Aart Heering
A strong man at the helm, that is the populist answer par excellence to a political crisis. But in practice, that strong man is quite often a strong woman. And the question is, who is the strongest: Geert Wilders or Marine Le Pen? Vladimir Putin or Catherine the Great?
In Italy we now even have the choice between a strong man and a strong woman: in addition to the well-known Matteo Salvini of the Lega, there is now also Giorgia Meloni risen, leader of the even more right formation Brothers of Italy.
She is the political revelation of 2019 and we're sure to hear a lot more from her in the new year. Meloni, who comes from the Roman working-class district of Garbatella, who will turn 15 on January 43, is like Salvini a professional politician pur sang. at her 15de she joined the Fronte della Gioventù, the youth organization of the 'post-fascist' party MSI.
In 2006 she entered the Chamber of Deputies for Alleanza Nazionale, the successor to the MSI; from 2008-11 she was minister for youth in the Berlusconi government; and the following year she founded FdI with a few kindred spirits, as a right-wing break with the then party leader Gianfranco Fini who aimed more at the center.
In the run-up to the March 2018 elections, she was still the junior partner in the right-wing alliance of Lega, Forza Italia and FdI. But she has long since ceased to be.
With Meloni in the lead, FdI has grown from 0 to 10% in just a few years. She has already surpassed Berlusconi, disappointed Five Star voters are now turning their hopes to her and even Salvini is beginning to be bothered by the 'evil dwarf', as he once called her. (Not very complimentary, but we're used to that from him.)
Salvini has slumped in popularity since he sparked a cabinet crisis last summer that should have brought him the premiership but instead knocked the League out of government. Meloni now benefits from this, who as a slender blond woman had to fight her way up in the macho environment of the far right and thus does not let herself be taken in at all by the noisy Lega leader. Giorgia has, as one party fellow put it graphically, 'balls of steel'.
Giorgia now presents herself as a representative of the true right, even more so than Salvini, who started it last year with the Five Star Movement and is now taking a somewhat more moderate course of wresting voters from the political center.
The name of her party, also the title of the Italian national anthem, says it all: Giorgia stands for 'God, fatherland and family', and the fact that she is an unmarried mother herself does not change that. (But same-sex marriage is, of course, out of the question.)
From the House she launches with fire and verve the right-wing anathemas: the threat of immigration – now reduced by 90%; the need for a naval blockade of Libya; the Islamization of Europe; the dictatorship of Brussels; and the decline of Christian values.
She often uses a classic political discussion trick: you knock a case up, make a caricature of it and then attack your opponent on that caricature. Meloni did this successfully last month in response to the European Stability Mechanism (EMS), a strictly technical Brussels procedure, of which I will spare you the details, but which Giorgia managed to explain as yet another attempt by the Eurocrats to complicity of the Italian government, to make Italian savers pay for the debts of German banks.
That's grossly exaggerated to say the least, and I can hardly imagine her believing in it herself, but she delivered it well, with skillfully played fury and an apocalyptic anticipation.
No wonder, then, that on October 19, during the great manifestation of the right Italy in the square in front of the Church of St. John in Lateran in Rome, she was the great star, more than one for his do what tame Salvini and a Berlusconi who is hardly a shadow of itself anymore.
Her powerfully shouted salutation Son Giorgia! Sono una donna! Sono una cristiana! was greeted with thunderous applause and then used in an ironic remix, which only increased its popularity.
And indeed, when you see and hear Meloni, with her savagely blowing blond mane, her dangerously bulging blue eyes and her angry flat-Roman recitation, then you have to give her an undeniable charisma.
So if I ever have to endure some severe chastisement by a stern mistress, let her be. Ooh, Giorgia!
Comments