The coalition that unites the right and the Italian extreme right obtained an expected victory in the legislative elections on Sunday. With 43% of the votes cast in this vote weighed down by a particularly high rate of abstention, the team made up of Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s Lega via Fratelli d’Italia will obtain the majority in the next legislature.
It is also this last formation that is affirmed as the spearhead of the victory of the conservative camp, having mobilized only in its name 26% of the electorate that has spoken. The probable president of the Council of Ministers to come, her leader Giorgia Meloni, is therefore preparing to install post-fascism embodied by her party at the head of the Italian State.
“Hide-sex”
If the term “fascism” brings back painful memories, the prefix now attached to it indicates that this concept has been reconfigured. But is the concept of post-fascism really different from fascism?
“For me, ‘post-fascism’ is pure nominalism,” says the writer and historian specializing in Italy, Jacques de Saint-Victor. “It is about saying that the fascism of the 21st century will obviously not be the same as that of the 20th, but it is a cache-sex of neofascism which in turn was a cache-sex of fascism prohibited after 1945.”
In fact, “the law does not allow the existence of a fascist association, even if the application could be questionable,” says Fabien Gibault, an expert in linguistics and a professor in particular at the universities of Bologna and Turin, author of numerous articles on Italian . political scenario for the IRIS website.
“Meloni is the fascism of the 21st century. The ideas remain the same: rejection of democracy as we understand it, promotion of new elites from the people,” says essayist Dominique Vidal who edited the book Nationalists attacking Europe.
discreet balance
Nothing new, then, under the Italian sun? Not entirely, because the label not only designates a Mussolinian fascism impossible to hoist as such, but rather points to overcoming it. “What strikes me about Meloni is that there is a balancing act”, continues Dominique Vidal: “At the same time, she has been claiming her fascist roots for a long time because a part of the electorate will not vote for her if she claims them and at the same time At the same time, it aims for something modernized, demonized. It is in this balance that the prefix ‘post’ is justified”.
Attention too: now widely used by observers of public life, the term “post-fascism” is not used by everyone. Especially not among the first interested parties. Lorenzo Castellani, a researcher at the Luiss Guido Carli University where he is a specialist in the political institutions of his country, warns:
“Apart from the flame on the party logo, Giorgia Meloni prefers to hide any direct reference to post-fascism. She speaks of ‘conservatism’ and substitutes the word ‘post-fascism’.”
And if the word already has a long history, it initially springs from the ranks of the left, according to the academic who continues: “Political employment is done first by the Communist Party and the leftist parties today.”
The expression “post-fascism” circulates in any case -in the form of an accusation- since “the years 1970-1980 with the evolution of the Italian Social Movement (MSI)”, Lorenzo Castellani specifies again. This MSI, in which Giorgia Meloni first campaigned before participating in the creation, in 2012, of Fratelli d’Italia. The very concept of “post-fascism” knows a wider diffusion with this new formation, further comments Fabien Gibault, who places this explosion “during the previous legislative elections, when the Italians’ desire for stability collided with the chaos of life Italian politics. “.
The pillars of post-fascism
The linguist and language teacher, moreover, bases the post-fascist success on this collision, and explains it by his resumption of the original promise of fascism at the same time as its adaptation to contemporary Italy: “Italy suffers, therefore, from an enormous political instability. it is a major problem in a country that loves and generates traditions. However, the guideline of fascism is order, rigor, stability. The idea with post-fascism is that in this great constant chaos, we are going to delegate power to a strong person.
However, Fabien Gibault stops the parallelism here: “Post-fascism is a much less social format than fascism. It encompasses much more the liberal ideas that have worked in Italian society for 30 years.” Giorgia Meloni thus expressed her hostility to “citizenship income” – social assistance that is similar to a universal income at least. “With Giorgia Meloni, help will come through work”, analyzes Fabien Gibault before summarizing Fratelli d’Italia’s program: “Rigidity in the territory and more liberalism in the European market, with a force of personality that will defend the Italians in Brussels”. .
Still, now we must draw the face of the Italians who are in the post-fascist offer. “Fratelli d’Italia represents small businesses, crafts. It is still a festival in the north of Italy”, says Dominique Vidal.
Fabien Gibault refers rather to another fracture: the one that separates the cities from the countryside, and the latter, from the entire peninsula. “There is always an ambiguity in Fratelli d’Italia, an ambiguity that will hit in the middle, a dialectic to score points everywhere. The northern field will vote for Meloni because of the agricultural competition with France, Spain, Italy.” this etc. And the southern countryside, which is more traditional, marked by Catholic culture, is sometimes distressed by the effect of globalization on customs. And that’s where Meloni comes in,” he says. .
The revolution in the past
Giorgia Meloni herself never stopped emphasizing her Catholicism throughout rallies and election days. And this over-the-shoulder faith must be related to the conservatism exhibited by political women. And at first glance, this ideological orientation seems to collide with fascism, which wanted to be a revolutionary party.
Once again, caution is in order. In fact, post-fascism does not completely evacuate this dimension of its heritage, but rather reformulates it. “Post-fascism is a revolution in the past. It is a revolution against ‘good thinking’, gender theory, ‘left-wing intelligentsia’. We are making a revolution against what Giorgia Meloni calls ‘the mainstream,'” she analyzes Deeper. Fabien Gibault. Post-fascism, therefore, does not claim bright tomorrows, worrying rather about yesterdays.
It also remains for us to look towards the past of Italy because perhaps it is there where post-fascism keeps buried the secret of its identity and its current fashion. “There is something deeply rooted in many Italians: the memory of a very late political unity”, highlights Dominique Vidal. Late and therefore as incomplete as fragile. The essayist then states: “and post-fascism wants to achieve Italian political unity à la schlague”.
But before dreaming of any Italian unity, Giorgia Meloni will have to manage to maintain the cohesion of her coalition government. Which, in Italy, is not the least of the challenges.
Source: BFM TV
