ROME — Since World War II, 30 prime ministers have presided over the 67 governments that have marked Italy’s uniquely unstable political life. On Sept. 25, Italians elected Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, into power. Meloni will be the first woman to lead the country, but she will also be the nation’s only prime minister to have praised — though several years ago — fascist dictator Benito Mussolini as a great statesman rather than acknowledge him as one of the great criminals of 20th-century European history.
In less than two weeks, Meloni will enter the chambers of the Quirinale, the palace in the center of Rome that was once the residence of popes and kings, to receive the mandate to form the government with a parliamentary majority that is the second largest since 1948.
Determined and shrewd, Meloni is not blind. She knows that there are limits to what she will be able to implement from her far-right ideology. The voters who chose her — 1 in 7 of those eligible to vote and 1 in 4 of those who went to the polls — are not all nostalgic fascists. Some certainly are, perhaps 2% to 4% of total voters, equal to the votes that Brothers of Italy obtained in the previous elections. Most of the others were drawn to her because Brothers of Italy was the only opposition party in the last legislature. Since the corruption and economic crisis that hit Italy at the end of the last century, Italians have constantly been looking for a voice against the establishment: media mogul Silvio Berlusconi, the secessionist League party, the populist Five Star Movement and now, the last remaining option, Brothers of Italy.
