An American newspaper of great ambition has raised the alarm about the fact that the relative majority party in Italy (according to the polls) would put Italy at risk of fascism, and therefore would make it a country at risk, and so on. So everyone in Italy is wondering whether or not Meloni is a "fascist".
To answer the question, however, I see people throwing themselves into unlikely comparisons, which would lead one to assume that Italy somehow has a mutilated victory to complain about, or that Silvio Berlusconi would be the new d'Annunzio.
In reality, making comparisons with a century ago is useless, the situation is too different. What needs to be defined first is "what a fascist is today", and at that point to see if Meloni is part of it, and to ask oneself if by chance someone else does.
It is therefore necessary to identify the abstract and general characteristics of fascism, which was already difficult at the time, and try to make them exclusive. What does it mean? It means that at the time Salazar was defined as a fascist, who was a traditionalist, but Hitler was by no means a traditionalist, and Mussolini had a period (the first, in which he enjoyed the investments made by previous governments) in which he sinned in modernism because he enjoyed of the results (not his). But in the second part of the twenty-year period these results were now over, and he became "conservative".
So you have to take it easy. Let's go in order.
- the fascist is inconsistent. Mussolini preached the traditional family of the villages, but he had left his wife for his lover and had one prostitute brought to the office a day. In the same way, Giorgia Meloni lives with her partner with whom she had a daughter, but continues to present herself as the emblem of the Christian woman. The same goes for the “conservative” camp to which it belongs, which proposes itself as a bulwark of the traditional family despite having the most embarrassing group of divorcees in parliament. In this sense, Meloni is a fascist. But it is not the only one to enjoy this feature.
- the fascist uses unnecessarily martial language. define a border police operation as a "naval blockade" (term that comes from 1937, or thereabouts), or define "invasion" the arrival of immigrants, and all the pseudo-militarist paraphernalia is typical of the fascist . In this, Meloni is definitely a fascist. But he is in good company, because the exaggeration of confrontational language is typical of many other factions, including the radical left.
- the fascist believes he is unpunished. He declares wars and is amazed at being bombed, invades nations and is amazed by the Foibe, the interesting thing about the fascist is that he lives in a world of total impunity. Meloni, who declared a naval blockade on Libya, would then have been amazed at the closure of the gas pipelines and the eventual expulsion of Italian interests from Libya. As well as thunders against Europe but will be amazed at the hostility of the European institutions when it is in power. In the mental world of the fascist, you step on your feet and no one breathes.
- the fascist is a victim. The manhood of the fascist is largely a play, as he continues to complain of having suffered enormous wrongs, especially from foreigners and other powers. It is interesting to note that almost always these are powers that the fascist has challenged or assaulted, always because of these terrible injustices. Then, when you dig well, it turns out that the injustice consisted in applying rules and treaties. Meloni will go around whining about all those countries of which she said plague and horns, and which consequently will not show themselves friendly.
- the fascist is special in the sense of exceptional. The treaties and rules never apply to the fascist, as he is always in an emergency situation, or in a special situation, with a special nation and a special people. This exceptionalism, which leads precisely to exceptions in the yardstick, is normally used for not respecting commitments and treaties.
- the fascist understands tradition as an excuse for inaction or inconclusiveness. when it is pointed out to the fascist that we are in 2022 and that this and that should have been done, the fascist defends himself with tradition. It is like a student who justifies with a long tradition of ignorance the fact that he has not done his homework. When the fascist does not make plans for the future, or is unable to implement them, he brings out the tradition as an excuse. In this sense, as soon as Meloni fails to achieve the objectives of the PNRR, she will come up with some traditional bullshit.
- the village as a remedy for the incompetence of foreign policy. The fascist never has a foreign policy strategy. When, as regularly happens, it turns out that he can't get the spider out of the hole because he doesn't know how to set up a negotiation, he usually takes refuge in his provincialism. We weren't able to close the oil deal, but they live without Zollia lasagna. When Meloni does nothing in foreign policy, she will say more or less this. Rigatoni are better than oil.
