Last week Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with Trump at the White House. They reportedly discussed Ukraine, defense spending, economy, space, energy —specifically Italy importing more US liquefied natural gas— and of course the US tariffs looming over EU imports.
One item that really stood out, however, was Meloni’s insight into her brand of nationalism. Here she is speaking during the meeting with the press in the Oval Office:
“Someone calls me a Western nationalist , I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I know that when I talk about the West, I’m not talking primarily about geographical space , but about civilization.”
She added:
“The goal for me is to make the West great again, and I think we can do it together, and we will keep on working on that.”
On its face, it is contradictory. Either one is nationalistic or it subscribes to the western order headquartered in Washington. Yet, Meloni has been at the lead of squaring this circle in Europe over the past few years.
As the 2023 elections in Italy approached with Meloni leading the polls, international media was in an uproar over the return of fascism to Rome. It was commonly assumed that she would lead a short-lived government that sparred with the EU and NATO. That belief was reasonably based on Meloni’s past statements critical of the supranational organizations, as well as the worn path from other political insurgencies of both the left and the right.
And yet Meloni is still here, now among the five most durable of the Republic:
And the party she leads maintains a steadily comfortable cushion in Italian polls.
Part of that rests on feckless, Obama-inspired Partitico Democratico and the other is an increasingly disenchanted electorate. But it’s also reflective of Meloni’s realization that real nationalism wouldn’t play in Washington and Brussels and that she was destined to lose any struggle with NATO and the EU.
She has instead sought to lead the European flank of “Western nationalism.” Others might call it “civilizational Europe.” To Quinn Slobodian, Meloni would be yet another “bastard of neoliberalism.”
While her Brothers of Italy party struggles to crack 30 percent at home, she has become an international darling.
Following the New York Times —the US paper of record— announcement at the beginning of 2024 that Meloni “solidifie[d] her credentials” and “put the European establishment at ease” the media has lauded her. She has been bestowed with the coveted title of Europe’s “Trump whisperer.”
She was also well-received by the Biden administration and is chummy with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Even the Atlantic Council, the liberal internationalist establishment’s think tank, crowned her with its “Global Citizen” award last year.
Meloni’s Western nationalism is the reason she is embraced so enthusiastically.
What are the tenets of that philosophy?
- Neoliberalism.
- Immigration that serves capital.
- Atlanticism.
Let’s take a look.
Neoliberalism
Meloni and others on the “new right” like Argentine President Javier Milei and Trump himself like to tout themselves as rebels against the grating virtue signalling of the Davos cabal.
They might be in style, but in substance they are a continuation.
If neoliberalism is markets before people, Meloni and others on the “new” usually say they are for the people, nationalism — in Melon’s case, Western nationalism.
Yet they have virtually zero plans to elevate the people over finance and tech—and in many cases seek to further empower the latter.
Meloni has made much of her desire for more Italian babies and a strengthening of the family, but her economic policies do the opposite. Indeed, Italian youth continue to emigrate en masse due to the lack of decent paying jobs at home.
The Meloni government has been overseeing a wave of privatizations, including critical communications infrastructure to CIA-connected private equity, and plans for more of the state rail company Ferrovie dello Stato, Poste Italiane, Monte dei Paschi bank and energy giant Eni. The firesale is necessitated by more tax cuts for the wealthy, as well as more than billions of euros Rome has burned through in order to address the loss of pipeline gas from Russia, which includes buying more US LNG.
In 2023, Meloni chose May Day to announce her government’s promotion of short-term worker contracts, as well as the abolition of Italy’s basic income program, which provided the unemployed with an average of 567 euros a month. Despite the program providing a mild stimulus to the economy, Meloni said its elimination will force people back to work. “Where is the slump in the economy and employment?” she asked.
