Italy
Three years of Meloni: A model for the international far right
Thursday 6 November 2025, by Fabrizio Burattini
Wednesday 22 October marked exactly three years since Giorgia Meloni took office at Palazzo Chigi, the seat of the Italian Prime Minister. Her appointment was the result of the predictable but nonetheless disastrous election results of September 2022, when the right-wing coalition (of which Fratelli d’Italia was by far the largest party) won thanks to a significant abstention rate (36%) but above all thanks to an anti-proportional representation law passed by previous centre-left governments and the deep division between the other political forces that formed the diverse opposition front in parliament.
The right, with its 12 million votes (out of an electorate of around 46 million), with less than 44% of the votes cast, and therefore with only 26% of the electorate’s support, elected almost 60% of the deputies and senators. As we said at the time in a commentary article, ’the victory of Giorgia Meloni and Fratelli d’Italia has a symbolic value unprecedented in the history of the Republic: Italy ends up in the hands of a coalition dominated by the heirs of Mussolini, Almirante and Rauti’.
Of course, we must not overlook all the other factors that influenced the result and paved the way for the success of the party that is the direct heir to fascism:
• the cultural and institutional transformations already imposed on the country by Berlusconi’s governments
• the gradual disappearance of a left wing capable of representing an alternative for the working classes
• the institutional constraints imposed on politics by left-wing and ’technical’ governments
• the heavily ’social-liberal’ choices of these same governments
• the stubborn acquiescence to these choices by the majority trade unions
• the failure of the illusions created in the country by the demagogy of the Five Star Movement.
The fact remains that Giorgia Meloni’s victory appears much more solid and ’project-oriented’ than Silvio Berlusconi’s success almost thirty years earlier, which was continually marked by the mixing of the political objectives of the right with the personal and business interests of the prime minister. Unlike Berlusconi, Giorgia Meloni presents herself and, to a certain extent, is, as a ’pure politician’,. She was born in 1977 and was raised in the shady circles of the Roman far right, a neo-fascist youth activist since the age of 15 and since then always involved in political activities. Meloni was elected to increasingly powerful institutional positions, from councillor of a municipality in the capital to an MP, then minister and now prime minister. Her response to an interview made headlines when, shortly after her appointment, a controversy arose between her and Berlusconi. She replied curtly, ’I cannot be blackmailed’, thereby asserting that, unlike the elderly leader of Forza Italia, she had no interests to hide other than political ones.
It must be said that she has never wanted to hide her fascist political roots either. Faced with the ineffective insistence of the opposition and certain media outlets that she declare herself ’anti-fascist’, she has consistently managed to sidestep the issue. Her distancing of herself from historical fascism has always been tactically limited to relatively minor issues. She has even managed to consolidate a relationship with the Jewish community, particularly in Rome, once a bastion of the left, by putting its spokesperson, Ester Mieli, the granddaughter of a deportee to Auschwitz, on her Senate slate. This is despite numerous media investigations that have revealed how the base and nomenklatura of Fratelli d’Italia continue to cultivate the Mussolini myth, fascist ideology and even anti-Semitic hatred.
The balance sheet she claims and the real one
The balance sheet for these three years of government is marked by the generally depressed economic situation, with the budgetary constraints that Italy has been experiencing for years due to its abysmal public debt (€3,053 billion in July 2025, equal to almost 140% of gross domestic product). The government’s fiscal policy, mainly based on tax cuts mostly in favour of its social base among small businesses, commerce and the liberal professions,, has also caused the debt to increase by almost €300 billion over the three years.
Despite this, the government can boast a significant reduction in the spread between the interest rate on Italian government bonds and that on German bonds, which has fallen from 244 to 86 between 2022 and today. Of course, the economic crisis that has been troubling Germany for some time and, therefore, the increase in interest on its government bonds, has contributed greatly to lowering the spread. Nevertheless it is certainly true that the yield on Italian treasury bonds has fallen from 4.79% to 3.57% in three years, which indicates that the ’markets’ have significantly increased their confidence in the Italian economy... because it is in the hands of a government considered ’more reliable’ by the ’markets’. This has also translated into a slight improvement in the rating defined by the main financial rating agencies, which Giorgia Meloni has presented as ’confirmation that the government is on the right track’.
