Original article (in Croatian) was published on 06/10/2022
Giorgia Meloni, the first woman to become prime minister of Italy, is gaining a reputation as a fighter against the “globalist elite”. This is not correct.
Italy gets its first female prime minister in history – Giorgia Meloni, president of the Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) party. The contradictions related to Meloni do not end with the fact that she is – biologically, as the FdI does not fail to emphasise in its criticisms of the hated “gender ideologies” – actually a sister. The real misunderstanding is caused by the anti-establishment position of the Brothers of Italy.
Meloni was welcomed by right-wing politics as the saviour of Italy, and then perhaps Europe, from the so-called Agenda 2030, that is, the “New World Order” so often identified with the World Economic Forum (WEF). In the days after the election results, her so-called “brave common sense speech” from 2019 at the family congress in Rome, when she electrified the audience with slogans about erasing identity and roots in order to turn people into numbers, perfect slaves and consumers.
But some went a step further. The web portal Epoha reported on Meloni’s alleged impending showdown with the globalists, which the FdI president allegedly announced in her victory speech.
The new Italian Prime Minister said in her speech that she would defend Italy against Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum…
And after she won, she scared the globalists in the EU and the US during her victory speech. Here are some highlights from her speech:
“Our main enemy today is the globalist trend of those who see identity and all its forms as an evil that needs to be overcome. And they constantly demand that real power be transferred from the people to supranational entities headed by supposedly enlightened elites.
“Let us be clear in our minds, for we did not fight and defeat communism to replace it with a new international regime, but to enable independent nation-states once again to defend the freedom, identity and sovereignty of their people…
“As a serious alternative to the bureaucratic superstate… and even though that someone in Brussels or Frankfurt, Davos or London City does not have democratic legitimacy, they daily order the economic choices and political decisions of those who invested in that legitimacy with their popular vote.
“This means that whether the fake Democrats like it or not, national conservatives across all latitudes are actually the only true Democrats. Because only by defending national states, we defend the political sovereignty that belongs to the citizens of that state…”
No sign of the globalists
Since Meloni posted her nine-minute victory speech on Twitter, it’s easy to see that she didn’t say such a thing at all. This also explains the writings of numerous world media that stated that Meloni actually gave a tame, conciliatory speech [1, 2].
She thanked her family, political allies and colleagues. She also mentioned Saint Francis, the pride of waving the Italian flag, the responsibility she assumes for managing the country, and the desire to form a government for all Italians. She regretted the low turnout and the aggressive campaign but not the existence of the “New World Order”.
At no time, therefore, does Meloni mention either Schwab or the World Economic Forum, which Epoha claims in the title, or the other incendiary “keywords”. There is no trace of Brussels, Frankfurt, Davos or London City, communism or globalists.
Agenda 2030
There is, of course, a reason why Meloni is expected to say something like this. As Meloni comes from a neo-fascist or post-fascist wing, a more radical approach is expected from her compared to the established parties.
The Brothers of Italy chose the tricolour flame used by the Italian Social Movement (MSI) as their symbol. MSI was founded in 1946 by associates of the fascist criminal Benito Mussolini, and Meloni joined the party when she was only 15 years old. Mussolini’s grandchildren were among the members and candidates of the Brothers. There has been a lot of talk about this these days, even in Croatia, because Meloni once mentioned parts of the territory of the today’s Republic of Croatia in the context of the (partial?) return of Italy’s borders to fascist settings.
Symbolism was not the only one that was used here. Meloni has been in politics since the nineties and built her popularity on a set of “arguments” that sympathizers of the fascist or Nazi regimes of the last century so often resort to. First of all, it is the aggressive rhetoric towards minorities, be they sexual minorities or people in the movement. In inciting migrants, she mainly used the theory of great replacement, popular on the European extreme identitarian right. Among the more concrete measures, she announced the blockade of ships with migrants at sea.
Her story about identity is also based on conspiratorial interpretations of the development agenda of the United Nations, that is, the rebellion against the so-called Agenda 2030. During her performance last year at a rally organised by the Spanish ultra-right party Vox, the following panel was in the audience:
Her aura as a fighter against supranational powers was certainly helped by the fact that the Brothers were the only ones who did not support the technocratic government led by Mario Draghi, who worked for Goldman Sachs and chaired the European Central Bank. Welcoming Brexit in 2016, she declared that Europe, i.e., Union, was rotten to the core.
However, there are several indications that Meloni will limit her battles to the cultural-identity front by reducing the rights of women and minorities, while she will leave the economy front to the current trends.