She failed to mention that roughly 40 percent of Italian workers earn less than 10 euros an hour in the country where real wages have done this:
Italy’s real wage misery: inflation-adjusted wages in 2023 were 4.4% lower than in 1990. Even real wages in Greek performed a little better. pic.twitter.com/rRN9QE4JE7
— Philipp Heimberger (@heimbergecon) July 3, 2024
So what of Meloni’s stated desire to “make the West great again”? It appears the tools to accomplish the job are the same that have been used for the three-plus decades.
The cure for Italy’s ills is always more wage suppression, more market-friendly reforms, more social spending cuts, and more privatization. The country has actually followed the EU’s neoliberal reform policy rulebook much more closely than Berlin or Paris, and the answer when it inevitably doesn’t work, is always to double down. Meloni has done nothing to change this, and has embraced a future in which Italy is a deindustrialized imperial military outpost that doubles as a sunny Mediterranean corporate resort owned by (mostly) American capital.
Immigration that Serves Capital
Meloni is anti-immigrant except for those who are valuable for capital. In that case, they are welcome in the garden as a serf. It’s remarkably similar to the Trump-Silicon Valley vision for the US, even down to the use of foreign prisons.
Meloni who rode to power two years ago based in part on strong opposition to illegal immigration and asylum. She quickly backed down on her deportations pledge, however, and ended up increasing the supply of cheap foreign labor at the request of Italian capital. She’s made a big show of it all, however, and now has a nearly $1 billion detention facility in Albania sitting empty after courts blocked the plan.
They’re now being rebranded as repatriation hubs, in line with a recent EU proposal, which largely embraces Meloni’s vision.
What the Albanian detention centers do is offshore the detention of immigrants and refugees outside of EU law while still allowing in those deemed valuable for capital. Meloni, after all, says she wants immigrants that contribute to the economy.
Meloni, despite railing against immigrants, is increasing the number of work permits to non-EU nationals in an effort to boost the supply of cheap labor.
While Italians try to scrape by on low salaries, foreign workers can be paid even less.
According to the 2020 IDOS Statistical Dossier on Immigration, the overall average monthly wage for foreign workers was 1,077 euros in 2019, which was 23.5 percent lower than that of Italians’ 1,408 euros. That gap is only widening in Italy, as well as the EU. In the agricultural sector in particular, migrant workers are subject to various forms of abuse and live and work in inhumane conditions.
That is, of course, precisely why Italian oligarchs demanded a certain flow of immigrants. Italian big business welcomed the increase, but immediately said more will be needed to tackle a longstanding demographic decline.
So Italians leave searching for higher wages and immigrants come in to fill low-wage jobs. Nationalism it ain’t – unless one conceives of the “western nation” as solely a profit extracting mechanism for oligarchs.
When Meloni embraces the “Western nationalist” label and explains she’s talking about civilization, that’s the civilization she’s referring to.
Atlanticism
In Meloni’s speech last year accepting the Atlantic Council’s Global Citizen award, one of the items she chose not to talk about was “the efforts the Italian government is doing to reform its country to make it, once again, a protagonist of the geopolitical chessboard.”
By that she means American hegemony with Italy—and Europe— acting as the US sidekick.
It’s difficult to know what reforms exactly she’s talking about, but we can make some educated guesses. A few hours ahead of Meloni’s meeting with Trump, her finance minister announced Italy would hit 2 percent of GDP on defense spending this year—up from 1.5 percent. There has been speculation that Rome would try some creative accounting by throwing expenditures like the Coast Guard into the defense category, but that looks to have been abandoned in favor of buying more American products.
Of course, this will mean more of a budget squeeze, which only reinforces the argument that Italy must privatize state assets. New York-based private equity behemoth KKR, which includes former CIA director David Petraeus as a partner, snatched up the fixed-line network of Telecom Italia last year. Rome approved of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, taking a stake of more than 3 percent in defense and aerospace group Leonardo, which makes it the second largest shareholder after the state.
Meloni is getting pushback on the major SpaceX deal she has championed. That potential deal would see Musk’s company provide security and encryption service to the Italian public sector.
Meloni has also taken on a decidedly anti-China edge as well, withdrawing from Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative at the end of 2023.