GDP at constant prices has been essentially flat during Meloni’s three years in government, with growth between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the second quarter of 2025 of just under 1.5%. Despite this, the government boasts a growth trend in the employment rate, which is expected to reach 62.80% this summer (in 2013 it was 54.70%).
These results, which are very modest, even in a depressed global context marked by a slowdown in international trade, are largely ’inflated’ thanks to the 194 billion euro provided by the European Union as part of the post-Covid Next Generation EU programme. This comes partly as grants (€71.8 billion) and partly as subsidised loans (€122.6 billion). These are enormous sums that are pouring into Italian businesses, clearly supporting GDP and employment by at least one percentage point, it is said.
Despite the right wing’s proclamations about the dangers of ’ethnic replacement’, the demographic decline remains unresolved. In 10 years, the Italian population has fallen from 60.2 million in 2016 to 59.0 million this year. The decline would be even more striking if it weren’t for the significant influx of foreign residents in recent years, which has gone from around 500,000 in the early 1990s to over 5 million today, of whom 4.3 million are registered with the Social Security Institute . This comprises 3.8 million workers, just over 300,000 pensioners and around 250,000 recipients of income support benefits: redundancy payments, disability or unemployment benefits. In addition to the sharp decline in births (no more than 340,000 births are expected in 2025, 8% less than in 2024), it should not be overlooked that every year around 100,000 young people (generally university graduates) emigrate to other EU or non-EU countries.
The situation of the working class is easily illustrated by consumer prices, which have risen by around 17% over the last five years (2021-2025), while average wages have risen by only 9.6%, resulting in a loss of 8 points of purchasing power, equivalent to the loss of an entire month’s salary. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has repeatedly highlighted that Italy is one of the few G20 countries where wages are now lower than in 2008.
Poverty, particularly in certain areas of the country, is a real chronic emergency. Between 2022 and 2024, households in absolute poverty rose from 8.3% to 8.5% of all resident households. This is equivalent to approximately 2 million 234 thousand households; they were ’only’ 6.2% in 2014). Individuals in absolute poverty will rise from 9.7% to 9.8% (over 5.7 million people). The phenomenon is getting worse, both because of inflation, which is impoverishing households that were just above the poverty line, and because of the elimination of the Citizenship Income benefit in 2023, which has left many already poor households without any income support. According to the Institute of Statistics, the rate of the population at risk of poverty will be 23.1% in 2024.
Absolute poverty particularly affects minors, who are more numerous in poor families: minors under the age of 18 in absolute poverty account for 14% of the total (1.3 million). It also affects a significant portion of the working population (the working poor). Households with a person in employment living in absolute poverty increased from 8.3% to 9.1% between 2022 and 2023. The opposition to the government,in all its forms, has called for the introduction of a ’minimum wage’ law. The position of some trade unions, such as CGIL and UIL, which were previously opposed has even changed. However the government has managed to scupper every proposal to this effect.
Italy has been the second largest manufacturing power on the European continent for many years, but its industry remains heavily characterised by low labour productivity :in 2024, it represented €65 per hour worked: in France it was €75.12. This data also contributes to reducing, if not cancelling out, the government’s triumphalist data on employment growth and its quality. In 2023, for example, hours worked grew by 2.7%, while value added grew by only 0.2%, indicating that most entrepreneurs, especially small and micro businesses, prefer to hire low-wage employees rather than make innovative investments. It is no coincidence that the European Commission ranks Italy only 14th among the most innovative EU countries in 2025 in its reports.
However, the small increase in employment, which the right-wing government boasts about, shows signs of fragility. In fact, the number of people in employment in the over-50 age group is growing, while the number of younger people is falling, demonstrating the employment consequences of the extension of the retirement age, decreed in 2011 by Mario Monti’s ’technical’ government and never changed by subsequent governments. Older people are staying in work longer, skewing the employment statistics, to the detriment of a more significant rejuvenation and turnover in the workforce.
