Last Sunday, Italians voted for the most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini. The controversial politician leading the winning coalition, Giorgia Meloni, will become Italy’s first female prime minister.
Meloni has become a darling of sorts for many Republicans in America, who invited her to speak at this year’s CPAC conference. The “Brothers of Italy,” co-founded by Meloni in 2012, was a fringe party with neo-fascist roots. It rebranded itself in recent years as a socially conservative, ultra-nationalist party that’s also a European voice in the growing trans-national culture wars.
