Meloni, Mussolini, and the Media

Ricochet ^ | 26 Sep 2022 | Jon Gabriel

[Rummyfan]

Whenever Italy elects a right-of-center Prime Minister, the international press labels them a fascist and links them to Mussolini (coincidentally, the only Italian PM they’ve heard of). What was true for Silvio Berlusconi and Mario Draghi is true of their latest PM, Giorgia Meloni, elected over the weekend....

I’m no scholar in Italian politics, nor have I invested much time researching the 317 parties jockeying for control from Turin to Taranto. But considering the news media’s coverage of U.S. politics, I didn’t fall for their latest imprecation.

They claimed Ronald Reagan was a fascist. As was Bush Sr., Bush Jr., McCain, Romney, and Trump. As I type, the press is pivoting from “Trump is literally Hitler” to “DeSantis is even more Hitlery than Hitler.” Hell, they thought Liz Cheney was a fascist until a few years ago.

So, their track record is, let’s say, spotty. And provincial. Which is why our political press called Jair Bolsonaro “Brazil’s Trump” and Viktor Orbán “Hungary’s Trump.” They view every election around the world as a proxy battle on whatever Beltway buzz is circling the cubicles this week.

[Rummyfan]

The left hates her because they reflexively denigrate family, faith, and patriotism. All of these are bulwarks against government power, transnational finance, and the NGO-driven international monoculture. That just won’t do. There is no world but one and Klaus Schwab is its prophet.

Meloni disagrees, as do a growing number of voters around the world. Sweden ousted its leftist government two weeks ago.

[Don Corleone]

It took no time at all for the blast e-mail to go out to all their media sycophants who don’t even have the intelligence to change the wording. Mussolini, Fascists. Boy!

[marron]

You have to expect fascists to call us names. It’s what they do.

[Rummyfan]

The best part of Meloni’s speech was her quoting G.K. Chesterton, a personal favorite. Here’s the full quote, from his book Heretics:

Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. 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, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.

[USA-FRANCE]

Woke media considers “family” as a crime against humanity.

[chuckee]

Mussolini and his mentor, Gentile’s fascism subordinates the concept of the individual to service of the state. Its economic precepts are based on socialism with the state controlling the economy and nationalizing industry. Meloni’s conservatism is the antithesis. Democrats here are closer to the definition of fascism than Meloni or whoever else they accuse of fascism. Mussolini had a minister of disinformation much like the Democrats here tried to establish a Minister of Disinformation and cling to the superiority of the collective over the individual