The deindustrialisation of Europe’s second largest manufacturing sector
The phenomenon of so-called ’deindustrialisation’ began in Italy (as in much of the Western world) in the 1970s and accelerated in the 1990s, with a gradual reduction in the importance of the manufacturing sector in favour of services. However, in recent years, the Meloni government, with its economic policy and in an attempt to raise cash in order to balance the public accounts, has facilitated a further process of divestment of ’strategic’ companies. The state has sold off companies that were once essential to the country’s economic development. These divestments have had a significant impact on employment.
The steelworks in Taranto (formerly Italsider, formerly ILVA, now ’Acciaierie d’Italia Spa’) have been struggling since their privatisation in the 1980s with a serious environmental and employment crisis. Now the government is essentially planning to give them away to the US financial company Bedrock Industries, which is asking for the sale to be accompanied by €700 million in non-repayable public funding to proceed with the ’decarbonisation’ of the plants. Bedrock also plans to make sweeping job cuts, laying off 7,000 of the 10,000 workers currently employed.
Just a year ago, the government sold the telecoms network of TIM (formerly Telecom Italia) to a consortium led by the American fund KKR, resulting in a reduction in TIM’s workforce from 37,000 to 17,300. Already in 2022, the national airline Alitalia (now ITA) was privatised, and a few months ago, the Meloni government decided to sell it off completely to Lufthansa, with the latter refusing to reabsorb the 2,000 workers currently on furlough. The IP (Italiana Petroli) oil brand, once part of the ENI group, is in the process of being sold to the Azerbaijani group Socar for £3 billion, as part of the ’diversification of energy sources’ following the Russian war in Ukraine.
The former Fiat (now Stellantis) production facilities have been in the process of being decommissioned for years, and the crisis in the car market has only accelerated this trend. The former Fiat IVECO factory (industrial vehicles) has already been sold in part to India’s Tata Motors and the military vehicle sector to a partnership between Leonardo and Germany’s Rheinmetall. In total, this puts more than 10,000 additional jobs at risk. The government also plans to convert Italian automotive production to military production by providing new public subsidies to Stellantis. Despite this, the company has continued to distribute dividends to shareholders, thanks to production relocation, wage compression, generous public subsidies and the transfer of profits to ’tax havens’.
The growth of inequality
In the banking sector, the case of Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) stands out. One of the oldest banks, once largely publicly owned (more than 60% of the capital) and in financial distress for a long time, it was ’restructured’ a few years ago thanks to a €5.4 billion bailout from the public purse. Now that the bank has become ’attractive’ again, the government wants to sell off the remaining 11% of shares still held by the state. In the meantime, MPS has acquired the country’s leading ’investment bank’ (Mediobanca), earning its main shareholders (the Del Vecchio and Caltagirone families and the American fund BlackRock) over £1.5 billion in profits, on which nothing will be paid to the tax authorities as they are all residents of tax havens.
In 2024, Italian banks recorded a new high in terms of net profit, amounting to €46.5 billion, an increase of €5.7 billion (+14%) compared to 2023. The total profits made by banks in the Meloni three-year period (2022-2024) reached €112 billion, clearly thanks in part to the high interest rates set by the ECB. In its financial manoeuvres in recent years, the government had repeatedly proclaimed its intention to levy a tax (albeit a very modest one, no more than €2 billion) on these extraordinarily high profits. However, opposition from bankers, ’authoritatively’ delegated within the government to the Forza Italia party, quickly led the executive to abandon the idea. Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti (Lega) seems to want to try again this year, but it appears that the difficulties will remain the same as in previous years.
Laws to consolidate consensus
As for the government’s legislative activity, this has been particularly limited. Despite pressure from the EU and the EU’s policy of ’protecting competition’, the Meloni government has chosen the path of ’protection from competition’ and has continuously renewed the monopolistic concessions and rents of certain corporations from which the right wing draws significant electoral support (beach resorts, taxis, notaries, etc.).
Furthermore, since his first budget at the end of 2022, which he renewed and expanded in subsequent budgets, he has chosen to pursue a blatantly favourable fiscal policy towards certain categories of income earners. Consequently, employees and pensioners continue to be taxed at progressive rates (23% for incomes up to €28,000, 35% for incomes up to €50,000, 43% for incomes above €50,000). However, freelancers and sole traders are subject to a so-called ’flat tax’ of 15%, which is reduced to 5% for five years for ’new entrepreneurs’. As a result, for the same income, an employee can end up paying three times as much tax as a freelancer. The electoral advantage that the right wing has gained from this move is quite clear, especially in Italy, where the proportion of ’self-employment’ and small businesses is well above the average for developed countries.
