Meloni, Mussolini, and the Media

Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
3516
 

Whenever Italy elects a right-of-center Prime Minister, the international press labels them a fascist and links them to Mussolini (coincidentally, the only Italian PM they’ve heard of). What was true for Silvio Berlusconi and Mario Draghi is true of their latest PM, Giorgia Meloni, elected over the weekend. To wit:

I’m no scholar in Italian politics, nor have I invested much time researching the 317 parties jockeying for control from Turin to Taranto. But considering the news media’s coverage of U.S. politics, I didn’t fall for their latest imprecation.

They claimed Ronald Reagan was a fascist. As was Bush Sr., Bush Jr., McCain, Romney, and Trump. As I type, the press is pivoting from “Trump is literally Hitler” to “DeSantis is even more Hitlery than Hitler.” Hell, they thought Liz Cheney was a fascist until a few years ago.

So, their track record is, let’s say, spotty. And provincial. Which is why our political press called Jair Bolsonaro “Brazil’s Trump” and Viktor Orbán “Hungary’s Trump.” They view every election around the world as a proxy battle on whatever Beltway buzz is circling the cubicles this week.

Let’s hear from Meloni herself in the 2019 speech that catapulted her to national fame:

The left hates her because they reflexively denigrate family, faith, and patriotism. All of these are bulwarks against government power, transnational finance, and the NGO-driven international monoculture. That just won’t do. There is no world but one and Klaus Schwab is its prophet.

Meloni disagrees, as do a growing number of voters around the world. Sweden ousted its leftist government two weeks ago. As Vox mewled:

Giorgia Meloni and her far-right Fratelli d’Italia are expected to lead a far-right victory in Italian elections this weekend. That win, if it happens, would come shortly after the far-right Sweden Democrats won the second-largest share of the vote, helping to oust the center-left from power and giving the far-right a potential role in the next government.

The far-right is far-right and that far-right beat the center-left. Booo, far-right.

The left is always characterized as the natural center, while the right lurks on the fringes. The people of Sweden, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark disagree, but what do they know about Europe compared to an asthmatic spoon-chest filing reports from a Park Slope kombucharie?

The best part of Meloni’s speech was her quoting G.K. Chesterton, a personal favorite. Here’s the full quote, from his book Heretics:

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.

Next, they’ll be impugning Chesterton as an extremist. Wait, it’s already begun…

Published in Elections, Foreign Policy
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  1. Henry Castaigne Member
    Henry Castaigne
    @HenryCastaigne
    2:15 PM EDT ⋅ Sep 27, 2022

    shoshido (View Comment):

    I have decidedly mixed feelings about Chesterton. On the plus side, he was a Zionist who supported the establishment of a Jewish home run by Jews, and clearly admired the earthy pioneers who were making that happen. But a significant part of his support was in seeing Zionism as a solution to “the Jewish problem,” which was just a fancy word for English/European bigotry, and a particular distaste for Jews who had materially succeeded despite such bigotry. In that I don’t judge him then as I would judge a similar man with similar views today, since antisemitism was simply the state of things in Europe when he wrote this (1931), and the reason my grandparents and great grandparents had already left that cursed continent. But even then there were those who somehow rose above such bigotry, and he wasn’t one of them.

    That is a total bummer. But we should ask how we can overcome the bigotry of our day and give Chesterton a little grace.

    • #31
  2. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival
    2:34 PM EDT ⋅ Sep 27, 2022

    Rightfromthestart (View Comment):

    They keep saying her party has its roots in fascism, oh roots, I see , you mean like the Democrat Party that has its root in slavery?

    They’re all living in Italy. Italy was once fascist. Therefore they all have roots in fascism.

    • #32
  3. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster
    6:45 PM EDT ⋅ Sep 27, 2022

    YouTube removed the video of her speech and they’re calling *her* a fascist?

    • #33
  4. Rightfromthestart Coolidge
    Rightfromthestart
    @Rightfromthestart
    9:23 AM EDT ⋅ Sep 28, 2022

    ‘home run by Jews’ – Hank Greenberg

    • #34
  5. GlennAmurgis Coolidge
    GlennAmurgis
    @GlennAmurgis
    7:29 AM EDT ⋅ Sep 29, 2022

    Corporate media never seems to worry about an extreme left wing candidate getting elected – we have people actually praise Hugo Chavez 

    • #35
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