Georgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy

“I am Georgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian.” With these words, Georgia Meloni, leader of the Fratelli d'Italia party, introduces herself to her citizens on electoral events, the latest of which was the legislative elections that took place yesterday, Sunday, with the results of which are reported. The initial victory led to the victory of the right-wing coalition led by her party, which puts her on the verge of becoming the first woman prime minister in Italian history, as the "neo-fascists" found an opportunity to rule the country for the first time since 1945.

There are similarities between the features of the biography of Georgia Meloni (45 years old) and the "Brothers of Italy" party that she leads and found its way to rule after 7 governments formed during 11 turbulent years, especially as it preferred to distance itself from participating in the coalition government, and it was the only party that remained outside the government. Mario Draghi, the coalition that collapsed last July.

The party followed its path slowly and steadily, as well as Meloni, and the victory of the party - relatively recent - reflects the boredom of the Italian voter with the currents and other parties that he has tried, and accumulated practices and decisions that he sees have multiplied his crises, so he saw in Meloni and her party the only political option that has not been tested before, and from Then the relative majority of them voted in the hope of getting out of the list of crises that had accumulated during the previous seven governments' periods, led by the economic crisis.

early responsibility

Reading in Georgia Meloni's political biography, would introduce the nature of her thinking and orientations, in order to anticipate the features of the internal and foreign policy of her and her party.

Georgia Meloni was born on January 15, 1977 in the working-class neighborhood of Garbatella in the capital, Rome, and her mother was 23 years old when she gave birth to her, a year and a half after the birth of her first daughter, Ariana.

Due to the absence of the father, the mother had to combine a number of jobs to cover the expenses of raising her two daughters, which made Meloni follow in her mother's example later as well. As a teenager she worked as a bartender in a famous nightclub in Rome, and also worked as a babysitter.

Except for a few sporadic visits, her father disappeared from family life when she was still young.

At the age of eleven, Meloni decided not to see him again, due to his lack of interest in the family, and recorded this in her autobiographical book entitled "I am Georgia.. My roots and my thoughts", where she says that this absence later prompted her to "constantly rise to the level of expectations of others." ', and proving itself 'especially in a male-dominated environment'.

Of that early upbringing, one of the cadres of the Brothers of Italy party, Marco Marsilio, the regional governor of Abruzzo, says: "She had to learn from an early age how to fight to achieve things, and this molded her character. She was distinguished by her determination."

At the age of 15, Meloni joined the youth wing of the "Italian Social Movement" formed by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after World War II, and which had been set up by Giorgio Almirante, who was a minister in Mussolini's government.

As she says in her autobiographical book, "I found in the movement a second family. I found solidarity and a cohesive society in which people devoted their time to politics rather than frequent discos or shopping like their peers."

She then became active in the movement, excelling at mobilizing and coordinating student organizations, and Meloni honed her potential through student politics, handing out pamphlets in schools, putting up posters in the streets, and trying to gauge public sentiment by chatting with people in markets, something she said she didn't. still doing today.

When she was 19, she was campaigning for the far-right National Alliance, telling French television that "Mussolini was a good politician, because everything he did, he did for Italy." Meloni soon became president of the youth movement.

political rise

Meloni began her career as a journalist, and her rise in politics was cemented by Silvio Berlusconi's first coming to power in 1994, in coalition with the resurgent National Alliance.

In 2006, she entered Parliament after being elected as a member of the National Alliance at the age of twenty-nine, and became the youngest Vice-President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

In 2008, she was appointed Minister of Youth Policy in Berlusconi's government, a position she held from May 8, 2008 until November 16, 2011, and she was the youngest minister in the history of the Italian Republic.

In 2009, her party merged with Forza Italia into a unified party called "People of Liberty", and she headed the youth department in it and called it "Young Italy".

In December 2012, she and two colleagues withdrew from her party to found a new political movement, the Brothers of Italy, borrowed from the Italian national anthem.

In the 2013 general elections, her party won 2% of the vote with a total of 9 parliamentary seats.

In March 2014, she won her party's primaries and became its president.

She was a candidate for mayor of Rome in 2016, but lost.

She and her party voted "no" in the referendum on the Italian constitution that same year.

Since then, Meloni has worked to pry the party off the fringes, by recasting it as a champion of patriotism.

This approach helped propel the group forward, an image shaped by the 2020 election of Meloni as chairperson of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists.

turn right

Meloni also tried to purge her party of its neo-fascist image.

Last August, she released a video in which she spoke in English, French and Spanish, which she is all fluent in. "The Italian right has handed fascism into history for decades now," she says, insisting that within her party "there is no room for nostalgic attitudes."

Her party takes its name from the first line of Italy's national anthem, and its emblem includes the same green, white, and red flame the movement used for the country's flag.

She rejected calls to change the logo, saying she was "proud" of it, insisting that the torch "has nothing to do with fascism" and maintained the fascist slogan: "God, homeland, family."

Observers argue that Meloni has remained cohesive because she has been able to work quietly on her political project without paying the price of the government's day-to-day policies in the process, has been able to attract voters with left-wing ideals, and has an electorate that is not ideologically extreme to the right.

Meloni is an unmarried mother with a child out of wedlock born in 2006. She does not describe herself as a feminist, but rather says she opposes the "pink quota" (female quotas), and that roles should be fulfilled by merit, not by gender.

She sees her party as the only one with many women in leadership positions, but her opponents argue that she has done little to promote women's social and economic advancement.

Meloni adopts hard-line views on issues such as irregular migration, and has called for the Italian navy to return migrants to Africa, and called for a naval blockade to prevent boats coming from North Africa, to stop irregular migration, and called on the European Union to leave the global compact on migration, which is A non-binding UN agreement has been the target of far-right conspiracy theories in many countries, but it takes a less hardline stance on "integral" immigrants, a reference to non-Muslim immigrants.

She also presents herself as a "pro-family", and raised the slogan "God, homeland, family" in the minds of many who lived through World War II, and she and her party cooperate with anti-abortion and anti-LGBT movements.

One of her main campaign themes: the need to increase Italy's low birth rate, by encouraging "native" women to have children, while denouncing the danger of "racial substitution" by immigrants, and opposing abortion and same-sex marriage.

Meloni said she is pro-European, but she - like League leader Matteo Salvini - shares a vision of a Europe "more in line" with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's, arguing that EU policies should not replace Italian ones.

Meloni stated that she would renegotiate the European financial support agreement if she wins the elections, and pledged during a speech in Milan - the capital of the Italian economy - and in front of the eyes of her right-wing rivals Salvini and Berlusconi, where the city constitutes their political and electoral stronghold, to adopt the principle of "Italy first".

On the other hand, it expressed its willingness to negotiate flexibly with the European Union, in order to preserve the budget approved by the Italian government from faltering in light of austerity caused by the escalating energy crisis, and fears of the danger of recession that Europe fears against the background of the war in Ukraine.

In the winter of 2019, nightclubs across Italy were dancing to a steady electric rhythm accompanied by Meloni's phrases: "I'm Georgian, I'm a woman, I'm a mother, I'm Italian, I'm a Christian", with the intention of mocking her, but after 3 years, her message seems to be Ultra-conservatism and nationalism have also had success on the ground, but it remains a test of whether far-right sentiment is gaining more momentum in the 27-nation European Union of late.