Add it all up, and Meloni simply represents different flavor of vassalage than elsewhere in Europe. While an adherent to the liberal rules-based order champions LGBTQ and immigration, the western nationalist opts for family values and rails against immigration. But the economic policies remain largely the same. It’s difficult to see a ton of daylight, for example, between Meloni and the Green madwoman in Berlin, Annalena Baerbock. She spent recent years openly arguing that Germany’s place was as overseer of America’s imperial order in Europe and junior partner in other global conflicts. Baerbock sold this as a “feminist” foreign policy; for Meloni it’s a civilizational struggle. Both are euphemisms for imperialism.
We see where that got Germany, although it is a mindset that remains despite the replacement of Scholz and Baerbock with new faces.
Italy, too, has also been hammered by the New Cold War and the EU’s severing itself from Russian pipeline gas, which has only added to the economic decay the country has been mired in since joining the common currency in the 1990s.
Meloni and her “western nationalism” being welcome in the European halls of power alongside those still clinging to their respectable liberal rules-based order, is likely to only accelerate these trends as the very mixture of Meloni’s style of nationalism and neoliberalism mean that she and the country she currently leads will be sold up the river to further the goals of Western capital.
Openly offering Italy up as a “protagonist” piece to be used by the US on the geopolitical chessboard should be setting off alarm bells in Italy. A look at the history of such protagonist American allies would show that Meloni and Italy are soon going to get burned—even if she’s currently the “Trump whisperer.”
The Atlantic Council’s “Global Citizen Award”…a bureaucrat who cares only about 1/8th of the globe…one couldnt make this up…
Nope. They care only about 1% of the 1/8th of the globe.
the Golden Ten Million.
I have no statistics but I would guess in Germany agriculture without foreign (mostly undocumented) labour would break down. Same for meat-processing industry. The truly blue-collar work is not even done by natives when they´re poor.
And while sociology and left think tanks used to have models on how to organize labour in a democratic society in a meaningful and just way I have the impression the insight and demands to transform those into genuine policies by unions and left parties thereof has been totally abandoned.
Thanks for this great piece.
I guess I´m gonna pester my Italian friends with it…
p.s. We did have discussions over German native Eike Schmidt who had been the director of the Uffizi in Florence until last year. He then planned to run as Florence mayor supported by right-wing parties. (I believe there was even discussion over Schmidt as cultural minister under Meloni.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eike_Schmidt
When Meloni won everyone demanded that Schmidt ought to deny any cooperation with her being a “fascist”. I of course doubted that approach. We came to no conclusion.
I know too little of the minutes of the preceding 10 years in Italian politics to be able to judge if there were major differences between Meloni and here social democratic predecessors to “justify” such a move to oppose as cultural manager beyond self-serving.
When does activism serve the people, when does it not?
Schmidt lost. His opponent, Sara Funaro had a Jewish father. So, of course, The Times of Israel gets involved.
Sounds like she’s dealing with antisemitism, instead of responding to her German opponent, with no “deep roots” in Florence. On Israel
“Always”? Dante might have had a different opinion. For the future
Renzi?
Thank you, Conor.
Just a bit off topic from Blighty: Last December, to commemorate Labour’s first six months in power (or should that be in office, but not in power), the Financial Times, including a friend on the City team, interviewed some of the back room staff and included some settling of scores.
Not all of the material was published as the FT would like to keep lines of communication open. Two things struck, alarmed even, my friend as they are married to the child of immigrants and would like to start a family.
Mandelson’s protege and the brains behind Starmer, Cork born and raised and Fine Gael stalwart Morgan McSweeney, said Labour would not be outflanked from the right and looked forward to and even relished fighting (Farage’s) Reform on their turf, Labour thinks the latter part of this decade and next will be dominated by Vance, Weidel (that was before the German federal elections), Le Pen (that was before the court case) and Meloni, so Starmer wants and needs to be on (their) side, Labour thinks the left and even centre have nowhere to go, and (the bit which alarmed my friend) would scapegoat immigrants and other minorities.
