Interview with Giorgia Meloni: “I’m not anti-German”

In the FAZ interview, the leader of the Italian brothers, Giorgia Meloni, tries to allay concerns about a right-wing populist government in Italy. Her party is neither post-fascist nor anti-German and poses no threat to the EU.

MEP Meloni, your Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) party is often described abroad as ‘post-fascist’. I think you don’t like that.

You’re right, I don’t like that. Because it disregards the historical development of the Italian right, which decades ago consigned fascism to history and unequivocally condemned the abolition of democracy, the shameful anti-Jewish laws, the tragedy of the world war. The party of the Italian right, which was then called “Alleanza Nazionale” (National Alliance), was involved in several governments (under party leader Gianfranco Fini, editor’s note). We then formed a unified centre-right party, Il Popolo della Libertà (The People of Freedom), which was part of the Christian Democratic European People’s Party (EPP). I was a minister for this party (for youth and sport in Silvio Berlusconi’s fourth cabinet from 2008 to 2011, editor’s note), along with other important members of my current Italian Brothers party, some of whom do not come from the tradition of the political right. We have never been a threat to democracy, and we will not become one now. But we do pose a threat to the power system of the Italian left, which has been in government for years without having won the elections. And by the way, no one ever calls them “post-communist” even though they historically emerged from the strongest pro-Soviet party in the West (the Italian Communist Party, editor’s note).