The world of business and finance is not particularly concerned
To begin with, the election of Meloni did not worry the stock market, normally sensitive to politicians who threaten the status quo. Some mainstream media – especially those oriented to the economy – accompanied her election with reassuring words that it was not real fascism and that Meloni’s election was actually not so terrible [1, 2, 3, 4].
The reason for the relaxation surrounding the election of a party with post-fascist roots exactly one hundred years after the original fascists came to power, these media find either in its distancing from the fascist rhetoric as it gradually approached the throne or in the short duration of Italian governments in general, or in the habit that even the most radical parties, like the Five Star Movement (M5S), in power very quickly die and submit to Brussels and Frankfurt. It is similar with the world of business.
“They want to be perceived as a party that can do business with and that is able to manage the country”, said the former director general of the Italian Treasury, Lorenzo Codogno, about the Brothers of Italy, as reported by the Financial Times.
“On September 27, the European Commission approved Italy’s second tranche of 21 billion euros ($20 billion) in funds to recover from the pandemic. Mario Draghi, the outgoing technocratic prime minister, secured the grant by meeting 45 conditions the EU demanded in areas such as public administration reform. It is expected that Mrs Meloni will continue his course and by the end of the year will try to fulfil 54 more conditions for receiving the third tranche”, writes the Economist on the topic of the relationship between the Brothers and business.
The text itself opens with the statement that business develops cordial relations with the authorities, whatever they may be, which in the case of Italy includes the media tycoon who was tried for fraud and bribery, Silvio Berlusconi, as well as the fascist criminal Mussolini.
This can also be interpreted as the speech of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. She did not give the impression of panic because she reminded of the instruments of pressure available to the Commission.
“Whatever democratic government is willing to work with us, we work together… If things go in a difficult direction, I was talking about Hungary and Poland, we have the tools”, von der Leyen said. She was obviously referring, writes Euractiv, to the European Commission’s recommendation from last Sunday to suspend around 7.5 billion euros in funding for Hungary due to corruption, that is, disrespect for the rule of law.
Let’s also mention that the former American head of diplomacy, Hillary Clinton, welcomed the arrival of a woman as the head of Italy, adding that Meloni would be judged by her deeds.
Aspen and Davos
The circles within which Meloni has been building her political career for decades also do not testify to particular defiance of the so-called establishment. She was already a minister, namely Berlusconi’s minister of youth, right before the trial for the so-called bunga bunga parties, where underage girls were paid to entertain elderly gentlemen.
In addition, sceptics resent her membership in the Aspen Institute [1, 2, 3], a private multinational association promoting enlightened leadership. However, the same problem is highlighted by Il Giornale d’Italia, a liberal newspaper that has existed since 1901. This is how it reports on Meloni’s membership in the Aspen Institute:
The Aspen Institute and the Davos Forum are two sides of the same coin forged by the Deep State… Each of us can go to the official website and read the names of the main financiers: Carnegie Corporation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumina Foundation and Ford Foundation …
Aspen Institute Kyiv actively participated in organising the Ukrainian program at the Forum in Davos…
Anyone who still thinks that opposition to Giorgia Meloni in these two and a half years has been genuine opposition is ignorant in the sense that they ignore that the Davos Forum and the Aspen Institute are two sides of the same coin. What kind of change can we expect? None!
Without getting into deep state ratings, the aforementioned foundations are really the financiers of the Aspen Institute, along with other big names like Bloomberg Philanthropies, JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Google, LLC, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC…
And among the members, they have quite a few associates of the World Economic Forum, that is, speakers at the annual WEF meetings in Davos. Furthermore, the analyst of the Atlantic Council organisation, which also has an impressive list of donors from the world of surveillance, arms trade, financial and other powerful corporations, lists Meloni’s membership in the Aspen Institute among her virtues.
She recently reached an agreement with the American International Republican Institute (IRI) to organise a major conference on Afghanistan in Rome. She is also a member of the Aspen Institute and participated in this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. She said that Italy and the United States have “common roots” and publicly defended her views in leading American newspapers.
Meloni is, therefore, a rising star of right-wing politics, but her biography does not leave much hope that she will, in practice, defy anyone except the weakest in society. In addition to turning away migrant boats and making it more difficult for LGBT couples to adopt children, she also announced the cancellation of the 500-euro aid for the unemployed and socially vulnerable.
But before any move, despite her youthful love for Duce and mature distancing herself from him, she will have to swear by the Constitution of the Republic of Italy, which “forbids the reorganisation, in any form, of a dissolved fascist party”.