In 2017, after Emmanuel Macron bested Marine Le Pen in the French Presidential election, following on the heels of defeats for right-wing parties in the Dutch and Austrian elections, I wrote of a sense of relief that seemed to wash over an anxious European establishment. It was my view that they were utterly wrong and short-sighted to feel complacent because all the signs of unrest and discontentment were mounting.
Now, after the peoples of Sweden and Italy have both chosen right-wing parties to lead them, the cracks on what might be called the globalist façade are truly rupturing. It has brought about some hypocrisy and ironies to savour.
For example, did the world’s ‘progressive’ media celebrate Italy’s likely first female Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, for breaking the glass ceiling? Of course not. In fact, almost every story on Meloni’s win compared her with Mussolini.
While it is true that her party, the Brothers of Italy, has close historical links to the conservative National Alliance party, it must be remembered that the National Alliance party was formed to break away from the neo-fascistic elements and corrupt nature of the Italian Social Movement party, which it replaced in 1995.
And if embarrassing political lineage is of such concern, by the same token, the US Democratic Party, which had supported slavery and was against civil rights reform after the Civil War, should surely be hounded for not even having the embarrassment to change its party name… But the sauce for the goose is seldom sauce for the gander when it comes to the modern Left.
The reason why Meloni and the other European leaders, who are against the globalist EU and extreme-leftist dictates, are always branded ‘far-right’ is because they are pushing back on a few foundational pillars that have been dragged so far left by the political elite as to be edging on the precipice. These include vital issues like sovereignty, indiscriminate mass immigration, Woke madness, and gross economic mismanagement. They dare to point at the emperor’s nakedness.
Meloni, a straight-talking and impassioned donna Italiana, brought up by a single mother in a working-class suburb of Rome, seems to have a much better grasp on the damage these policies have caused to ordinary Italians than any of the bureaucrats in the EU. And the name-calling also shows that her oppositions do not have good answers to her criticisms. Like the not-so-bright school bully, they are resorting to ad hominem attacks, which has long been the refuge of the scoundrel.
It should also be remembered that if Meloni forms government, she will be the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Italy in 14 years. This is how emaciated democracy has been in Italy. Many of Meloni’s predecessors were technocrats ushered in by the EU to carry their agenda and circumvent troublesome egalitarianism, such as the incumbent Mario Draghi, who is a former President of the European Central Bank, or Mario Monti, who was a European Commissioner.
Nevertheless, Ursula Von der Leyen, the ‘undemocratically’ elected President of the undemocratic European Commission, saw fit to cast a thinly veiled threat against the Italians as they engaged in their democratic process. She said that the EU had ‘tools’ to deal with Italy should she choose the wrong path – i.e. vote conservative. It seems to completely escape her sophisticated yet cloistered mind that such open condescension towards the citizens of entire countries is precisely what is driving them towards the right in the first place.
Von der Leyen and the other technocrats would certainly do better if they spent a little time on introspection. They might discover why it is that the continent is rebelling under the yoke of their management. They did not seem to have learned anything even after Brexit.
And the screw of urgency has certainly been tightened by Covid. The Brothers of Italy received only 4.4 per cent of the vote in the 2018 elections. In 2022, they got 26 per cent of the vote. This is because Italians have been suffering. Italy has endured early and greatly with draconian lockdowns. The cessation of tourism, among other economic activities, has greatly damaged its already crippled economy. Tens of thousands of businesses are again forced to be on the cusp of closing this year due to soaring energy prices. Prior to the pandemic, Italy was one of the most inundated points of entry, along with Greece, for illegal migration. And like Greece some 13 years ago, it is also facing a debt crisis. All the time while the EU is becoming ever more censorious and illiberal in their march towards their Utopian dream of a Europe without states, without borders, without a culture, and without a soul.
This is in not an endorsement of Meloni per se – now in power, she will have to let her actions do the talking. But in such dire times, who can blame the people of Italy for choosing ‘unrespectable’ politicians, rather than being herded over the cliff by the exquisitely educated and tailored intelligentsia who live in a detached world? Meloni’s assertive use of alluvial words like ‘country’, ‘family’, ‘woman’, and ‘mother’, so common and yet so strange from the lips of a Western politician in today’s climes, must be like a breath of fresh air to Italians used to the bland shallowness of EU-speak.
The mirage of respectability of the European elite is melting away, and that is a good thing. Hopefully, this is a much needed second Renaissance that will resurrect Italy and Europe from a self-imposed sleep of reason.