- hatred against the elites as an admission of inferiority. The fascist has a gigantic inferiority complex, which leads him to hate the elites. Although then he would need it to govern. When, after having lost all the experts, he finds himself ruling and the experts give him meat, he accuses them of treason. Meloni today despises economists, sociologists and almost all the specialists who would serve her, exactly as happened to Grillo. As soon as she gets to the government, she'll start complaining about their betrayal because they don't help her.
- the race to appropriate the virtues of others. The fascist boasts of Leonardo da Vinci without ever having excelled in mathematics or physics, he boasts of Cesare without ever having had the sergeant's degrees, he boasts of Enrico Fermi without understanding anything of physics, simply because they are of the same "race" . The Race is only a pretext to appropriate the virtues and achievements of others. Meloni will continue to flaunt characters from the past to appropriate an intellectual and historical depth that it lacks.
The first question that will come to your mind is "but how do you know what Meloni will do"? Oh, I don't know: I've seen it.
Meloni is not a political virgin. She didn't arrive yesterday. He has been in politics for a long time and has been part of governments. And he spoke (and acted) exactly in the way I described, reacting in the way I described in the situations I described.
But the important thing is, these methods work with his sycophants. What does it mean?
It is not enough to be "a fascist" to be a fascist dictator. So in general it is not enough to call yourself fascists to be fascists, or partisans to be partisans: you will only get the party version of a Star Trek convention, with fascists and communists becoming Klingons and Vulcans. But it's a disguise.
It is necessary that the fascist dialectic and the related way of thinking find consensus. Because in politics the power only tells you how much salary you will earn and what title you will have in front of the name: it is instead the consensus you have to design what you will do.
If you have consensus among a pile of evildoers, whatever you do will be ruined by a huge number of scandals, say, regardless of whether it's good or bad. And Meloni's problem is to have consensus among people who will NEVER be able to do something in a complete, functional and competent way. The fascist is incompetent by definition: the prime example is Hitler who has only maritime powers as enemies, and launches a state program of highways, rather than ports. Or Mussolini who has an agricultural problem and instead of mechanizing or resorting to chemistry decides to bring more hands to the fields. Incompetence.
But not only Mussolini: the official who sent 'to inspect agriculture exchanged' the rice fields for marshes in almost all of Piedmont, and recommended 'reclamation: let it be clear, Mussolini did not do everything himself, he could not: the incompetent were his subordinates. But there was nothing he could do about it, because his consent came from there. The good ones didn't work for him.
And if you remember, it also happened to Grillo: however decent your ideas may be, for example on Citizenship Income, if you have it implemented by the phony politicians who gave you their consent, you do nothing else. It's not like school, where you can copy from counter neighbors.
Ultimately, Meloni (who in good company, even on the left) is phylogenetically fascist, but in the sense that she has all the cultural and mental processes of the fascist, and as if that were not enough, her consent has its roots in areas of absolute professional mediocrity. and academic. Consequently, even if she had the best ideas in the world, she would not be able to realize them because her consent does not bring her the specialists she would need.
Let's face it: without Crosetto, who sends FdI to talk to the ECB? (admitted and not granted that Crosetto lends himself: the decorum and the seriousness of taking a step back is one of the excuses that the fascist uses to leave the field when the blows are whistled).
The fascism you have in mind (and which perhaps, it is true, its sycophants and its followers have in mind) is historical fascism. But historical fascism is not feasible: if you want to live in Pula or Rijeka today, all you have to do is go there and buy a house, we are in 2022 and Croatia has just signed up for access to the euro from 2023. You don't even have to. change money. You don't need d'Annunzio, to live in Rijeka just go there and buy a house. And if you turn in a black shirt they call you "gothic".
If the question is "but Meloni is a historical fascist", the answer is "no", as one cannot be in favor of Charlemagne. If the question is "but Meloni is a fascist in the phylogenetic sense", the answer is "YES", but so many wallow in the same pot that in the end no one is interested in really gutting the subject, or " what exactly makes you a fascist ”.
