Is Italy s Next Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, A ‘Fascist’? Hardly
Who knows? Perhaps tomorrow Meloni will have the trains running on time and embrace a corporatist economic system like so many liberal Eurozone nations. I m a minarchist at heart, so everyone looks like a fascist to me. More likely, though, the Italian right will be illiberal within the normal illiberal standards of modern Europe. It will be no more illiberal than democratic socialist parties, and no less authoritarian than the present German government, which regularly sends police to break down the doors and arrest citizens for saying stupid things on the internet. The difference is that like Orban, the Italian right promises to use state power to blunt the European left s agendas on social policy and immigration, rather than use state power to enforce them. And that will be enough reason to call them fascists.