Giorgia Meloni And Her Coalition Enjoy A Sweeping Victory
Italy gets a taste of the years-long European right-wing wave. The European Unionists now have another enemy.
In one of the greatest international political upsets since Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni’s party (Brothers of Italy) captured 26% percent of the Italian vote compared to Enrico Letta’s (Democratic Party) 19.06%, as per the BBC. Most European elections work like this: the people directly vote for their favored party and whatever percentage of votes that the challenging parties get, that roughly allocates how many parliament seats said parties get. The winning party’s leader will most likely become the prime minister. The Europeans also have more than 2 parties, and frequently form new parties in order to get rid of seemingly ineffective or defunct parties. The split of the Italian parliament will look like this: “[The] Brothers of Italy ultimately won 26 percent of votes — six times more than it received in 2018 — while the right-wing coalition it was part of secured 44 percent”, as per foreignpolicy.com.
The international response has been scathing. The main accusation of the international media has been that she is a neo-fascist and has ideological connections to Benito Mussolini (the fascist leader of Italy from 1922 to 1943). They even point to the flame in the “Brothers of Italy” party logo as a callback to the dictator. The Associated Press said it best: “A party with neo-fascist roots won the most votes in Italy’s national election, setting the stage Monday for talks to form the country’s first far right-led government since World War II, with Giorgia Meloni at the helm as Italy’s first female premier.” The main cause of these accusations is that she has made it clear that she stands against cultural liberalism, mass immigration, and green energy policies that would destroy the quality of life of Europeans as a whole. With these things in mind, we cannot be surprised when she made a few enemies as a result of her views. The European Commision head, Ursula von der Leyen, made that clear when she said that “we have tools” if Italy goes “in a difficult direction.” These comments were followed up by the French Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, with the words: “In Europe, we have a set of values and, of course, we will be mindful that these values are respected by everyone…”. These “European Unionists”, if you will, are willing to implement punishments (“tools”) if Italy steps out of line with the ideology or policy of the European Union. We should hope that Meloni stays the course and follows the democratic mandate of her people, independent of whatever the European Commission does. The Italian people should defend their values and their civilization, whatever the cost. They have now joined the band of European dissident nations such as Poland and Hungary. I pray for the resilience of the new Italian government, and most importantly, the Italian people.
