What does far-right rule in Italy really mean? In a book published earlier this year, La Destra al potere. Rischi per la democrazia? (The Right in Power: Risks for Democracy?), political scientist and former MP Carlo Galli attempts to understand what is genuinely original about Giorgia Meloni’s government, in order to grasp what actual threat it poses to Italian democracy.

In his view, what he calls the “Right” — which outside Italy might more properly be called the “far right” — is neither the direct heir to fascism nor a traditional form of conservatism. Meloni’s plans for constitutional change include introducing the so-called premierato — transferring power from parties and parliament into the prime minister’s own hands — but they do not mark a new regime. Rather, this is a movement that feeds on society’s fears so as to secure power for a government with one primary focus: defending the interests of capital.

The current far-right government is not a fascist takeover. But it is, in a sense, the ultimate political phase in the crisis of neoliberalism, leading to a debased democracy — what Galli calls “post-democracy.” In this respect, the Italian new right is a danger to a democracy that has already been weakened by decades of neoliberal reforms. As Galli tells Romaric Godin in an interview, the Meloni government “has accelerated all the worst dynamics that were underway already.”