I think Italy may get burned, but Meloni won’t be. For example, former Finnish PM Sanne Marin is employed by Blair and lives in style in London. The likes of Baerbock, Kallas, von der Leyen (descendant of English gentry) and Sandu can look forward to that retirement from front line politics. The sons of Radek Sikorski and Anne Apfelbaum went to Eton and Oxford and divide their time between London, the Cotswolds and NYC. This is the lifestyle that the US elite can offer them, so why not betray one’s country.
“… While an adherent to the liberal rules-based order champions LGBTQ and immigration, the western nationalist opts for family values and rails against immigration. But the economic policies remain largely the same. It’s difficult to see a ton of daylight, for example, between Meloni and the Green madwoman in Berlin, Annalena Baerbock. She spent recent years openly arguing that Germany’s place was as overseer of America’s imperial order in Europe and junior partner in other global conflicts. Baerbock sold this as a “feminist” foreign policy; for Meloni it’s a civilizational struggle. Both are euphemisms for imperialism.”
Yes. This is the key point everywhere in the West as far as I can tell. These increasingly “polarized” political camps are mainly sheep-herding mechanisms for different segments of the “electorate,” while the trajectories of both foreign and domestic policy continue on steadily through the administrations of “Democrats” or “Republicans,” “Socialists” or “Conservatives,” the “Left” or the “Right,” etc. As Conor emphasizes here and has noted before, there is a “compatible right” just as there is a “compatible left” in the West. The political rhetoric differs; the policies remain the same.
Wowsers. That graphic. Berlusconi, Craxi, Renzi, Meloni. Every one of them successful postmodern politicians — purveyors of the big nothing. One might argue, though, that Meloni is the most intelligent and the least corrupt. Berlusconi represented (and his Forza Italia still represents) the big bourgeoisie of Lombardy and the Veneto. Craxi is the politician who makes Italians shake their heads: “Bettino should have known better.”
Renzi is the Hillary Clinton of Italy, although slightly more charming: He’s office politics, self-promotion, and grift, grift, grift.
The most important part of this excellent article is that Italian politics isn’t all that hard to understand. The Anglosphere likes to go on about an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a mozzarella, but there is no mystery of how Italian politics works, how the parties align, and how Italian politicians have damaged the social state to comply with directives from the EU.
To wit: “She failed to mention that roughly 40 percent of Italian workers earn less than 10 euros an hour in the country where real wages have … [declined over the course of the past thirty years].”
Frankly, I am appalled by how little Italians make. Further, because minimum wage is decided by negotiations by economic sector and not by a national law, the concept of a minimum wage is rickety. Fortunately, workplace protections are still stronger in Italy than in “at-will employee” U S of A. I will be watching the results of the referendums to be held on 8 / 9 June to repeal the so-called Jobs Act and to change citizenship requirements to be less reliant on jus sanguinis (inherited citizenship).
Further, the argument that the Western industrial countries aren’t competitive on wages doesn’t hold up when one looks at how low Italian wages are. Instead, it’s the war on the working class. Heck, even Italian medical doctors don’t make what a U.S. medical doctor makes.
As to “Western nationalism,” which must come out of the Frodo-Atreju-Gollum-Tolkien wing of the Fratelli d’Italia, I am reminded of Meloni’s insistence on the use of the word Nazione for Italy.
Italy is many things, but it is too varied a country to be a nazione. For most Italians, it is Il Paese. The country. Nation is a top-down idea, a fantasy of hierarchy. Here in the Undisclosed Region, mon petit pays, society is from the ground up — a country of cows, bees, chocolate, educution, an amazing work ethic, and religion in the style of Pope Francis.
Nation, indeed.
Thank you, DJG.
I have noticed the Italians moving to Mauritius. They tend to work in textiles, hotels and catering, but some are in finance and technology.
