So far, Meloni has used her sway mostly in Italy. The question now is whether she will start to flex her muscles internationally, and whether — with a new wind blowing across the Atlantic — she will continue to play nice with institutions like the EU and NATO, or if, as Bannon suggests, she’ll return […]
Who do you call if you want to speak to Europe?
If you’re Elon Musk — the world’s richest man and a key adviser to United States President-elect Donald Trump — the number you dial belongs to Giorgia Meloni.
In less than a decade, the leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy party has gone from being dismissed as an ultranationalist kook to being elected prime minister of Italy and establishing herself as a figure with whom Brussels, and now Washington, can do business.
Even as she has tacked to the center, Meloni — who began her political career as an activist in the youth wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement and praised dictator Benito Mussolini as “a good politician who did everything he did for the good of Italy” — has been on the forefront of a wave that is dragging European politics toward the far right.
