The Problem With Calling Giorgia Meloni “Extreme Right”

-Analysis-

ROME — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has declared that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is from th extreme right-wing, and as such should be kept out of the doors of the future European majority. It would be nice to understand what prompts this kind of political characterization.

Is it a question of Western reliability? That, she has passed with flying colors, giving birth in Italy to the government with the most outspoken support for Ukraine since the Russian invasion, certainly more assertive than the German position and Scholz himself.

A question of economic reliability? That too she has passed with excellent marks, given the abrupt halt the premier gave to the astonishing debt projects of the election campaign, as well as abolition of excise taxes, end of the public TV RAI canon.

EU at a crossroads

Then there is the question of democratic accountability: the right-wing has its own rather reactionary ideas on rights, but the drift in the direction of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has only played out in words, in verbal tics on the issue of abortion or minority protection. Contrary to what many opponents thought — and plenty of voters hoped — the Meloni government has not legislated naval blockades, fired on barges, eliminated abortion rights or exercised its famous cultural hegemony mainly by replacing hostile establishment pieces with friendly figures.

Even in Italy, when faced with the advance of the right-wing, the old Democratic Party (PD) thought it was clever to focus on fear.

For a long time, the Italian and European press has portrayed the head of the Italian government as a woman at the crossroads between confirming a euroskeptic imprinting (the one that determined her success in 2022) and fully accepting her governing responsibilities, including that of linking herself in the most efficient way to Europe and its decision-making mechanisms.

Now standing at that crossroads are the others instead, and especially the German Social Democrats who govern the Old Continent’s leading country, and must decide how to adjust. Are these tests imposed on the Italian right going to stop any time soon? And if they do not think of them as finished — as we seem to understand — about what specific subject is the judgment still insufficient?

Right-wingers podium

The wall of containment erected against other successful right-wingers in the Union is understandable. That of Orbán above all: Vladimir Putin‘s best friend in Europe, the only premier on the continent who publicly congratulated the Russian President on his re-election — standing between the model of European freedoms and Russian authoritarianism clearly prefers the latter. Marine Le Pen, secondly, having long financed her party with Russian loans.

Are we sure this is the political dynamic we went?

And, of course, the Alternative for Germany party (Afd) having scored third place in the EU elections among German voters, with calls for shifting the axis of alliances away from the U.S., toward Russia and China, restoring the Mark and using it to regain monetary supremacy over other countries. “Extreme right,” in these cases, is a proper expression.

And it certainly could have been extended as well to the Italians, before the right-wing Brothers of Italy party (FdI) showed it was ready to govern, and abandoned the maximalist projects on which it had asked for and obtained votes.

Thus the question about extremists stands at a crossroads today, after years of making agreements based mainly on the fear of barbarians at the gates: populist barbarians, anti-European barbarians, fascist barbarians.

It was precisely Scholz, under the illusion that this fear was widely shared, who made perhaps the most incredible technical mistake of the entire election campaign: opening up the vote to 16-year-olds, imagining them predisposed to the progressive and libertarian message, while they turned out to be eager to vote Afd.

Been there, done that

Italians have been there, too, and therefore we must be sympathetic. Even in Italy, when faced with the advance of the right-wing, the old Democratic Party (PD) thought it was clever to focus on fear. They too launched the proposal to extend voting to minors, convinced young people could protect the country from right-wingers.

The rest is history, and it took a woman outside all party games and traditions, Elly Schlein, PD’s leader, to revive a direct confrontation with Meloni, built on a different vision of development and society. The success of Schlein is a reminder that there is plenty of terrain for competition against the right-wingers, without having to demonize them.

Scholz’s Germany, as well as Emmanuel Macron‘s France (or anyone else’s, to be updated after the next general election), will also have to find a new way to confront the right. It is lazy to just call them “extreme right” erga omnes and to rely on this kind of anathema today is to achieve the most classic contradictory of ends: the establishment in Brussels of an axis of the old guard now excluded with high interdictory power, a seething opposition army on the verge of taking over from a risky numerical and political majority. Are we sure this is the political dynamic we went?