How Giorgia Meloni Became a “Globalist Elite” Herself
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni used to damn liberal “globalists” who undermined national sovereignty. This week, she accepted the Atlantic Council’s Global Citizen Award, in recognition of her role as a servile ally to Washington.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni addresses journalists during the final national press conference during the high-level NATO summit at Litexpo Conference Center in Vilnius, Lithuania, on July 12, 2023. (Dominika Zarzycka / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
During the turbulent 2010s, the steadfast advocates of neoliberal reforms, globalization, and open markets wasted no opportunities to lampoon the rising nationalist danger. Not just Donald Trump, but also figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, and Britain’s Nigel Farage were presented as an existential threat to the liberal order and a blemish on Western civilization’s time-honored values.
In 2016, the Economist ran a famous cover on the “new nationalism” featuring Vladimir Putin alongside Farage and Trump. In the Atlantic, neoliberal zealots such as Yascha Mounk had no ink to spare in their condemnation of dangerous illiberal “populists” — not only Orbán and Trump, but also the likes of Spain’s Podemos, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. We were told that contemporary politics was less about Left and Right than the fundamental fault line between populism and liberal democracy, nationalists and globalists. Any perceptive and civilized person must instinctively know what side to take.
But now times have changed. We have moved from the populist 2010s to the geopolitical chaos of the 2020s. The same neoliberal ideologues who used to preach about nationalist authoritarians seem to have warmed to the political opportunity offered by such figures, as useful thugs able to carry out undesirable tasks. Worried about the multiple wars from Ukraine to the Middle East and pervaded by the sense of a fundamental decline of Western civilization, the liberal mainstream has radically changed its approach to the far right. The message now: don’t keep them out of the cocktail party, but invite them in.
For their part, the old “nationalists” — or at least many of them — have been eager to be accepted and finally introduced to high society. It’s only fitting for reprobates anxious to get rid of the stigma carried from their fascist past, and often harboring a hefty dose of opportunism. Once at the table, both sides — the good old respectable liberal society and the new barbarian nationalists — usually find that, while perhaps disagreeing on aesthetics, they’re not that far apart on policy.
Giorgia Meloni, a Global Citizen
This week we had the most concise image yet of this sordid marriage of interests between champions of neoliberal globalization and the nationalist far right, as the Atlantic Council awarded the title of “Global Citizen” to Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni. The “independent think tank” was created in 1961 to advocate the need for strong ties between Europe and the United States. But more generally, it has become a strong ideological voice supporting liberal values of free trade, freedom of expression, and the “rules-based international order” — nominally opposed to far-right extremism as well as communism.
Given this liberal orientation, its awarding of a prize to Meloni, who hails from the tradition of the neofascist Movimento Sociale Italiano, has created an uproar inside the organization. Staffers have reportedly expressed their displeasure to the council’s current CEO, former journalist Frederick Kempe. But if anything, Meloni should have even more reason to be ashamed to receive such an award. For years, she constructed her public image as that of an “anti-globalist” rebel, fighting against international finance and what Italians call poteri forti — the entrenched “powers that be.”
In her 2021 book, Io Sono Giorgia (“I am Giorgia”), before she became premier, she furiously took aim at the “globalist” elites who she accused of stealing popular sovereignty. She argued that “globalism” means moving power to international organizations and finance, while attacking the values and traditions of ordinary people. Like her ally Matteo Salvini, she took aim at George Soros, accused of being a speculator puppeteer manipulating immigration behind the scenes. Against this globalism, she called for the recovery of the idea of the nation and of patriotism, which she argued have become unmentionable in a world dominated by a progressive dictatorship.
This type of anti-globalist approach starkly contrasts with the radiant smile sported by Meloni in the official picture of the award reception. There, she was flanked by all sorts of figures that might perfectly embody the “globalism” she formerly damned. Take John Francis William Rogers, executive vice president of Goldman Sachs. Or Klaus Schwab, the organizer of the World Economic Forum in Davos — a figure viscerally hated by the far-right digital cesspits who attribute to him all sorts of conspiratorial goings-on in building a post-COVID-19 new economic order.
Naturally, at the top of this official picture we find none other than Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, whom Meloni expressly demanded should be the man to give the award. The same Musk who — among other antics — famously expressed his intention to “coup anyone” who got in the way of US capitalist interests. Not exactly a champion of national sovereignty against the world’s rulers.