Giorgia Meloni ‘s government, in perfect continuity with Berlusconi, has persevered with a policy of leniency towards Italy’s colossal tax evasion (around €100 billion per year) and equally significant tax avoidance - in 2024, there were around 23 million taxpayers in debt to the tax authorities, with debts amounting to the colossal figure of almost €1.3 trillion. This policy was expressed through demagogic and propagandistic operations, such as the Prime Minister’s statements in 2023 in Catania. Here is a region in Sicily where tax evasion reaches record levels and where the mafia still reigns supreme. There she compared the fight against tax evasion to ’state protection money’, i.e. the ’contributions’ that organised crime extorts from citizens through violence. But it has also and above all been expressed through numerous and repeated amnesties (condone) - about twenty measures during the three years of government, that have wiped out or reduced to negligible amounts the tax debts of evaders or defaulters.
Therefore, with all citizens on fixed incomes such as employees and pensioners being penalised, inequalities continue to grow in Italy. Italian real estate and financial wealth, which has exploded in recent years, amounts to 11.7 trillion (five times GDP) and places the country eighth in the global ranking for financial wealth. There are 517,000 millionaires in the country, i.e. people who hold at least one million dollars in financial wealth, less than 1% of the population. There are 2,600 individuals in Italy who hold more than $100 million in financial wealth. This profitability of financial assets and the fact that they are lightly taxed triggers a ’rent-seeking spiral’ that diverts investment away from the productive economy.
The government, with other demagogic and propagandistic operations, also aims to entice important sectors of business and finance to organise themselves to speculate on areas of the world that are victims of war and devastation. In January 2024, Giorgia Meloni organised an ’Italy-Africa summit’ in Rome, attended by representatives of 45 African states, at which the prime minister outlined the ’partnership’ proposals set out in the so-called Mattei Plan. But that’s not all. In July this year, she organised the ’Conference on the Recovery of Ukraine’ in Rome, in collaboration with the Kiev government, proposing major investments in the reconstruction of the country devastated by the Russian invasion. In the coming days, we can be sure that the government will work to involve Italian industries in the ’reconstruction of Gaza’, if the fragile agreement between Netanyahu and Hamas holds.
Racism, security crackdowns and the distortion of the Constitution
The government’s activity, therefore, has been more explicit on the political level than on the purely legislative one. For example, the numerous and important initiatives aimed at ’preventing illegal immigration’ have not produced any significant concrete results. It just reinforces the image of a government that is ’strong with the weak’, an image that is useful for safeguarding the political and electoral support of large sections of the electorate infected with racism. A barrage of decrees in 2023 served this purpose, such as the one that severely hampered the activities of NGO ships engaged in rescuing shipwrecked migrants in the Mediterranean, the one passed after the Cutro massacre (with over 100 drownings) or the one that extended the maximum stay in the hell of the ’Repatriation Centres’ (CPR) to 18 months.
A separate story concerns the memorandum of understanding with the Albanian government in February 2024, which led to the construction of two CPRs on Albanian territory, a very expensive project that has so far remained largely unused.
The whole affair that saw a clash between the government’s desire to define the countries to be considered ’safe’ for the repatriation of asylum seekers and the contrary initiatives of numerous Italian judges (and the European judiciary) was also useful for the government’s racist propaganda and its campaign against the independence of the judiciary.
In economic policy, in addition to decisions to pardon tax evaders, the government has adopted important measures to facilitate business, such as the establishment of a single ’special economic zone’ (SEZ) covering the entire south of the country. It has relaxed tax and regulations both contractual and environmental, for companies operating in the Mezzogiorno (South). To the benefit of employers, it was also decided to extend the reduction in the so-called ’tax take’, which did indeed add a few dozen euros to employees’ pay packets at the expense of the public budget. Its explicit aim is to reduce wage and trade union pressure for the renewal of collective agreements and wage increases.
