The Contradictions of Giorgia Meloni
Last Spring I started writing a profile of Giorgia Meloni, and it came out in July (while I was on vacation and largely offline) in the Ideas Letter.
The first thing about Meloni that bears emphasizing is what an impressive political communicator and performer she is: dramatic, combative, quick-witted. Meloni also has a striking, unusual personal story that she has told often and well and has linked to her politics. Absent father, lower-class background; the transformation from an awkward, overweight, bullied and irascible kid into a star right-wing teen activist. In my notes for the piece I wrote that Meloni has “daddy issues” and “a huge chip on her shoulder.” Today she is an unmarried single mother who champions traditional family values; a woman who loves competing with (and beating) men but doesn’t believe in feminism; a right-wing politician who can only reject the Fascist roots of her party so far without denying her own past.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about Meloni is that, despite her extremely aggressive (and frankly often mendacious) rhetoric, she is cautious and not at all disruptive in the way that, say, Trump is. Meloni is interested in getting into power and staying in power and — unlike some other right-wing populists — in governing. One of my arguments is that her political project has been hard to define because it has little original or well-articulated content (beyond the usual broad right-wing anti-immigration anti-woke lines), little in terms of actual policy solutions to offer to the problem of Italy’s decline, but is open to constant redefinition to suit her shifting interests and agendas.
On a personal note, it was fascinating to write about Meloni, who is almost exactly my age and who grew up in Romes at the same time I did, her early adolescence marked by the same turning points in Italian political culture that I remember (the assassinations of anti-mafia judges Falcone and Borsalino, the anti-corruption Mani Pulite investigation that brought down the entire political system). One of the pleasures of the piece for me was working in Italian — watching many Meloni videos, reading her autobiography and some excellent books about her.
Some terms that I had not heard before: “faccettismo” which means making “little faces,” something Meloni does all the time; “sdoganare” terms and ideas, meaning to “get them through customs,” that is to normalise them; “buonismo” and “buonisti,” a term of derision and condescension towards bleeding-heart liberals; and the way members of Meloni’s party describe themselves as “melocentrici.”