As a teenager, Đorđa Meloni would sneak out in the dead of night and help put up ultra-right posters around her Roman neighborhood, playing cat and mouse with left-wing enemies who could easily turn violent.
Three decades later, she no longer needs covert operations to get her message across. Instead, her photo graces billboards across the country ahead of the Sept. 25 election that could crown her as Italy's first female prime minister.
"It's been an incredible journey, but if I win the election, then it's not the end, it's actually just the beginning," Meloni told Reuters last Sunday from her parliamentary office overlooking the historic center of Rome.
She promised that under her leadership, Italy would not be a "weak link" in the Western alliance
Her rapid rise is intertwined with the transformation of her party, the Brothers of Italy, which emerged from the shadows and into the mainstream without ever fully shedding its post-fascist roots.
Polls predict that the group will become the largest party in Italy, winning up to 25 percent of the vote compared to only 4,3 percent in the 2018 elections and surpassing its once dominant allies - Matteo Salvini's League party and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.
Friends and critics alike say the surge in support is largely due to the dogged determination of 45-year-old Meloni, who won her first local election when she was 21 and became Italy's youngest-ever minister when, at 32, she was appointed department for youth in Berlusconi's government in 2008.
The rise of Đorđe Meloni is particularly significant given her humble origins in a country where family ties often trump merit, writes Reuters. She was raised by a single mother in a working-class district of the Italian capital, as her father abandoned them after her birth.
In her 2021 autobiography, I Am Đorđa, Meloni says she found a new family at age 15, when she joined the local youth branch of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), founded in 1946 by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
She was hard-working and energetic and was soon noticed by party activist Fabio Rampeli, who organized training courses for what he hoped would be a new generation of conservative politicians.
"My idea was to imagine a right-wing government that had nothing to do with (fascism) in the 1930s," said Rampeli, who is the deputy president of the Brothers of Italy in parliament.
"Meloni was blonde, blue-eyed, petite, casual and witty. She was also very specific and not a raving fan. Those were all the characteristics we needed to raise the Italian right to a higher level," he said.
Flames and angels
The MSI was merged into a new body called the National Alliance (AN) in the mid-1990s before merging with the mainstream conservative group created by former prime minister Berlusconi.
In his biggest political gamble, Meloni and a contingent of AN veterans left Berlusconi in 2012 and were among the founders of the "Brothers of Italy" party, named after the opening lines of the national anthem.
The party has retained the old flame symbol of the original MSI group, and the Italian media occasionally publishes photos showing fascist memorabilia in the offices of some regional Brothers of Italy politicians.
Meloni compares his party to the American Republican Party and the British Conservative Party. Patriotism and traditional family values are glorified, while political correctness and global elites are harshly condemned
Reuters writes that such relics do not adorn Melon's office, but there are numerous figurines of angels, photos of her five-year-old daughter, chess sets, a photo of Pope John Paul with Mother Teresa and containers of colored pencils that she uses for precise notes.
She rejects any suggestion that her party is nostalgic for the fascist era. She distanced herself from a video that emerged this month of her as a teenager speaking in French and praising Mussolini, a World War II ally of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, as a "good politician."
"Obviously I have a different opinion now," she said, without elaborating.
Meloni compares his party to the American Republican Party and the British Conservative Party. Patriotism and traditional family values are glorified, while political correctness and global elites are harshly condemned.
"Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death," she said in a June speech to supporters of the Spanish right-wing Vox party.
"No to the violence of Islam, yes to more secure borders, no to mass immigration, to work for our people, no to big international finance," she continued in Spanish, as anger rose in her voice.
Underrated
Polling agencies say the secret to her success is her apparent refusal to compromise and the consistency of her messages.
While her allies Salvini and Berlusconi joined forces with the center-left last year to form a unity government headed by Mario Draghi, Meloni rejected it, saying the appointment of an unelected former central banker was undemocratic. That decision left the Brothers of Italy as the only major party in the opposition, so it did not have to defend unpopular decisions made during the covid emergency.
Reuters also writes that Meloni is cautious ahead of the election, calling on her allies not to make promises they cannot keep and pledging responsibility in managing Italy's fragile public budget.
She is emboldening the Italian establishment by propagating a strong pro-Western message, pledging to increase defense spending and pledging to stand up to Russia and China.
"It won't be the usual Italy with spaghetti and mandolins that won't show up when history calls," Meloni said.
This vigorous rhetoric inevitably provokes comparisons in the Italian press between Meloni and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, according to Reuters.
The Italian leader plays that card, saying that one of her main inspirations is the English philosopher Roger Scruton, who gave the intellectual force to Thatcherism in Britain.
Like Thatcher, Meloni will be her country's first female prime minister if she wins next month. But it's not something he particularly thinks about. She opposes quotas to increase the presence of women in parliament or on boards of directors and believes that women must rise to the top through merit. However, she says being a woman has its advantages in macho Italy.
"Women are often underestimated, but it can be helpful," she said.
Against China's economic expansion
"I want Italy to be strong on the international chessboard," said Đorđa Meloni recently.
She promised that under her leadership, Italy would not be the "weak link" in the Western alliance, that it would seek to limit China's economic expansion and that it would continue to militarily support Ukraine.
"Ukraine is ... the tip of the iceberg of conflicts whose goal is to revise the world order. Russia is currently louder, and China is quieter, but it is penetrating everywhere," she said in an interview with Reuters.
In 2019, Italy was the first major industrialized country to become part of China's Belt and Road Initiative, a massive project designed to improve Beijing's trade reach.
Only a small part of the agreement signed by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his state visit to Italy has been implemented, and Meloni said that she will not seek to continue its implementation because she does not support "Chinese expansion into Italy or Europe."
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