Furthermore, the possibility for companies to use subcontractors and fixed-term employment contracts, even without a valid reason, has also been extended.
Important and disturbing laws have been adopted on the repressive front. The government had already made its debut in 2022, just one week after taking office, by adopting the so-called ’Rave Decree’, which penalised ’unauthorised’ gatherings of more than 50 young people with heavy fines and imprisonment. But the most significant law in this regard is the one adopted last April by decree, thus bypassing a vote in parliament, despite the government’s large majority in both chambers. This is the so-called ’security decree’, which introduces new offences relating to public order:
• road blockades
• occupation of buildings
• revocation of citizenship for foreigners who have obtained Italian citizenship and who have been convicted even for minor offences
• compulsory imprisonment even for women with children under one year of age
• more flexible use of weapons, including firearms, by the police
• greater repression of all protests in prisons,
This decree manages to worsen the repressive nature of the penal code inherited by the Italian Republic from the fascist regime.
The government’s intentions, however, go much further. A year ago, parliament approved the law on so-called ’differentiated autonomy’, strongly supported by Matteo Salvini’s Lega party. This law aims to eliminate all forms of fiscal solidarity between the richer and poorer areas of the country and to give greater and almost unlimited powers to the leaders of the richer regions. This law, passed with the support of the entire right-wing majority in June 2024, was positively, albeit partially, weakened by a ruling of the Constitutional Court in December 2024, but it continues to represent a significant distortion of the constitutional structure adopted in 1948 by the Italian Republic.
A further constitutional reform law, particularly desired by Forza Italia, was recently adopted by the government majority on the subject of justice. It separates the careers of defence lawyers from those of public prosecutors and heavily modifies the system of self-government of the judiciary. The explicit intention is to subordinate it to the power of the government and thus undermining the separation of powers also provided for in the Constitution. The latter has already been heavily compromised by the abuse of emergency decrees; the Meloni government has adopted 91 decree-laws in three years. This abuse is undermining the role of parliament by subordinating it to the executive. In accordance with constitutional rules, this reform of the judiciary will be put to a confirmatory referendum next spring. However, polls currently predict a favourable outcome for the right.
However, the main point of the constitutional reform programme proposed by the right wing is the ’premierato reform’, a complete redesign of the country’s institutional functioning. This proposal has been described by Giorgia Meloni as ’the beginning of the Third Republic’ (the ’second’ being the one governed by Berlusconi) and the ’mother of all reforms’. This is a proposal for a very serious and heavy-handed tampering with the institutional architecture adopted by Italy after the twenty years of Fascism. It is a blow that Giorgia Meloni intends to inflict on the parliamentary institutional structure of our country, with no justification other than the ideological fixation of Italian post-Fascists on the centralisation of power.
The proposal is presented as a remedy for the governmental instability that characterised the country in the second half of the last century. But today, particularly in this legislature, that instability no longer exists. So much so that to all observers, Giorgia Meloni’s Italy seems a model of stability in a Europe where many countries are in the throes of deep crisis, first and foremost Macron’s France.
The Meloni government is, in fact, set to be the longest-lasting in the country’s history. Therefore, the reform of the premiership has nothing to do with so-called ’governability’ but, in the intentions of the prime minister and other promoters, aims to politically and symbolically mark the definitive overcoming of the anti-fascist and democratic roots of the 1948 Constitution. It aims to create, among a much broader populist electorate, the illusion of a renewal that promises to lead the country out of the difficulties of recent decades.
The abstruse institutional mechanism identified by the drafters of the bill effectively nullifies the role of parliament’s assemblies, reducing them to mere venues for ratifying decisions made by the government and its prime minister. It would be, even formally, the ’dictatorship of the majority’, a majority which, under the new electoral rules, could have at least 55% of parliamentarians even with only 30% of the vote, and moreover only of the electorate that votes, in a context in which abstention is constantly growing. The executive power (i.e. the government) would become independent of parliament, because the proposed direct election of the prime minister makes him or her the central power, heavily prevailing over all other institutional bodies (the president of the Republic and parliament), which are structurally weakened. This would be a ’democracy’ similar to that of many of Giorgia Meloni’s ’friends’, particularly Hungary’s Viktor Orban.
