Fratelli d'Italia (Italy)

Fascism is no longer a ghost in Italy. It governs.

While Giorgia Meloni parades on the international stage as a respectable stateswoman, the youth of her party reenacts the past: arms outstretched, Nazi salutes, hymns in praise of Mussolini, nostalgia displayed without embarrassment.

“God, family, fatherland.” The old catechism is back, “work” having been quietly sacrificed. Her God now opens the doors of abortion clinics to anti-abortion activists and stands guard over moral order. The same God earns her a singular distinction: being the only sitting European Union leader invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration. The symmetry is telling. The same distrust of protesters. The same suspicion toward dissent. Meloni has now introduced preventive detention of up to twelve hours for any demonstrator deemed suspicious before even acting.

She proclaims herself the architect of a grand “union of the right.” In reality, she stands at the heart of the resurgence of Europe’s far-right movements. Her party, Fratelli d’Italia, sits in the European Parliament alongside Marion Maréchal Le Pen, heir to the Le Pen dynasty, an elected official who openly claims her lineage and celebrates its political legacy.

Fascism does not return in the form of black shirts and a coup d’état. History never repeats itself in exactly the same form.