Nothing fascist about a leader elected on hope

Many Italians voted for Giorgia Meloni because ‘they want a different Italy’. Picture: AFP

There was a burning, brilliant sunrise over Milan when I landed in Italy two weeks ago. I’ll confess to a wave of emotion as the flight touched down. The last time I was here, almost three years to the day, seemed a distant, sepia-toned memory.

September 2019, I had my late Dad’s ashes tucked away in my suitcase. I was heading to meet my brother in our family village in the Valtellina region where we scattered Dad’s ashes.

My first trip back to Italy post-pandemic instead had me landing a week ahead of the recent elections, the results of which triggered the most broken among us.

Never have I seen so speedy an emergence of people who claim knowledge of Italian political, social and cultural history. One trip to the Amalfi and everyone’s an expert.

I spent the week before the poll and a few days post in Lerici, a seaside town that’s joyously close but not part of the Cinque Terre. Lerici is most famous for being the place where Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned, but is more broadly known as the Gulf of Poets because the likes of Lord Byron, the ill-fated Shelley, Wordsworth and DH Lawrence were so captivated by its beauty and climate, they made it their second home.

Right on the border with Liguria and Tuscany, the area is traditionally left of centre. People read la Repubblica rather than the Corriere della Sera. I say this by way of context because so many ended up fuori di testa (out of their minds) at the centre-right victory they were incapable of interrogating what happened and why.

Consider this. A person I’ve known through family for about a decade, is a single parent in her 40s, and earns about $35k a year working full-time. This person gets less financial housing support from the Italian government than illegal immigrants.

Interestingly, she’s not anti-immigration. Rather, she feels that as a taxpaying Italian citizen the government should put her first. That there should be a system to “controllare” (manage) the way foreigners come into Italy. Bring order to the chaos. Hardly an extreme view. Multiply this experience by several tens of millions and maybe there’s a clue as to why Italy voted the way it did.

I’ve been in Italy close to a month now and let me share a few hard home truths. Nobody is calling Giorgia Meloni or her coalition fascist. Not even the institutional left.

In fact, former leftist prime minister Matteo Renzi told CNN immediately after the election that any suggestion fascism is back in Italy, or that Meloni is a danger to democracy, was fake news. Faker than fake. But apparently anyone holding a different view is busy ironing their brown shirts and getting ready to rumble.

What has become abundantly clear is that Italians had, as a whole, lost faith in i politici (the political class). Here, people aren’t talking about pronouns. They’re not cancelling anyone because of their faith. In many ways, the headlines I’ve been reading here scream a loud warning to us in Australia.

“Energia e materie prime, il Prezzo del pane, lievita”. Energy, raw materials and the price of bread – all rising.

And this: “Bollete troppo care, l cita spegna la luce.” – Power is too expensive, so the city (of Sondrio) is turning out the lights. Friends I have spoken to this week tell of increases in power bills of 70 per cent. Stagnant wages and financial stress.

Oh, but it’s easier to fascist! It’s easier to ignore the issues and attack Meloni, a woman who, let’s be honest, if she were of the political left would be feted and adored. The first woman elected as prime minister of Italy. No quotas required.

Italians, it seems, are far more capable than we are to hold two ideas in tension. To acknowledge the past yet not assume it’s the present. I approached conversations of the past weeks with a rewarding curiosity. Perhaps surprisingly, there was a consistent thread of hope amid the fatigue. The kind of hope you find when someone’s at the end of themselves, but hope, nonetheless. Hope that maybe this government will be the one to sort out the mess Italy is in, socially and economically.

Many said they voted for Meloni because they wanted change. Because they’re sick of the merry-go-round in Rome. They want a different Italy.

Those who’ve been following Meloni over the past decade, from her days as a junior minister, say she’s fearless, ready. That she’s often the smartest in the room, politically pragmatic and not easily pushed around.

That may just be opinion, but this is fact: she and the centre-right coalition have a massive job ahead of them. She knows it. Italians know it, and the last word here really should belong to them: (of Meloni and her government) non promettono tutto e poi fa niente … they better not promise the earth and not deliver.

As the Italians so beautifully say, punto e basta.