This reform is still under discussion in Parliament, and the government will probably choose to let it mature over time (unless unforeseen opportunities arise), perhaps postponing its final approval until the next legislature, which will be elected in autumn 2027. This is because it is entirely predictable that the reform will be put to a confirmatory referendum, and confirmatory referendums on constitutional reforms have often turned into a resounding rejection of governments, as shown by the 60% ’No’ vote that overwhelmed the Renzi government in 2016. But this time, the test will be particularly tricky for the opposition as well, because in order to prevent the reform, it will be necessary to ’defend’ a Constitution which, thanks to repeated tampering, is no longer based on the anti-fascist ’social compromise’ of 1948. Also because, in any case, that Constitution has painfully demonstrated its formal,demagogic character over the decades, betraying in practice all the commitments to equality and justice promised in the text.
International reliability...
Among Giorgia Meloni’s successes, we must not overlook her ability to effectively insert herself into European Union politics, even if this choice blatantly contradicts her demagogic stance against the ’technocrats of Brussels’ adopted when she was still in opposition. It must be said that, after some initial scepticism, even the European Commission and its president, Von Der Leyen, have largely opened the door to collaboration with the Italian prime minister. This collaboration has resulted in:
• the Italian government’s contribution at EU level on immigration
• the revision of the Dublin Regulation
• new rules on the right to asylum and rules on repatriation
• on the environment, the rewriting of the European Green Deal
• on the economy, the relaxation of certain rules of the Stability and Growth Pact.
This collaboration led the Italian right-wing government to differ in its vote on the new commission, with Fratelli d’Italia and Forza Italia voting in favour of Ursula Von Der Leyen while the Lega voted against her along with the rest of the European far right. In return, Fratelli d’Italia secured the appointment of its Raffaele Fitto as executive vice-president. Taking stock of the European policies of other right-wing leaders (such as Matteo Salvini), Giorgia Meloni realised that a confrontational ’sovereignist’ and anti-European approach does not pay off. She has therefore implemented and continues to implement a policy of gradual integration into the EU institutions, with undeniable results so far.
In foreign policy, there are still some differences between the parties in the right-wing coalition, with Fratelli d’Italia and Forza Italia more clearly Atlanticist with regard to Ukraine, but Trump’s activism seems to be unanimously supported, and Giorgia Meloni is certainly best placed to take advantage of the rise to power of the American far right.
Given that the Italian government was the first among the major Western countries to fall into the hands of the far right, it must be acknowledged that Giorgia Meloni has succeeded in normalising the presence of a fascist (or at least post-fascist) far right at the helm of Europe’s third largest economy, becoming an international reference point for all right-wing parties.
She has skilfully managed to surround herself with an aura of respectability, to project an institutional and ’moderate’ image, and to establish herself as a key player in addressing the main challenges facing the EU, not only on Ukraine but also on other issues. She has managed to establish and display an explicitly cordial and symbolically significant relationship with the President of the Commission. She even organised a joint visit with her to the island of Lampedusa, the main destination for migrants arriving from North Africa, precisely to demonstrate harmony and collaboration on the sensitive issue of immigration. This is an issue on which European politics as a whole seems to be shifting towards the xenophobic and racist positions of the Italian right. At the same time, she has managed to combine all this with an ostentatious harmony with the Trump administration, which in some ways reciprocates by presenting her as a privileged interlocutor.
Despite the largely ineffective criticism levelled at Giorgia Meloni from the right by Matteo Salvini’s Lega and neo-fascist General Roberto Vannacci, it must be said that Meloni, with her pragmatism, has managed to win over more and more of the business community, even the most powerful, once perplexed by the ’sovereignty’ of the far right, to her government and her policies. It should also be added that her ’model’ contributes to the ’rise’ to power of other far-right parties at the international level, because it leads increasingly broad sectors of the ruling classes to say: ’Well, you see, in the end there is no need to be afraid of them; on the contrary, as Giorgia Meloni demonstrates, they can do useful work for us’.