There are a dozen families, split evenly between young and retirees, in my small town on the west coast. We have had Italian neighbours, two different families, for a dozen years.
With regard to Renzi, he’s the darling of British centrists. They know nothing about him apart from the marketing by the MSM.
From your comments, it seems that many people from Europe are moving to Mauritius. Any push-back from the local population against that form of immigration? And how much total population can Mauritius comfortably host?
Thank you.
There’s very little evidence of push back other than for environmental reasons, insufficient water / water infrastructure and loss of farm land, and, but not solely due to much better paid foreigners, house prices going up.
Many, if not most, Mauritians have family and friends abroad, so they are relaxed. Also, there are no indigenous Mauritians.
Migrants are quite safe and most welcome there. There aren’t enough Mauritians, especially with skills.
DJG,
What are your thoughts about the impact on Italy of Hillary Clinton? She is linked to the downfall of Muammar Khadaffi. His efforts held back the wave of immigration through Lampedusa.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the announcements of Meloni. She is kinda like the AOC of the EU. She too was elected on the basis of being a reformer and once in she ran up the Jolly Roger and showed her true colours. That threat that Ursula made against her before her election about the EU having the tools to use to bring her in line was totally unnecessary. With Biden in she trimmed Italy’s sails to what he wanted as much as she could and even rescued him when he stared to wander away from that group of EU leaders. But then the winds of change came along with the election of Donald Trump and she jumped a plane to meet with him for several hours in Mar-a-Lago back in January. And that is the key with her. She will always align herself with the most powerful figure at any particular time in order to ensure her own political survival. If Putin was made head of the EU tomorrow I’m sure that she would jump the next plane to Moscow to talk to him about Italy’s historical ties to Russia.
Thank you, Rev.
Having worked in Russia for HSBC twenty years ago, I noticed how much of the equipment for factories and parts for vehicles came from Italy. Italy was then and is to some extent now a serious competitor for Germany, but China is eclipsing the pair.
The problem for the Western mindset in general, is that it is very node oriented, from atoms to individuals, in a reality that is the interplay between nodes and networks.
The essence of the node is synchronization, everything on the same wavelength, functioning as one. While the essence of the network is harmonization. Everything interacting, with an overall balance. “Entangled particles.”
So when it’s just the node, it becomes a feedback loop with no circuit breakers. Microphone up to the speaker, shriek going parabolic. Echo chamber. Like Israel.
The eventual consequence is when it all goes super nova and collapses into the vortex in the middle. Black hole.
If they ditched the euphemisms and just explained what they believe about the way the world works, they’d sound more coherent. Imagine Meloni pledging her allegiance to the Empire, waxing rhapsodic about her imperial patriotism, and exclaiming how true and just it is that the lesser orders don’t get a say in how it’s run. It might take less energy than the constant stream of P.R. talk, which I know politicians enjoy, somewhat sadistically.
Is it just me or is this basically another slight variant of Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” with somewhat different costuming?
And wasn’t even that basically a way to make xenophobia intellectually respectable again?
This is what happened in the great Roman Empire. Brave Roman citizens left Rome to expand abroad, and vice versa, the conquered people went to Rome, the economic center of the city. I think Meloni is more of a traditionalist than Mussolini.
The chart by Philipp Heimberger is a devastating indictment of Italy’s economic (mis-)management over the past 30 years. Even worse than Greece. 1987’s Il Sorpasso is just a distant memory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_sorpasso_(economics)
Thank you and well said.
I have followed Heimberger’s work for years.
Some years ago, he was invited to meetings in Rome and Brussels to discuss his analysis. Unfortunately, the neoliberal Italian government, which set up the meetings, did not support his findings.
Young Italians are still coming to the UK. One hears from them of their peers in Germany and Netherlands.
It’s so sad that Italy,which once had a strong communist/leftist movement, now only has these pathetic centrist parties.
This, no one to challenge Meloni.
I thought 5 states movement might make an impact, but did not happen.
They gave up their sovereignty when they joined the euro.