Meloni, Salvini, Berlusconi: will Italy's right-wing populists win the election - or will they dismantle themselves?

Created: 08/23/2022, 12:42 p.m

By: Bettina Menzel

Giorgia Meloni, party leader of Fratelli d'Italia, speaks at a Fratelli d'Italia event in July 2022. © picture alliance/dpa/LaPresse via ZUMA Press |

Cecilia Fabiano

Italy faces new elections.

The extreme right could benefit from the political chaos in the country.

First and foremost is the post-fascist Giorgia Meloni, who was already in Berlusconi's cabinet.

Rome- New elections are due in Italy on September 25th.

The centre-right alliance of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia, Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia (Italian Brothers) and Matteo Salvini's Lega are given the best chances in advance - even if it is difficult to make a forecast in the current chaotic political situation in the country.

Former Prime Minister Berlusconi and his conservative Forza Italia would still be the most moderate in this right-wing extremist alliance.

According to recent polls, right-wing populist Meloni could become Italy's first female prime minister.

Europe looks suspiciously at the post-fascist, who stands for an anti-European economic policy.

Who is Giorgia Meloni?

What the logo of the Fratelli d'Italia party reveals about the party leader

Giorgia Meloni has been party leader of the Fratelli d'Italia since 2014.

If you want to know something about the 45-year-old, you only have to look at her party's logo: It shows a flame in the national colors of Italy, blazing over a black line.

Since 1946, the flame banner has been a symbol of neo-fascists in Italy.

At that time, Giorgio Almirante, a loyal companion of the dictator Benito Mussolini, founded the neo-fascist movement Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI).

According to a common interpretation, the black line in the logo is intended to indicate the Duce's coffin, from which his ghost in the form of a flame is licking up.

In the parliamentary elections of 2018, the brothers of Italy only got around four percent and were thus dismissed as a marginal phenomenon.

But today, with around 23 to 25 percent, they are considered the strongest force in the upcoming new elections.

Accordingly, a discussion began in Italy about removing the flames from the logo.

Holocaust survivors also appealed to Giorgia Meloni - but the party leader stuck to it.

On social media, the 45-year-old even wrote about the "beautiful symbol for the elections that we are so proud of".

Meloni once called the racist and anti-Semite Giorgio Almirante, who first used the flame as a neo-fascist symbol in 1946, “one of the most extraordinary men” in post-war Italian history.

"He was the leader of generations, the most important political father."

Giorgia Meloni: That's what the post-fascist stands for

Giorgia Meloni gives a speech at the Fratelli d'Italia demonstration in Piazza Vittorio in Rome.

© Piero Tenagli/Imago

100 years after the fascists under Benito Mussolini seized power, the right-wing extremist Fratelli d'Italia now have the best chance of taking over the government in the fall.

Young Meloni said in 1996 that "Mussolini was a good politician, the best in 50 years," according to a

video uploaded by Italian newspaper

Today she expresses herself a little more moderately, but makes no secret of her nationalistic convictions.

It is considered anti-European, but the brothers of Italy have not yet presented an election program.

In terms of foreign policy, however, the Fratelli d'Italia are committed to NATO and are on the Ukrainian side in the Ukraine war.

In her speeches, the 45-year-old party leader of the Brothers of Italy railed against migrants, the LGBTQ lobby and the "Islamization of our Christian identity".

In mid-June, Meloni appeared at an event hosted by Spain's far-right Vox party, and to a cheering audience he roared what she opposes everything from immigrants to LGBTQ groups and gender ideologies to Brussels bureaucrats.

Europe and the world don't have to worry about Italy, Meloni then tried to appease in a video clip in mid-August.

However, her critics say that the moderate tones are only a facade for becoming prime minister.

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Giorgia Meloni: From Rome's left-wing working-class district to the ultra-right prime minister?

In her autobiography "Io sono Giorgia" (I am Giorgia), Giorgia Meloni tells of her childhood in Garbatella, a left-wing working-class district in Rome, and her communist father, who left the family early.

As a teenager she joined the neo-fascist MSI movement, at 29 Meloni became a member of parliament, and two years later Minister for Youth and Sport in Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet.

She is said to have founded the Fratelli d'Italia party - together with other politicians - in 2012 because she was dissatisfied with Berlusconi's course.

But now Meloni and Berlusconi are moving closer together again because of the new elections in Italy.

