The Fratelli d’Italia is now said to include several figures reluctant to let go of their fascist beliefs. But Meloni and her party are explained by their present, and by the policies they will introduce when in power, not by their past. And in that present, an attempt to re-found fascism on Italian soil would be demented. She established the Fratelli d’Italia in 2012, along with two other much older politicians. In the ensuing decade, her new party has come to dominate the Italian Right and to shunt the centre-Left Partito Democratico into second place—a party which itself evolved, via a series of name changes, from the Italian Communist Party in 1991.

So, Italy’s politics are now dominated by two parties which both sprang from revolutionary and murderous dictatorships, both of which have decided that the messy business of parliamentary democracy is to be preferred to the cult of the all-powerful leader. In the decade since she co-founded the Fratelli, Meloni has re-fashioned the party. That does not mean that it will take its place meekly beside others on the Left and Right, but its policies will require serious engagement from liberals, not dismissive accusations of bigotry. They are not dangerous, as they presently stand; were they to become so, the checks and balances within the Italian constitution, and the liveliness and diversity of Italian civil society, would be a corrective.