David Leask: A century after fascism’s first victory, we must wise up to the new-look far right

Last week, straying in to her native Romanesco dialect, she told cheering supporters she would turn Italy “inside out, like a sock”. And she rounded on those who call her a fascist, essentially accusing them of being beholden to unseen forces.

“We are painted as monsters because we are not for sale, we can’t be blackmailed and we don’t have the ‘power lobby’ behind our backs,” she said.

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Ms Meloni and her Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), or Brothers of Italy, party have been pushing back heavily against those who believe them to be far right.

But her latest outburst comes after an Edinburgh-based film-maker put her picture in his new documentary on the rise of fascism a century ago. Mark Cousins’s March on Rome was shown at the Venice film festival this week ahead of its cinema release next month.

It has sparked a bit of a stushie in Italy. And provoked some really hard questions about what the far right looks like; questions I think we should all be asking ourselves.

The movie’s launch is timed to mark 100 years since Benito Mussolini seized power after a ragged mob stomped into the Italian capital.

But this is more than a history doc, critics say; it is a reflection on the stories fascists tell, then, and now. And so it ends with images of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and, yes, Ms Meloni.

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The FdI’s culture spokesman was furious that such a film could be shown at a publicly-funded event during an election campaign. Federico Mollicone – apparently unironically – called it “propaganda.”

Cousins was unrepentant. Speaking after the showing he acknowledged that Ms Meloni did not call herself a fascist. “Maybe,” he said, “she is not like Mussolini but the language she uses is very dangerous.”

The FdI leader really does push rightist and far-rightist culture-war narratives, not least on immigration. Though, it is not just what she says that matters, but also where her party comes from.

There is a reason her fans are antsy about the Cousins film. It is because the FdI has fairly easily traceable neo-fascist roots.

Its logo – for starters – is the flaming tricolour, symbol of a movement set up by Mussolini diehards in the late 1940s. Some FdI members – so-called nostalgici, apologists for the “20 years” of fascism – have been photographed giving the Roman salutes.

Ms Meloni, 45, has accused the left of “hate, violence and lies” in what she called a “ shameful” campaign against FdI. Her party feels smeared by those who remember its history and attack its present nativist policies. She, for example, objects to plans to allow foreign-born people brought to Italy as children to become citizens.

One veteran trade unionist-turned-senator, Valeria Fedeli, this summer called Ms Meloni a “racist because she discriminates on the basis of ethnicity”. Such criticism was characterised, I am not joking, as “red hate” by FdI supporters.

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“Fascist” is one of those words which has lost its meaning with over-use. It gets thrown at all sorts of authoritarians and rightists, such as America’s Donald Trump. The term, now more suited to polemics than analysis, is not always an ideal fit.

Is Ms Meloni an actual fascist? Well, maybe not. She does not stand at the head of an army of black-shirted thugs; she is not plotting an extra-parliamentary coup of the kind pulled off by Mussolini.

But if she gains power she will have to appeal to her base, she will have to throw red meat to the nostalgici, she will have to find more scapegoats for the economic woes of her country.

Expect migrants and minorities to suffer, expect extreme nationalist chauvinism to be normalised, expect culture wars to flame up.The rhetoric could get scary.

A Meloni premiership, a far-right leader in the heart of the European Union, one of the world’s great bastions of democracy and the rule of law, would be a disaster.

But context is important too.

FdI, if the polls are accurately capturing the public mood, is running at just under a quarter of the popular vote. It can only rule in coalition. Ms Meloni faces constitutional checks and balances and political swings and roundabouts.

The current elections have been called because of the collapse of the Covid emergency government led by technocrat Mario Draghi.

The FdI had stayed out of power, sniping from the sidelines, and has benefited as a result. Now it hopes to lead an alliance that will include two parties whose leaders did serve under Mr Draghi.

The first is the now-waning anti-immigration Lega of Matteo Salvini, 49, a populist who was once pictured strutting around Moscow’s Red Square in a Putin T-shirt.

The second likely partner is the conservative Forza Italia of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, now 85 but still sporting a full head of jet-black hair.

The latest poll, by Ipsos on Thursday for Corriere della Sera, suggest the “centre-right” is beating the “centre-left” by 46.6% to 29.9%.

Ms Meloni’s potential coalition, in my view, is not very centre but it is very, very right. It is also divided on core issues.

Take foreign affairs.

The FdI leader has adopted a more Atlanticist approach on Putin’s war on Ukraine than Mr Salvini, who is struggling to distance himself from his previous fanboying of the Russian strongman.

Mr Salvini wants to stop arms shipments to Kyiv. Ms Meloni does not. Can that kind of policy gulf be overcome?

This week Mr Salvini posted a picture of himself with Ms Meloni, smiling on the campaign trial in Sicily against a background of blue skies and an azure Mediterranean. “United we will win,”

he said on Facebook. He had his arm around his potential coalition leader. She, looking demure, had her head tilted down.

As creepy as this will sound, the Lega leader appears to have selected a snap that made the pair look like a honeymooning couple.

A century after Mussolini took Rome, the far right is on the march again. Cousins is right to draw a line from 1922 to today.

But the new threat to liberal democracy looks very different to the old. We need to wise up to this, fast.