Last month, Berlusconi's conservative Forza Italia, together with the radical right-wing Lega and the populist Five Star Movement, contributed to the fall of the previous prime minister and Mario Draghi.

Meloni was also considered Draghi's adversary and had dubbed the government of the former head of the ECB a "slave of Europe and the international financial world".

The Fratelli d'Italia were never in power during this legislative period, which political observers see as one reason for Meloni's rapid rise.

The party was ahead in polls in August, so Meloni could become Italy's first female prime minister.

Alliance of Meloni, Berlusconi and Salvini: who will win the 2022 Italian elections?

Giorgia Meloni (left), leader of the right-wing alliance party Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) in 2018 with former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini, party leader of the right-wing populist Lega Nord.

© picture alliance / Andrew Medichini/AP/dpa |

Andrew Medichini

Around nine years after being expelled from the Senate for tax fraud, Italy's long-serving Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is hoping for a return to parliament in the new elections in Italy.

"I think that I will end up running as a candidate for the Senate so that all the people who have asked me to be happy at last," the controversial 85-year-old billionaire media mogul told Italian radio Rai.

According to Berlusconi, however, the post of prime minister can easily be handed over to Giorgia Meloni.

He recently denied reports that he was concerned about the possibility that the 45-year-old could become prime minister.

He referred to an agreement between the right-wing parties, according to which the group with the most votes provides the prime minister.

"If it's Giorgia, I'm sure she will master this difficult task," said Berlusconi.

However, the 85-year-old urged voters to back his party as a moderate voice in the centre-right alliance.

In Rome, however, it is said that Berlusconi and also Matteo Salvini consider Meloni "unsuitable" for the post of prime minister.

In any case, Salvini would have reasons for antipathy against Meloni: The rapid rise of the 45-year-old cost his party Lega numerous votes.

Elections in Italy 2022: Right-wing populist Matteo Salvini criticized for being close to Russia

Berlusconi is right when he says that Forza Italia is the most moderate of the three parties in the centre-right alliance.

The right-wing populist Matteo Salvini from the right-wing Lega party, for example, recently gave an election campaign speech on the Italian Mediterranean island of Lampedusa and used the occasion to promote his anti-immigration policy.

"Lampedusa is the gateway to Europe, it cannot be Europe's refugee camp," said after visiting the arrival center.

An entry ban is a cornerstone of the Lega election program.

"Those who have the right to come to Italy come by plane, not by boat, and risk their lives," said Salvini.

The right-wing populist is in favor of refugees applying for asylum in special centers in North Africa.

However, surveys indicate that migration is currently less of a concern for Italians than high inflation.

Support for Salvini's party hovered around 13 percent in early August.

Giorgia Meloni's party took votes from him because they covered the right-wing populist spectrum even more clearly.

In addition, the Lega party leader was recently criticized for his closeness to Russia.

Salvini has been a long-time admirer of Vladimir Putin and has been spotted wearing T-shirts with the Russian President's likeness on them.

The politician was recently in the spotlight because of a planned and paid for, but not made, trip to Russia.

Salvini had to explain his contacts with Russia,

Italy's ex-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has to answer in court.

© Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse via ZUMA Press/dpa

Who could pose a threat to the right-wing conservative camp?

In Italy, a centre-left alliance is forming to stand up to right-wing populists.

The alliance is led by the Social Democrats (Partito Democratico).

In early August, the Greens, the Left (Sinistra Italiana) and Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio's new party (Impegno Civico) joined the alliance.

But then the center party Azione of the former Italian economy minister Carlo Calenda left the alliance.

According to recent polls, the Partito Democratico is roughly on a par with the Brothers of Italy party led by Giorgia Melani.

But the conservative-right camp of Berlusconi, Meloni and Salvini is the favorite with 45 percent approval.

At the moment, it doesn't look like the right-wing populists will dismantle themselves.

Italy could therefore face a shift to the right.

The fate of the European Union's third largest economy affects all of Europe.

"The concern that fascists are now coming to power is real," said Gianfranco Miro Gori.

He is a representative of the ANPI partisan association in Forlì, near Predappio in the Emilia-Romagna region.

"In Italy there is this nostalgia for fascism because, unlike the Germans, we never really worked through that era," explains the activist from the 

.

“No one here had to say: I was a fascist, I was wrong, I share the blame.” There was no counterpart to the Nuremberg trials, on the contrary: In order to quickly transition from everyday wartime to peacetime, the old fascists almost became all taken over by the new administration