Giorgia Meloni's election as Italian PM - initial thoughts

 My current reaction is a mixture of encouragement and profound misgivings.

She was on fire in her acceptance speech and minced no words in calling out wokeness for the cultural cancer it is. I was mightily impressed that she quoted Chesterton toward the end (""Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible.")

Still, I find her problematic for reasons similar to those that add an element of wariness in the way I approach theologian Carl Truman. Like Truman, she has no use for the obliteration of the basic architecture of the universe into which progressivism has morphed. (By the way - and sorry for the slight digression - there is a fine essay on this subject, couched as look at the difference between equality and sameness, at Quillette this morning. It's by Bo Winegard, to whom I'll start paying more attention. Highly recommend it.)

But, as I am with Truman, I'm uncomfortable with some of the company she's kept over the years.

She's a go-getter, to be sure. At 15, she joined the Italian Social Movement's Youth Front. Now, the MSI had its roots in continued support for Mussolini's general program into the late 1940s, but she did go with the National Alliance when that formed and sought to distance itself from that fascist past. Her coziness with former PM Berlusconi bothers me, as does the addition of the tricolor flame, symbolizing Mussolini's remains, to the logo of her party Brothers of Italy.

But there was none of that in her acceptance speech. I suppose one reaction to that could be along the lines of "How politically savvy do you have to be to avoid any mention of your unsavory past ties in your acceptance speech?" and that's true. But I really do think her core passion is for restoring some basic common sense about matters of human sexuality and family - as well as a proper regard for the designer thereof.

She's yet another example of what bothers me about the populist drift of the Right throughout the West. A restoration of core values has gotten mixed with some impulses that I definitely can't abide by. As I've said many times before, this gives progressivism its opening to conflate it all and lump anyone who asserts basic facts about men, women and how they were designed to come together with nationalist bonehead-ism and flirtation with authoritarianism.

But the matter at hand for Meloni and whatever government she forms will be to keep Italy's debt under control and prepare for the energy crisis that will befall all of Europe this winter.

One can't help but wish her the best of luck on those fronts. On the cultural-issues front, we'll just have to see if, and to what extent, she's outgrown the excesses of her youth.

I'll just conclude with a link to Andrew T. Walker's Twitter thread about the matter. I'd particularly draw your attention to the third tweet:

Much of Twitter dot com is historians, sociologists, and pundits denouncing historic Christian claims about life, relations, and order as anti-democratic. So count me a little suspicious when cultural forces who hate Christianity invoke "far right" like a Pavlovian dog.

We can't deny her baggage, but we probably need to observe her in action in her new role for a bit to get the full story.