Europe sees conservative trend as Italy elects right-wing prime minister
Fox News senior foreign affairs correspondent Amy Kellogg reports on the conservative wave sweeping through European nations and touches on concerns the center-left has in its wake.
Politico and The Guardian, two liberal media publications, published pieces describing newly elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a "far-right" politician and comparing her to former President Trump.
An article written Thursday by Politico congressional reporter Andrew Desiderio described Meloni as "a darling of U.S. conservatives with a history of far-right rhetoric on immigration." The piece was titled, "‘Reason to worry’: Italy's Meloni holds a mirror to Trump's GOP."
"U.S. conservatives are rallying behind Italy’s newly elected far-right prime minister — praise that highlights the Trumpification of GOP foreign policy doctrines and the fragility of the Western coalition against Russia’s war in Ukraine," Desiderio wrote.
Italian Prime Minister-elect Giorgia Meloni arrives in her car to attend a political rally in Rome, Italy. (REUTERS/Remo Casilli)
"Statements of support for Meloni’s victory have come almost exclusively from U.S. Republicans, while as of Wednesday President Biden had yet to offer the far-right firebrand his congratulations," Desiderio wrote.
On Wednesday night, Biden brought up the Italian election as an example of democracy being at stake around the world.
Desiderio lamented what he described as Meloni's party's "staunchly anti-immigration policies with a rallying cry against ‘globalists,’ and its previous iteration has roots in neo-fascism."
"As Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ foreign policy opens rifts among U.S. conservatives over continued aid to Ukraine, with the former president signaling a desire to stop funding Kyiv, the GOP boost for Meloni runs the risk of emboldening the party’s MAGA wing against more establishment voices who want to continue aiding Ukraine," he wrote.
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Then-President Trump talks to reporters while hosting workers and members of his cabinet for a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House Oct. 17, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Desiderio appeared to bemoan "Meloni’s celebrity status to some Republicans who’ve watched her espousal of traditional values and family-oriented social conservatism."
The Guardian published an article Wednesday titled, "Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is no Mussolini – but she may be a Trump." The article, written by Lorenzo Marsili, did not spare Meloni. "There’s nothing nostalgic about the far-right political space that the country’s new leader is trying to carve out in Europe," its subtitle read.
"Meloni’s party is not so much the heir to Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement as the first European copycat of the US Republican party," Marsili wrote.
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, takes a selfie during a rally in Duomo square ahead of the Sept. 25 snap election, in Milan Sept. 11, 2022. (REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo)
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"Gone may be the days when the victory of far-right populists and extremists appeared unthinkable or untenable. We may instead be in a new degenerated, rightwing normality: where that honourable and necessary space in a democracy – the space occupied by Jacques Chirac, Margaret Thatcher or Angela Merkel – becomes perverted and consistently occupied by Trumps and Melonis," Marsili wrote.
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