In the elections held in Italy on Sunday, the radical Right-wing "Brothers of Italy" party came first. Led by the 45-year-old Giorgia Meloni, the party received only 4 percent of the vote in the 2018 elections. The total vote of Meloni's alliance with the other two major Right-wing parties was "43 percent". The "Right-wing alliance", in which Meloni is a major partner, won the majority in the House and Senate. Likewise, Meloni will be Italy's right-wing Prime Minister since 1945.
On September 11, in the elections in Sweden, the radical Right party "Swedish Democrats" emerged as the second party. Now, the electoral victory of the "Brothers of Italy" deepens the concerns that the fundamentalist Right parties, which stand out with their opposition to Islam and Immigration, have become mainstream. Radical Right movements, once at the fringes of European politics and with very low levels of social representation, gained massive support. Let us remind you that these developments, which caused serious losses in the vote base of the Center Right and Center Left parties, are compared to the 1930s Europe that gave birth to Hitler and Mussolini. As a matter of fact, Giorgia Meloni's party was also seen as a new derivative of Mussolini's political legacy.
Meanwhile, the distance of these parties toward the European Union strengthens the predictions that the "Liberal Europe" project has come to an end. In this context, the victory of Meloni will also strengthen the hand of the Budapest Administration, which is makeshift within the European Union. As a matter of fact, the first congratulatory message from Europe to the "Brothers of Italy" came from Hungary.
Giorgia Meloni stated that her party is close to the Right line represented by the Conservative Party in the UK and the Republican Party in the U.S., which Trump had shaped in his own image. Some political analysts see Meloni and "Brothers of Italy" as part of the Global Right movement, which, along with Trump, includes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
The political discourses of the racist-fundamentalist Right parties in Europe also influenced and transformed the mainstream parties. Influence includes not only Centre-Right parties but also mainstream Left parties. Not wanting to lose their base, the Center parties tried to bring their rhetoric closer to the "White, Christian Europe" discourse of the anti-immigrant fundamentalist Right. The most striking example of this was Thilo Sarrazin, one of the leading figures of the “Social Democratic Party (SDP”), who caused serious controversy by writing a provocative book titled “Germany is destroying itself” in 2010. Sarazin used insulting and hateful expressions toward Muslim immigrants in his book.
In 2018, Sarazin published his second book titled "Unfriendly Takeover – How Islam Impedes Progress and Threatens Society". The expulsion of Sarazin from the SDP, which was supported by the racist "Alternative for Germany (AfD" party), only took place in 2020.
In the 1990s, parties with political and ideological rhetoric that evoked Hitler and Mussolini were excluded from coalitions. Those times are now in the rearview mirror. Center-right parties played an important role in the legitimacy of fundamentalist Right parties in Europe. The Central parties, which could not achieve the numerical ratios to form a government on their own, gave the green light to these parties. In addition, it should be reminded that the mainstream media outlets in both the U.S. and Europe also played a role in gaining mass support for radical Right movements.
The victory of Giorgia Meloni is bad news for China and Russia. Calling for more European assistance to Ukraine, Meloni said, "If Ukraine loses, the consequences will be very serious for all of us." On the other hand, Meloni said that countering the influence of Russia and China in the Western Balkans, Africa, Indo-Pacific, and parts of Latin America would be the top priority of his administration. Italy was the only country that signed the "Belt and Road Initiative" of China in the "G-7", which consisted of the U.S., Canada, Japan, Germany, England, Italy, and France. Meloni described Italy's signing of the "Initiative" as a "big mistake". Stating that he would not renew the "Belt and Road Initiative" agreement with Beijing, Meloni also said that he would strengthen relations with Taiwan. That's why Taiwanese media refer to Meloni as "a friend of Taiwan".
