What a difference a few months can make.

Ahead of Italy’s election last fall, Giorgia Meloni was widely depicted as a menace. By this summer, everything — her youthful admiration for Benito Mussolini, her party’s links to neofascists, her often extreme rhetoric — had been forgiven. Praised for her practicality and support for Ukraine, Ms. Meloni has established herself as a reliable Western partner, central to Group of 7 meetings and NATO summits alike. A visit to Washington, which takes place on Thursday, seals her status as a valued member of the international community.

But the comforting tale of a populist firebrand turned pragmatist overlooks something important: what’s been happening in Italy. Ms. Meloni’s administration has spent its first months accusing minorities of undermining the triad of God, nation and family, with dire practical consequences for migrants, nongovernmental organizations and same-sex parents. Efforts to weaken anti-torture legislation, stack the public broadcaster with loyalists and rewrite Italy’s postwar constitution to increase executive power are similarly troubling. Ms. Meloni’s government isn’t just nativist but has a harsh authoritarian streak, too.

For Italy, this is bad enough. But much of its significance lies beyond its borders, showing how the far right can break down historic barriers with the center right. Allies of Ms. Meloni are already in power in Poland, also newly legitimized by their support for Ukraine. In Sweden, a center-right coalition relies on the nativist Sweden Democrats’ support to govern. In Finland, the anti-immigrant Finns Party went one better and joined the government. Though these parties, like many of their European counterparts, once rejected membership in NATO and the European Union, today they seek a place in the main Euro-Atlantic institutions, transforming them from within. In this project, Ms. Meloni is leading the way.

Since becoming prime minister, Ms. Meloni has certainly moderated her language. In official settings, she’s at pains to appear considered and cautious — an act aided by her preference for televised addresses rather than questioning by journalists. Yet she can also rely on colleagues in her Brothers of Italy party to be less restrained. Taking aim at one of the government’s main targets, L.G.B.T.Q. parents, party leaders have called surrogate parenting a “crime worse than pedophilia,” claiming that gay people are “passing off” foreign kids as their own. Ms. Meloni can appear aloof from such rhetoric, even suggesting unhappiness with its extremism. But her decisions in office reflect zealotry, not caution. The government extended a ban on surrogacy to criminalize adoptions in other countries and ordered municipalities to stop registering same-sex parents, leaving children in legal limbo.

[…]

Journalists, too, are under pressure. Sitting ministers have threatened — and in some cases pursued — a raft of libel suits against the Italian press in an apparent bid to intimidate critics. The public broadcaster RAI is also under threat, and not just because its mission for the next five years includes “promoting birthrates.” After its chief executive and leading presenters resigned, citing political pressure from the new government, it now resembles tele-Meloni, with rampant handpicking of personnel. The new director general, Giampaolo Rossi, is a pro-Meloni hard-liner who previously distinguished himself as an organizer of an annual Brothers of Italy festival. In the aftermath of his appointment, news outlets published scores of his anti-immigration social media posts and an interview with a neofascist journal in which he condemned the antifascist “caricature” hanging over public life

This is not his concern alone. Burying the antifascist legacy of the wartime Resistance matters deeply to the Brothers of Italy, a party rooted in its fascist forefathers’ great defeat in 1945. As prime minister, Ms. Meloni has referred to Italy’s postwar antifascist culture as a repressive ideology, responsible even for the murder of right-wing militants in the political violence of the 1970s. It’s not just history to be rewritten. The postwar Constitution, drawn up by the Resistance-era parties, is also ripe for revision: The Brothers of Italy aims to create a directly elected head of government and a strong executive freer of constraint. No matter its novelty, Ms. Meloni’s administration has every chance of imposing enduring changes in the political order.

[…]

Success is hardly inevitable. Ahead of last week’s election in Spain, Ms. Meloni addressed her nationalist ally Vox, declaring that the “patriots’ time has come”; in fact, its vote share fell and right-wing parties failed to secure a majority. Even so, Vox has become an enduring part of the electoral arena and a regular ally for conservatives. Despite their growing success, such forces have for years been painted as insurgent outsiders representing long-ignored voters. The more disturbing truth is that they are no longer parties of protest, but increasingly welcome in the mainstream. For proof, just look to Washington on Thursday.

  • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    If fascist are put into power trough Democratic means then the people get the fascist government they deserve. Turkey had to chance to get rid of Erdog yet they overwhelmingly re-elected him.

    • RossoErcole@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      But when voting happens in a society that is misinformed, usually maliciously so, like in Turkey, it is not democratic, democracy works and is true to itself only when a vote is informed.

      • iByteABit [he/him]@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Turkey is a big examples of that, but this extends to many countries as well, it’s usually the uneducated and historically illiterate that fall for fascism

        • xuxebiko@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          In India, most Hindus from the educated middle-class & upper-middle class are huge fans of Hindu supremacism and Modi’s fascism. They have the means & oppurtunity to access information but choose to follow and believe the misinfo, disinfo, & propaganda churned ut by the Hindu upremacist RSS & BJP IT cell and godimedia (mainstream media that is Modi’s lapdog).

          :(

          @RossoErcole

          • RossoErcole@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            In our society social media have destabilized our methods of communication and I think our communication has been broken and we still don’t know how to fix it. The public square is now private, even if the change might seem subtle, it’s a big disruption in society (Meta, Twitter, Google, TikTok).

            • xuxebiko@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Hindu supremacist BJP has an IT cell which is tasked with creating and spreading disinfo, misinfo, and propaganda using all possible channels; mainstream media and all forms of social media. I keep waiting for one of them to pop up on the fediverse and either spread thir filth or start cursing me out.

        • graymalkin@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          In Nazi Germany it was the wealthy that voted him in. The establishment feared the left and colluded with Hitler.

          • RossoErcole@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            Usually fascism stems from the bourgeoisie, not the lower class. But through disinformation from the class that controls information it manages to get promoted from the lower class too.

            • xuxebiko@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              The caste at the topmost of India’s super-shitty caste pyramid (who are very good at playing victim while actually victimizing everyone else) created the Hindu supremacy ideology and the wealthiest merchant communities and corporates have funded it and dispersed it via their in-home mainstream media.

      • ParsnipWitch@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        There are people from Turkey, though who voted although they were able to inform themselves since they do not live in Turkey currently. Conservatives will vote and uphold conservative parties even when they know exactly what they are voting for. They do it because it benefits them personally.

        • RossoErcole@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          But conservative views are not the problem themselves, even though I don’t always agree with those, authoritarian views are.

          And as I said in another comment, having the means to inform yourself doesn’t mean that you will do it, because it’s a chore, at least that’s how it is in our society. If it was different, if the public square (which is social media atm) wasn’t controlled by private companies, I think it would be a bit better.

    • xuxebiko@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      India too, Hindu supremacist and fascist Modi’s 2nd term is almost up and the country is down the shitter.