2023-08-11 17:30:00
EDITORIAL – “Forewarned is forearmed”, the saying goes. Which should work for peoples too. Therefore, I must return for a moment to Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister appointed on October 22, 2022, about whom there is a lot to say. This 45-year-old Italian stateswoman, former Minister for Youth in one of the governments led by Berlusconi, subscribes to far-right parties. Passed from the Italian Social Movement to the National Alliance, she now chairs the national-conservative party “Brother of Italy”. Considered by some to be “post-fascist”, this can fuel controversy in public opinion.
In 2020, however, the mainstream media suddenly show an astonishing unanimous enthusiasm for it. Now Giorgia Meloni finds herself on the front page of all the newspapers and magazines, presented as the providential woman, a sort of Italian Joan of Arc. A strong and blameless woman who, you will see what you are going to see, once she reaches the highest offices of the State, will restore all their glory to the Italians. Heard for a fringe of the electorate fond of this kind of idea: to give Italy back to the Italians, the preference to the Transalpines.
Another stated objective, shared by a greater part of the voters in our time: to transfer in addition the “globalists”, with a kick (Italian) in the hindquarters of globalization. Same price, all the same, for the migrants, whom Giorgia Meloni could have presented at the height of her vehement invectives against them as these “fierce soldiers who come to our sheets to impregnate our daughters and our companions”. In short, a woman on the right of the right and straight in her boots, anchored in her partisan ideology.
An ideology which has also – which has also been presented by the mainstream media for a few years as self-evident – tinged in its speeches and various communications with an astonishing social pigment. According to her program for the 2022 legislative elections which brought her to power, Meloni proposed to revalue small retirement pensions and the social minima for disability, to favor families fiscally, to act on youth unemployment by promoting subsidized contracts and even to regulate the evil economic model resulting from globalization. Mélenchon, get out of this body!
As for the European Union (EU), beware of it, for years Meloni had been knocking out Brussels and its Commission… Which also seems logical: at present, for a leader of a state European Union, how to apply a political program that boasts of being “sovereign”, “independent” and “social”, while being part of a big thing that prevents any autonomous initiative? Whether or not you are in favor of the above ideas, how can you adopt, for example, an anti-migration program while being part of the Schengen area and/or the EU? Another illustration, from the other side of the political spectrum: how to decide on a left-wing social policy when the Member States will never be unanimous in implementing it, which is the rule of the European Treaties?
This makes from a stronger astonishing the support of the mainstream media, whose editorial lines are almost entirely Europeanist, to an evil far-rightist who was going, tremble in the cottages, to provoke Italexit.
Unless….
Let’s cut to the chase. Giorgia Meloni is a Trojan horse. Voluntarily or involuntarily, it does not matter, it allows the continuity of a policy by means other than conviction and respect for the electoral word given. Surreptitiously, concealed under finery appreciated by public opinion ready to support her at the polls, she took the reins of the City to play the same song (1).
Presented as a ferocious adversary to the European Union, presented rightly or wrongly as responsible for all the ills of Italy, here it is now in its pro-EU, pro-Euro and pro-NATO statements. A 180° turn at the speed of a Maserati which has already distinguished itself during several trips and international meetings.
In January 2023, the new President of the Italian Council meets Ursula von der Leyen, the dear, very dear, President of the European Commission. Arm in arm, they even seem to have matched their outfits. After having denounced Brussels as an unsustainable dictatorship, it is a real idyll for Giorgia, who according to Ursula went “continue to support Ukraine, guarantee security and a reasonable price of energy, promote the competitiveness of European industry, to advance the migration pact.”
While more than 55% of Italians are against delivering arms to Ukraine and more than 60% reject the idea of NATO going to war against Russia, Giorgia Meloni assured, from 2022, Kiev for her support… after having been a fervent admirer of Vladimir Putin. In early 2023, it intensified deliveries of so-called “defensive” weapons against Russian missiles. Here she is on the other side of the Atlantic alongside Joe Bien, the US president and Volodymyr Zelinsky, the Ukrainian president, so that we can be sure of her positions.
As for the so-called left-wing measures, the voters who brought her to power were seriously beginning to wince: her promises evaporating, Meloni “felt weakened by accusations of not caring about weaker families (2)So, in order to put on a layer of social veneer, the Prime Minister and her Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini loudly announced a taxation of the superprofits of Italian banking groups.
Supposed to reassure on their intentions, this announcement was very badly received… Doom! A day later, Giancarlo Giorgetti, the Minister of Economy and Finance announced that the tax measure was finally limited to 0.1% of bank assets. Suffice to say that, when it will be necessary to deal with the development of the next budget of the country, while eyeing a few tens of billions of euros which must be granted by the EU, this measure will probably no longer exist.
In short, in a way that has been eagerly awaited since the 1980s within her various political parties, Giorgia Meloni is leading a liberal policy expected like a coffee tiramisu. Oh yes ! This is verified each time: the unanimous enthusiasm of the mainstream media for a candidate who seems to come out of the nails or to be the guarantor of a renewal systematically turns out to be the Trojan Horse of a pro-European policy and Atlanticist. Of course, promises only bind those who believe in them, but, devil! Until when ?
It’s been a long time since I’ve been convinced by these newcomers to politics. Around me, I had predicted without too much risk on such an evolution. But what about the millions of Italians today who did not see the deal coming and did not know how to recognize an authentic product of the system? What will become of their dashed hopes in the face of so much hypocrisy? Some of them will console themselves by thinking back to this quote from Albert Einstein:
“If you have a problem and you rely on politicians to solve it, you have two problems.”
Finally, remember that Giorgia Meloni was sold to us as the Italian Marine Le Pen. And as a pacifist and humanist French voter, and who aspires for France to regain its place as a diplomatic power in the world and to treat the Russians at their fair value (as friends rather than enemies), I tell myself then that we must be wary of certain postures, appearances, speeches.
Institutionally, some things do not change. Politicians, it’s another refrain. A warned people is worth two… As this African proverb says:
“Although the serpent changes its skin, it does not change its nature.”
Notes :
(1) the same song
(2) According to Francesco Galietti, founder of a Rome-based political risk consultancy
#Giorgia #Meloni #forewarned #people #forearmed