The end of fascism – and of the fascism practised by anti-fascists – is down to a blue-haired fairy named Giorgia

Many people continue to wonder whether Meloni is a fascist, and a somewhat superficial historian has recently introduced a catch-all interpretative label: ‘white fascism’ or ‘gentle fascism’. This characterisation is unfounded. In light of her speech in Bari marking four years in government, the same debate is bound to resurface. It would be far more interesting to understand why it was the political right that finally managed to unify and integrate a country – long divided by a civil, cultural and institutional delegitimisation that proved so hard to eradicate – into the new normal. In reality, attempts to transcend the narrow horizons of an exclusive and hypocritical republican spirit had been made even before Meloni. The current government has been hailed as one of the longest-lasting in Italian history, surpassed only by those led by Craxi and Berlusconi, suggesting that certain political calculations do add up. Craxi was the first Prime Minister tasked with including the MSI in the consultations for the formation of the government in 1983, and he agreed with the historic heretic De Felice, who proposed the abolition of the transitional provision against the re-establishment of the Fascist Party in the name of political alternation in a Republic now firmly anchored in democracy, Craxi was frequently depicted in satire and in fierce polemics as wearing Mussolini’s heavy boots. Berlusconi embodied political alternation and launched his own political career by scandalously declaring that he would vote for an MSI member competing against a left-wing Radical, without hesitation, for the mayoralty of Rome. The inevitable curiosity surrounding Giorgia Meloni has ceased to focus, at least amongst rational-minded people, on her ‘level of fascism’. Born in 1977, she was, after all, seventeen when it was theorised at Fiuggi that the Right and fascism are two different things, that fascism died with Mussolini, that the Right existed before fascism and has survived it, and that now the children of the nostalgic party founded after the war and the Liberation are ‘leaving their father’s house’. Fini, who got off to a good start, later took part in the ritual of atonement and reduced his own project to political manoeuvring, becoming the darling of a truly grotesque ‘left-wing right’. Meloni has never submitted to the ritual of renunciation – demanded in vain, yet insistently, by the opposition – and has chosen pragmatism. Today she is criticised for failing to reform Italy over the past four years, for having missed a great opportunity to do so – namely, political stability – whilst overlooking the fact that this stability stems from her pragmatic approach and her adherence to non-negotiable principles in foreign and security policy, the cornerstone of any state policy and culture.

What is surprising is how rarely the question is asked as to why it was the right – embodied by a very young woman – that came to represent a method of governance untouched by the ideological civil war that has been one of the most persistent features of Italian politics from 25 April to the present day. And why this method has produced political stability. And whether this approach might give rise to a reformist conservatism capable of fully realising the transition towards a country that is thoroughly post-fascist and post-communist – in short, a fully-fledged liberal democracy characterised by the alternation of different political forces at the helm of the state.

To the best of my recollection, only one fine book by the historian Paolo Macry on the Italian right – reviewed in the Corriere by Ernesto Galli della Loggia in December 2023 – shortly after the formation of the Meloni government, addressed the question of why the right has failed to integrate – a process that may now be underway – into our political and constitutional system, and did so with rigour, that is to say sine ira ac studio, without partisanship, without superficial derision, and without excessive prejudice. A great deal, yet also rather little. The first president of the MSI was Junio Valerio Borghese, of whom General Catenacci—Meloni’s sworn enemy—is a pale, vernacular caricature, despite his own dangerousness. Yet the resurgence of integral fascism is greeted with obvious relish by all those who legitimately wish to bring down the Meloni government. This stems precisely from the fact that, by dint of spouting theatrical anti-fascist rhetoric, few have sought to understand why the halt to fascism – and to the fascism of the anti-fascists – came from the experience of a blue-haired fairy named Giorgia, rather than from a ruling class that had decided to thrive on the misconception of an endless civil war.