BOLOGNA, Italy — The first woman to hold the office of prime minister in Italy is a fascist. This is not hyperbole or metaphor, or some headline-grabbing device used to smear a conservative. No. The fact is that Giorgia Meloni, leader of the largest party after Italy's recent elections, is fascist to her core. The old-fashioned, last-century, Roman salute-in-public kind of fascist.
This fact is clear enough in Italy, even if Meloni, in order neither to admit nor deny that she is a fascist, performs semantic acrobatics, such as stating that fascism is now "consigned to history." Whatever that is supposed to mean.
