For the hundredy-hundredth time, let me say: the reporting of the US media on the European Right is not to be believed. I don’t say that as a right-winger who gets his nose out of joint when CBS News calls a politician I like “fascist.” I do get my nose out of joint, but that’s my problem. It’s your problem because you depend on the news media to tell you what’s happening in the world, and they are entirely misleading you. You don’t have to see this as a conspiracy; they lie to themselves about what’s going on, because they have been trained to disable their own skeptical instincts when it comes to maintaining the Narrative.

It is true that Meloni’s party, the Brothers Of Italy, has roots in twentieth-century fascism. But she herself is a standard right-wing populist, in that she is a social conservative (particularly, she values religion and opposes gender ideology) and is skeptical of political and economic globalism. Meloni was raised working class in Rome by a single mother; her father abandoned the family. She still holds on to her strong Roman accent. Below, watch her 15-minute speech in English at the National Conservatism Rome conference in 2020, and tell me with a straight face that that woman is a Fascist. The only thing that would set her apart from a standard US Republican is a more critical attitude towards capitalism, but in the post-Trump era, not even that would be a big deal (e.g., Gov. Ron DeSantis said in Florida recently that “America is a country with an economy, not the other way around” — which is Meloni’s position captured in a phrase). If CBS News is right and Giorgia Meloni is a “fascist,” then I’m telling you, half of America is fascist. Then again, they probably do believe that in the CBS Newsroom in New York.