Italy’s new leader is a very weird, Tolkien-obsessed right-wing extremist

Early polls out of Italy following its Sunday election suggest that Giorgia Meloni, an ultra-conservative leader known for her opposition to gay rights and immigration, will become its first female prime minister—and the most extreme right-winger to run the place since, you guessed it, Benito Mussolini.

Meloni’s victory makes her party, Brothers of Italy, the most successful of the new radical-right movements thriving on Europe’s economic struggles and migration crisis. Its predecessor was a neo-fascist party formed by Mussolini supporters after World War II, although Meloni claims that she’s https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/europe/italy-election-fascism-meloni.html”>gotten rid of the Brothers of Italy’s outright fascists. Her fixation on the https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/cpac-abortion-matt-schlapp-great-replacement/”>Great Replacement Theory and her https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/09/giorgia-meloni-italy-election-fascism-mussolini/671515/”>vendetta against George Soros are nothing to worry about, I’m sure.

Meloni is also completely obsessed with J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, regarding the series—which has been https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/world/europe/giorgia-meloni-lord-of-the-rings.html”>venerated by Italian fascists for decades—as an almost Biblical text. In her early twenties, Meloni https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2022-09-23-italy–giorgia-meloni–a-very-political-passion-for-%22the-lord-of-the-rings%22.SyXD-TUiZs.html”>haunted the web as “Khy-ri, the dragon of the Undernet.” Tolkien, she https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/21/world/europe/giorgia-meloni-lord-of-the-rings.html”>told the New York Times, explains “better than we can what conservatives believe in.” Her https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/italy-giorgia-meloni-far-right-nationalist-prime-minister-mussolini-rcna48506″>take on Mussolini? “Everything he did, he did for Italy.”

Meloni insists that she isn’t a fascist herself, even if her party’s flag includes the symbol of the old pro-Fascist party whose youth wing she belonged to. She https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/09/giorgia-meloni-italy-election-fascism-mussolini/671515/”>praised Il Duce at the time, decades before her small, splinter party leaped to the top of the polls. Italians aren’t necessarily turning far-right themselves, one analyst https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/italy-giorgia-meloni-far-right-nationalist-prime-minister-mussolini-rcna48506″>told NBC—but after decades of gridlock and stagnation, they’re desperate for something “new and disruptive.”

Disaffected Italians turned out to vote in record low numbers, seemingly bearing that out. But https://apnews.com/article/elections-voting-italy-matteo-salvini-c251832f5b73063b2e20869a21f92efe”>early exit polls show the country’s far-right coalition winning about 45 percent of the vote, much more than any other parties. That puts Meloni on track to be the country’s first ultra-right prime minister since World War II, a prospect that worries everyone from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/world/europe/lgbt-adoption-giorgia-meloni.html”>gay couples to https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/world/europe/giorgia-meloni-italy-women.html”>women seeking more social and economic power.

Election results are expected to be finalized by tomorrow, but https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/viktor-orban-hungary-cpac-hungary-maga-pilgrimage/”>Trump cheerleader https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/viktor-orban-hungarys-authoritarian-leader-might-be-reelected-this-weekend/”>Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s authoritarian head of state, has https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/sep/25/italy-general-election-2022-results-live-giorgia-meloni-latest-news?page=with:block-6330d28c8f0891514fe7c2f4#block-6330d28c8f0891514fe7c2f4″>already congratulated Meloni. It looks like authoritarianism is still spreading.