PROFILE: Who is Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s likely next prime minister?
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Opinion polls put Italy’s right-wing coalition on course to win the September 25th elections by a landslide, with Meloni’s party on top.
Meloni would then likely become the country’s first female prime minister – and the first leader of a post-fascist party to hold the office.
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Small in stature and with poker-straight blonde hair, the 45-year-old cuts a sharp contrast with the men who overwhelmingly dominate Italian politics, and both she and her party play heavily on her personal brand.
“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian,” she famously declared at a 2019 rally in Rome, while campaign billboards are dominated by her smiling face.
Meloni has benefited from hers being the only major party to stay out of outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government over the past 18 months, allowing her to claim she can offer voters a fresh start.
Giorgia Meloni has sought to distance her party from its post-fascist roots. Photo by Vincenzo PINTO / AFP
She is fighting the election as part of a coalition with Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigration League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, but her party is eclipsing them in opinion polls.
In public speeches she is intense and combative as she rails against the European Union, mass immigration – she wants a naval blockade to stop boats coming from north Africa – as well as abortion and “LGBT lobbies”.
READ ALSO: What election promises have Italy’s political parties made so far?
“In general terms, Meloni represents a point of reference for protest, disaffection,” Sofia Ventura, professor of political science at the University of Bologna, told AFP.
Brothers of Italy grew out of the country’s post-fascist movement, but Meloni has sought to distance herself from this past – while refusing to renounce it entirely.
Meloni helped co-found the party in 2012, although they only secured four percent of the vote in 2018 compared to current polling numbers of around 24 percent.
Her own political journey goes back much further.
She was a teenage activist with the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), formed by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after World War II.
Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni (L) is tipped to become Italy’s next prime minister as part of a strong coalition with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italy and Matteo Salvini’s League. Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP
At 19, campaigning for the far-right National Alliance, she told French television that “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy”.
After being elected an MP for National Alliance in 2006, she repeated a popular claim among the far right in Italy that the dictator’s decisions to enact racial laws and enter World War II on Hitler’s side were “mistakes”.
Two years later, she was named minister for youth in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, at 31 the youngest minister in post-war Italy.
“The Italian right has handed fascism over to history for decades now,” she said in a trilingual video message sent to foreign correspondents this month.
She insists that within her party “there is no room for nostalgic attitudes”.
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Her party takes its name from the first line of Italy’s national anthem and its logo includes the same flame used by MSI, in the green, white and red of the country’s flag.
She has refused calls to change the logo, saying she is “proud” of it, and insisting the flame has “nothing to do with fascism”.
Eccolo qui, il nostro bel simbolo depositato per le prossime elezioni. Un simbolo del quale andiamo fieri. Il 25 settembre scegli @FratellidItalia#VotaFDI #Meloni pic.twitter.com/gXzjFA0r1M
— Giorgia Meloni 🇮🇹 ن (@GiorgiaMeloni) August 13, 2022
Born in Rome on January 15, 1977, Meloni was brought up in the working-class neighbourhood of Garbatella by her mother, after her father left.
She describes herself on her social media profiles as a “Roman, politician and journalist… but first of all, Italian”.
Meloni has a daughter, born in 2006, with her TV journalist partner.
She speaks English, Spanish and French and reportedly has close contacts with other far-right European parties, notably Spain’s Vox and Poland’s Law and Justice party.
Find all the latest news on Italy’s election race here.