't know. She hasn't been in power, yet, and her party hasn't been, either. What may distinguish it is its willingness to act democratically. That, in the end, has tended to be the defining matter distinguishing very far right political parties from fascist ones, even if the former does not really meet the overall fascist definition. The Falangist and Italian fascist were hostile to democracy, there's no two ways about it. Is the modern FdI? We don't know yet.
For the same reason, we can't say if the FdI is in favor of Illiberal democracy. Progressives could look at this and immediately say that of course it is, but it's really not that simple at all The FdI may be very far right, without being favoring Illiberal democracy. Favoring political progressivism and having a liberal democracy are not the same thing, even though progressives seem to feel it is.
At the end of the day, Meloni may end up being a flash in the pan. As Italy is a parliamentary democracy, her party, while gathering the most votes, only has about 25% of them. The center left party has nearly as many. The remaining 25%, more or less, of votes she needs from other Italian right wing parties do not all come, by any means, from ones that have the same outlook.
But this will prove interesting.
All over Europe, this trend has been occurring. Just last week, the Sweden Democrats, which have neo-Nazi roots, became the second-largest governing partner in the Swedish government. It's a very hard right nationalistic party. We've already discussed Viktor Orban's Hungarian government and it's espousing of Illiberal Democracy. Poland's largest party is the Law and Justice Party, which is a right wing populist party. Slovakia's largest party is the right wing populist Ordinary People and Independents Party. And France, of course, has the National Rally Party which threatened to take office during the last French election and which is the second-largest party in the government, only slightly behind that of the largest party.
Then we have the current GOP.
Perhaps the real distinguishing thing about the current Trump wing of the GOP, which is the dominant branch right now, is that these other parties, which are not all the same, are at least pretty open about their views, which they can be as they're in a parliamentary system. In the case of the Trumpist, the views remain partially camouflaged. And the other major factor right now is that these European parties save for one, Orban's, all seem to be comfortable with full democracy, although I'd certainly hold the question open for the Sweden Democrats on that query as its history would suggest that it wouldn't be, if it were in power.
So, once again, what's that tell us?
It's hard to say, but as noted earlier on this blog, it seems to be an upset with the results of the post 1968 liberalization of the Western World. People feel it's taken from them and forced them into things they don't agree with and don't want to be. And to at least some extent, they feel that it's brought about a culture that's at war with natural culture.
In short, people feel what Meloni expressed:
Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.
All of that were things that conservative parties already held, however. They weren't, however, very successful at doing anything about their views in a massive way. All of these groups promise to.
And maybe they actually would. . . but in the American case, what does that actually mean and do people really know what they're suggesting? We'll look at that next.
