Giorgia Meloni is a populist and nationalist politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Italy since 22 October 2022, the first woman to hold this position. She is the leader of the Brothers of Italy (FdI), a party with neo-fascist roots that won the 2022 general election with 26% of the vote. She is also the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, a Eurosceptic and anti-immigration political group.
Giorgia Meloni was born on 15 January 1977 in Rome, into a middle-class family. Her father worked in the Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) and her mother was a teacher. She started her political career at the age of 15 when she joined the Youth Front, the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party founded by former followers of Benito Mussolini. She later became the leader of Student Action, the student movement of the National Alliance (AN), a post-fascist party that emerged from the MSI in 1995 and moved towards national conservatism.
She was elected as a councilor of the Province of Rome in 1998 and became the president of Youth Action, the youth wing of AN, in 2004. In 2008, she was appointed as the Minister of Youth in the fourth Berlusconi government, becoming the youngest minister in Italy’s history. She held this position until 2011 when the government collapsed amid a financial crisis and a series of scandals.
In 2012, she co-founded FdI, a legal successor to AN, and became its president in 2014. She positioned the party as a right-wing populist and nationalist force, opposing immigration, Islam, LGBT rights, abortion, and the European Union. She ran unsuccessfully in the 2014 European Parliament election and the 2016 Rome municipal election. In the 2018 general election, FdI obtained 4.3% of the vote and entered the parliament for the first time.
Meloni gained popularity and visibility as the leader of the opposition during the 18th legislature when she was the only party leader who refused to join the national unity government led by Mario Draghi, a former president of the European Central Bank. She criticized Draghi’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and his pro-European and pro-globalization policies. She also forged alliances with other right-wing populist and nationalist parties in Europe, such as the League in Italy, Vox in Spain, and the National Rally in France.
In the 2022 general election, FdI emerged as the largest party in Italy, with 26% of the vote, a six-fold increase from the previous election. Meloni claimed the right to form a government and received the support of her allies from the center-right coalition, the League and Forza Italia. She became the first female prime minister of Italy on 22 October 2022, after receiving the confidence of both chambers of the parliament.
As the prime minister, Meloni has promised to govern “for everyone” and to respect Italy’s commitments to its allies in NATO and the European Union. However, she has also vowed to pursue a nationalist and sovereignist agenda, based on the protection of the “natural family”, the defense of the “Christian identity” of Italy, the fight against “Islamist terrorism” and “mass migration”, the rejection of “gender ideology” and “big international finance”, and the criticism of the “bureaucrats of Brussels”. She has appointed a cabinet that reflects her political views, with only six women out of 24 ministers, and several controversial figures, such as Eugenia Roccella, an anti-abortion activist, as the Minister of Family and Birth Rate, and Matteo Salvini, a hardline anti-immigration leader, as the Minister of the Interior.
Giorgia Meloni is one of the most influential and controversial politicians in Italy and Europe. She has risen from a teenage neo-fascist activist to the first female prime minister of Italy, leading the most right-wing government in Italy’s history. She has shown her skills, charisma, and determination in domestic and international politics, and has earned the respect and admiration of her fans and peers. She has also faced criticism and opposition from her rivals and detractors, who accuse her of being a populist, a nationalist, and a fascist. She is Giorgia Meloni, the first female prime minister of Italy.
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