Nationalists and Vassals
So, what’s happened? Has Meloni betrayed nationalism to embrace “globalism,” as many international observers wonder? The granting of the Global Citizen Award to a rabid anti-globalist is surely a grotesque manifestation of the moral bankruptcy of liberal Atlanticists, now eager to recruit anyone to their cause. But it can also be used to better understand the actual politics of people like Meloni, and the relation between official discourse and practice. In short, Meloni’s nationalism is an ideological fraud: it appeals to patriotism to legitimize adherence to the project of Western empire (West against the Rest) at times of geopolitical turmoil, and Italy’s junior position within this framework as an imperial vassal.
Meloni is evidently aware of the ideological contradiction —and even tried to make excuses for it during her acceptance speech. She referred to an article published in Politico by political science researcher Anthony J. Constantini, which categorizes her position as Western nationalism, a nationalism “which holds the survival and flourishing of Western civilization as its goal — as opposed to just focusing on one’s own state.” Rather than simply rebutting the article, she argued that there was nothing wrong about being proud of Western civilization and of its democratic values, now said to be under attack.
Philosophically, such a position is easy to pull apart. Patriotism has historically meant a sense of pride and belonging to nation-states, also tempered by the fact that these same nation-states coincided with spaces of democratic sovereignty and offered their members citizenship and the protections and rights that derive from this. “Western patriotism” instead reeks of imperialism and racial supremacism. It is devoid of any reference to popular sovereignty or participation in making collective decisions. Where should we look for the democratic assembly representing the West?
The reality behind such ideological acrobatics is that Meloni has carved out a role as the guarantor of Italy’s strict adherence to Atlanticism and to supporting US economic and military interests in Italy, regardless of whether they contradict Italy’s national interests. This not altogether new for Italy’s far right. The hard core of the post-1945 neofascist movement exhibited a strong anti-Americanism inherited from the conflict between Fascist Italy and the United States during World War II. Yet during the Cold War, many right-wing subversive groups contributed to NATO clandestine “stay-behind” operations. Surely the dominant Christian Democracy was a strong institutional supporter of US interests in Italy. But nonetheless, it retained a notion of Italy’s sovereignty and economic autonomy — something that, despite her proclamations of patriotism, seems completely lost on Meloni.
Italy for Rent
Perhaps befuddled by the radicalism of her nationalist discourse, few even among Meloni’s most ardent critics expected how far she would kowtow to US geopolitical and military interests once in power. Certainly, she and her ministers waste no opportunity to defend the Italianness of the most obscure pasta recipe or some beloved cheese against the attempt of shadowy international forces to “steal our food.” They wax lyrical about the Italian flag, the great merits of Italian civilization, technology, science, and so on. Yet when it comes to actual national interests, to geopolitics and Italy’s position in the international economy, the government seems extraordinarily pliant to US desires.
On the military and geopolitical front, Meloni has vocally abandoned her admiration for Putin, who she had previously congratulated as a representative of the free will of the Russian people, by providing steady support to the war in Ukraine. She has gone to great lengths on this front, given that public opinion in Italy is among the most critical of the war effort anywhere in Europe. She has reneged on Italy’s participation in China’s Belt and Road initiative — agreed in 2019 under the first government of Giuseppe Conte, supported by an all-populist coalition formed by the Five Star Movement and Lega — because of pressures coming from Washington.
On the economic front, Meloni has allowed the sale of strategic Italian assets to US investors. She has reneged on her solemn campaign promise to keep the Italian mobile network TIM under national control by selling it to the US investment fund KKR. This might be considered a rather sensitive matter, given that this is a network that covers almost 90 percent of Italian households. Further, she has given the green light to US asset manager BlackRock to acquire more than 3 percent of Italy’s defense and security giant Leonardo, thus allowing it to become the second-largest shareholder after the Italian state itself.
US investment companies are also likely to get a chunk from the new wave of privatization of state-owned assets that will affect the Italian mail service (Poste), the railway company (Ferrovie dello Stato), and the world’s oldest bank in continuous operation, Monte dei Paschi di Siena. Meloni has thus proven not only a loyal vassal of US interests but also an attentive shopping assistant in the sale of the nation’s strategic assets to the imperial hegemon.
Certainly, Meloni is not the only nationalist who has proven that her explicit ideological positioning was a smoke screen, hiding the shrewdest opportunism and propensity for servility. But she also differs from nationalists such Hungary’s Orbán, who while acting as vassals also try to extract as many concessions as possible from their chosen overlords.
If accusations raised by the Left against Meloni often drew on her own, nationalist, self-presentation, we are now confronted with a curious reversal — and a more grotesque reality. It turns out that the “nationalists” were really rather similar to the infamous “globalists” that they used to chastise.