The right-wing coalition led by Giorgia Meloni wins an estimated 40-45 percent of the vote, winning at least 230 of the 400 seats in the lower house (legislature).
Meloni’s party, the Brothers of Italy, was the right’s biggest winner, with various pollsters predicting the party would win about 25 percent of the vote. While that’s more than the two main allies combined, Matteo Salvini is just behind the Lega party, which is estimated to have around 8-9 percent of the vote, and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italy.
In just four years, Brothers of Italy has gone from a minor far-right actor to a major actor. The Brothers of Italy party had 4.4 percent overall in 2018, compared to 17.4 percent for the League champion and 14 percent for Forza Italy.
And if we go back a little further, over two decades the right-wing coalition in Italy has shifted from the dominance of a centre-right populist party (Forza Italy) to that of a fascist party (Italy’s Brothers).
The victory of Italy’s brothers marks many firsts. Italy has a female prime minister for the first time. Both Italy and Western Europe will have fascist majority governments for the first time since the overthrow of Mussolini and the end of World War II.
WHO IS GIORGIA MELONI?
Meloni began her political life as an activist in the post-fascist Italian social movement that emerged in the early 1990s in Garbatella, a working-class neighborhood in Rome, and came to the fore in a political environment that did not contradict her heritage.
In an interview with French television in 1996, she stated that Mussolini was “a good politician” and “does everything he does for Italy”.
Although Meloni now says that Italy has defeated fascism, traces of his party’s political roots still remain. For example, the flame in his party’s symbol has been embraced by the post-fascist Italian social movement, and more recently, examples of fascist salutes have been coming in from its politicians and supporters.
The success of Meloni and his party dates back to Berlusconi’s entry into politics in 1994. Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italy movement legitimized this by bringing together two smaller fascist parties – the Lega movement and the National Alliance, which advocates the secession of the country’s wealthy northern region – in a coalition that easily won this year’s general election.
Almost 30 years later, while the coalition that will soon come to power contains the same three components, its internal balance has changed a lot.
A historic shift is taking place as some commentators focus on the scenario the new government will present. The pendulum in right-wing politics has shifted from Berlusconi’s centre-right populist governments with fascist extensions in the 1990s and 2000s to Meloni’s fascist-populist government with centre-right extensions in 2022.
WHAT DO THE RESULTS MEAN FOR ITALIAN POLITICS?
In the overall success of the right there are winners and losers. Obviously, Meloni is the first and Salvini is the second. Politician Salvini, who revived his party between 2013 and 2019, saw his support, which was over 35 percent in the polls conducted in July 2019, dropped below 10 percent today.
Only the absence of a clear successor could save Salvini from losing the leadership of his party.
Another bad day for the Democrat Party, the main party of left politics… It seems unlikely that the AKP, which fell below 20 percent in the 2018 general elections, will perform better this time. Their failure to find a campaign theme beyond “stopping the far-right” and building a broader coalition further compounded the strategic ineptitude that had long hampered the Italian left.
Another “first” of this election was turnout in post-war Italy, which fell below two-thirds for the first time, from 73 percent in 2018 to 64 percent in 2022. This underscores the image of a country, especially in the south, that has been disillusioned by large sections of the population for decades by politicians who have promised the world to them and given little of it.
In terms of economic and foreign policy, it is unlikely that much will change in Italy in the short term. Meloni will be ready to prove himself a responsible leader to the Italian and international elites. Strong internal interest groups such as the employers’ association “Confindustria” should be kept nearby. So is the European Union, which supports Italy in its post-Covid repair plan.
However, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities that the fascists describe as “enemy of the people”; Immigrant; Much could change for those who dare to criticize the new regime, such as judges, intellectuals and journalists. Things will also change for the fascist Italians, who, as Meloni said recently, “have had to keep their heads down and not say what they believe for many years.”