... and reactionary aggression towards those who disagree
In contrast to this ’institutional’ image, at the national level the prime minister is increasingly using aggressive and contemptuous tones towards the opposition. She recently described the timid solidarity of the institutional opposition towards Palestine as ’complicity with Hamas’. Although until a few weeks ago he was a totally unknown figure in Italy, she immediately used the assassination of Charlie Kirk to attack both the ultra-moderate and extreme left, going so far as to organise a grotesque commemoration of the pro-Trump reactionary activist in the Italian parliament.
The reactionary stance of the right continues to dominate its actions within the country. We have already mentioned the ’security decree’. Other measures have been taken against ’rainbow’ families, i.e. non-binary families, preventing the regularisation of adopted or heterodox children, and it has done everything possible to impose strict control over the media, particularly television.
Giorgia Meloni’s tactic is to exploit and try to deepen as much as possible the crisis of credibility of the entire opposition in all its nuances, from Matteo Renzi’s vacuous centrism to the impotent residual demagogy of the Five Star Movement to the shaky late-Labour approach of Elly Schlein’s PD. The entire opposition continues to pay the price for:
• its long and disastrous season in government - between ’political’ governments led by the PD or the Five Star Movement and ’technical’ governments supported by the PD, this lasted from 2011 to 2022,
• its anti-social policies,
• its perverse institutional reforms,
• its pandering to racist and security-driven forces,
• and its contribution to the definitive pulverisation of what was once the unity of the working class.
This translates into a gradual but inexorable decline in active voters. In the last regional elections, the figure remained around 50%, if not below, a decline that penalises the opposition significantly more than the forces of the right-wing government. An interesting analysis based on the percentage of votes cast not only for the slates but also for a specific candidate shows that this abstention is much lower for the right-wing vote (especially for Fratelli d’Italia) while it is very high (sometimes reaching or exceeding 70% for the PD) for the opposition. This phenomenon indicates the persistent ability of the right to ’speak’ to the public, to those who are less organised and less tied to parties, while the opposition is unable to attract the votes of the undecided electorate.
This is enough to describe the impotence of the political and institutional opposition, with the crisis and decline of the Five Star Movement, miraculously kept alive after the death of Gianroberto Casaleggio and the ’betrayal’ of Beppe Grillo by Giuseppe Conte’s leadership. The PD is currently forced to put a good face on Elly Schlein’s ’movementist’ management but continues to be totally infested by a nomenklatura of administrators nostalgic for the moderate Matteo Renzi. All this has facilitated some growth in the left wing of the opposition, the ’red-green’ wing of Nicola Fratoianni and Angelo Bonelli’s AVS (Green Left Alliance), but it is a wing that continues to scrape by in total subordination to the PD and others.
As for the ’radical left’, one would prefer not to talk about it in order to draw a ’veil’ over its ’existence’. However, it must be said that the extraordinary movement that has developed in recent weeks to condemn the genocide perpetrated in Gaza by Netanyahu and his government and the complicity of many governments (including the Italian one) is allowing a new displacement of forces in the field, significantly marginalising what remains of the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC). It is pushing to the forefront the more openly ’campist’ wings of the Italian radical left:the USB trade union and the political organisation Potere al Popolo. Their political and social activism and also thanks to some tactical choices that have proved to be far-sighted, have meant they have taken on a leading role in that movement.
The demonstrations that have swept across Italy (as in other countries) during the Global Sumud Flotilla action show the potential that still exists in the country. A cold political assessment shows that there are no political and social actors in the country capable of channelling this potential, except in the dead end of dangerous factionalism. However, the new mass mobilisation and the new willingness to engage in political militancy are creating new spaces for political work, so that a consistently internationalist option can challenge the hegemony of the factionalists in the radical left.
Meanwhile, Giorgia Meloni, with her tactical pragmatism, combining verbal arrogance and simulating moderation, is waiting for the ’Trump effect’ to spread around the world, for other European countries (France? Britain? Germany?) to fall into the hands of other far-right comrades, and is offering them a model for action.
25 October 2025
Translated by International Viewpoint from lRefrattario e controcorrente.
Attached documentsthree-years-of-meloni-a-model-for-the-international-far_a9251.pdf (PDF - 956 KiB)
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Fabrizio Burattini is a trade unionist in the CGIL and has been active in the Italian section of the Fourth International since 1968.
International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.
