Category: Meloni

Interview #60 — The Far Right and the Politics of Memory

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The Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is in power since one year, and she has been very busy opening an exhibition in Rome about J.R.R. Tolkien (one of her old obsessions, we talked about it in one of the last interviews, here). But this is far from the only thing she has been busy with during the last 12 months. She also devoted quite some time to official visits to former Italian colonies such as Libya, Albania, and Ethiopia, discussing issues linked to energy, migrants, and infrastructures.

Last May, I went to King’s College (London) for the presentation of Marianna Griffini’s book ‘The Politics of Memory in the Italian Populist Radical Right’. It was a very interesting event, with great discussions about the contemporary far right and its selective memory of the colonial past. I revised my notes for the event’s introduction and pulished them as an article for Jacobin (here, in Italian).

Since then, the relevance of the Italian colonial past has done nothing but increasing, and it could have been hardly different with the far-right government currently in power. In this interview, we discuss with Marianna Griffini the removal of the country’s past, the role of the far right in this process, as well as current and future developments.

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Brothers and Sisters of Italy: From Fascist Roots to Normalization — A Double Interview

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In this double interview we finally talk about Italy with two Professors, Filippo Tronconi and Gianfranco Baldini, who are investigating Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. This is an important interview that makes up, at least in part, for POP’s lack of attention to Italy. Being an Italian myself, I have always preferred not to deal with Italy because Italian politics (as interesting as it is) is also neurotic, unbearable, and at times incommentable.

The time to open this wound and look into it has finally come.

Tronconi and Baldini explain the electoral success of Brothers of Italy, a relatively new party that replaced Salvini’s Lega as the biggest party in the conservative camp. They help us understanding many important aspects of Brothers of Italy. First, what kind of party is it? Populist radical right? Nationalist and conservative? Neofascist? Second, how is it possible that the first female Prime Minister in Italy is not at all interested in any feminist agenda but rather proposes a traditional family model? And how did the party change once it won the elections and took power? Is Giorgia Meloni going to try and Orbanize Italy? How could she go from admiring Putin for years to endorse the sending of weapons to Ukraine?

The answers to these and many other questions in this long, dense interview.

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Interview #39 — Democracy, Constitutions, and Populism

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In this interview, Nadia Urbinati reflects on the democratic boundaries set by different types of constitutions, the evolution of Hungary from a populist democracy into an autocracy, the future of democracy in a post-pandemic scenario, the parallels and differences between this crisis and the last one. Moreover, we discuss how certain social aspects, such as education, health and climate change, should be addressed going beyond short-term, national interests. This could be the end for populism, but only if non-populist actors will manage to take advantage of the situation and restore the public sector.

How do populists undermine democracy, and in particular the separation powers, to establish an autocracy? A populist constitution, Urbinati claims, is a majority that constitutionalize itself, because the majority bends the constitution to justify an existing power instead of limiting any existing one. Democracy is now under a tremendous stress, and here we try to understand how populists actors can try to take advantage of the situation and to what extent different types of constitutions can prevent democratic erosion.  The words of Nadia Urbinati help us to understand the present and, crucially, to imagine our future.

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