Italy’s Giorgia Meloni: Why the West Is Worth Defending

Giorgia Meloni might just be the most interesting leader on the world stage right now. 

Not long ago the Italian prime minister was a fringe figure: the head of a small political party called the Brothers of Italy, which has its roots in the country’s postwar neo-fascist movement. But in the seemingly permanent turmoil of Italian politics, Meloni emerged as the leading right-populist in the country. After the right-wing coalition she led won a majority in 2022, she became the first woman to serve as Italy’s prime minister. 

Before Meloni took power, The Atlantic headlined her rise as “The Return of Fascism in Italy.” Most of the legacy press agreed, viewing her as akin to other European populists they have characterized as threats to liberal democracy. But that’s not quite how things turned out. 

During her two years in office, Meloni has proven to be a pragmatist as well as a populist. She is a bigger Ukraine hawk than just about any other Western leader—and she’s besties with Zelensky. She has, by all accounts, worked well with the Biden administration. And she recently welcomed Britain’s new Labour prime minister to Italy to offer advice on how to tackle illegal immigration. (Meloni’s government has overseen a big drop in boat crossings from North Africa to Italy.) 

As the author of a recent profile in The Guardian acknowledged, “Meloni has worked her way out of the neo-fascist pigeonhole in which her critics tried to confine her.” 

Last week, Meloni was named this year’s “Global Citizen,” an award handed out by the Atlantic Council, an avowedly liberal, internationalist, and establishment think tank. If you want to understand why Meloni has so many fans, look no further than the speech she gave when accepting the award, which we are publishing in full below. (You can also watch the video version at the bottom of this page.) We’re printing this speech because it is a distillation of an important and interesting leader’s worldview—and because it offers the kind of clarity missing from the words of so many contemporary leaders. —Oliver Wiseman  

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for having me. 

My deepest gratitude goes to Chairman John Rogers, President Frederick Kempe, and the entire Atlantic Council for this distinguished recognition I am very proud of. And I thank Elon [Musk] for the beautiful words that he had for me, and for his precious genius for the era in which we live.

I have put a lot of thought into how to present tonight’s speech.

Initially I thought of emphasizing the pride I still feel as the first woman to serve as prime minister in a nation as extraordinary as Italy.

Or about the efforts the Italian government is doing to reform its country to make it, once again, a protagonist of the geopolitical chessboard.

I could have talked about the inseparable bond that unites Italy and the United States, regardless of the political beliefs of the respective governments; a bond witnessed here by the many friends of Italian origin, representatives of a community that for generations has contributed to making America stronger.

Or I could have talked about foreign policy, in a time dominated by chaos in which Italy stands firmly alongside those who defend their freedom and sovereignty, not only for it is right to do so but also because it is in the interest of Italy and the West to prevent a future in which the law of the strongest prevails.

As a politician, you basically have two options: being a leader or a follower, to point a course or not, to act for the good of your people, or to act only driven by polls. Well, my ambition is to lead, and not to follow. 

Tonight, in any case, I want to offer you a different perspective.

Let me start by mentioning an op-ed recently published in the European edition of Politico. This analysis was focused on “Meloni’s Western nationalism.” The author, who is called Dr. Constantini, argues that my political belief is “in what might be called ‘Western nationalism.’ ” A thought which, at its heart, embodies the survival and Renaissance of Western civilization, which, according to Constantini, is “new to the European scene.”

I do not know if nationalism is the correct word, because it often recalls doctrines of aggression or authoritarianism. However, I know that we should not be ashamed to use and defend words and concepts like nation and patriotism, because they mean more than a physical place; they mean a state of mind to which one belongs in sharing culture, traditions, and values. When we see our flag, if we feel proud, it means that we feel the pride to be part of a community, and that we are ready to do our part to make its fate better.

Well, for me, the West is more than a physical place. By the word West we do not simply define countries by specific geographical location, but as a civilization built over the centuries with the genius and sacrifices of many.

The West is a system of values in which the person is central, men and women are equal and free, and therefore the systems are democratic, life is sacred, the state is secular, and based on the rule of law.

I ask and wonder, to myself and to you: Are these values which we should be ashamed of? And do these values drive us away from the others, or do they bring us closer to the others?

As the West, I think we have two risks to counter. The first is what one of the greatest contemporary European philosophers, Roger Scruton, called oikophobia, from the Greek words oikos, which means home, and phobia, which means fear. Oikophobia is the aversion to one’s home. A mounting contempt, which leads us to want to violently erase the symbols of our civilization, in the U.S. as in Europe.

The second risk is the paradox that, while on the one hand the West looks down on itself, on the other hand it often claims to be superior to the others.

The result? The result is that the West is in danger of becoming a less credible interlocutor. The so-called Global South is demanding more influence. Developing nations that are by now largely established are autonomously collaborating among themselves. Autocracies are gaining ground on democracies, and we risk looking more and more like a closed and self-referential fortress.

In Italy, to reverse this course, we decided to launch, for example, the Mattei Plan for Africa, a model of cooperation based on an equal footing to build a new, long-term partnership with African countries.

For, yes, crises are multiplying in the world, but every crisis hides also an opportunity, for it requires to question oneself, and to act.

Above all, we need to recover awareness of who we are. As Western peoples, we have a duty to keep this promise and seek the answer to the problems of the future by having faith in our values: a synthesis born out of the meeting of Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian humanism.

In short, as my English professor, Michael Jackson, used to say: I’m starting with the man in the mirror / I’m asking him to change his ways (we know the song). We have to start with ourselves, to know who we really are, and to respect that, so that we can understand and respect others as well.

There is a narrative that authoritarian regimes care [about] so much. It is about the idea of the inevitable decline of the West, the idea that democracies are failing to deliver. An army of foreign and malign trolls and bots is engaged in manipulating reality and exploiting our contradictions. But to the authoritarian fans, let me say very clearly that we will stand for our values. We will do that.

President Reagan once said, “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenal of the world, is so formidable as the will and the moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.”

I couldn’t agree more. Our freedom and our values, and the pride we feel for them, are the weapons our adversaries fear the most. So we can’t give up the strength of our own identity, for that would be the best gift we can make to authoritarian regimes.

So, at the end of the day, patriotism is the best response to declinism.

Defending our deep roots is the precondition for reaping ripe fruit. Learning from our past mistakes is the precondition for being better in the future.

I will also use the words of Giuseppe Prezzolini, perhaps the greatest conservative intellectual in twentieth-century Italy: “He who knows how to conserve is not afraid of the future, because he has learned the lessons of the past.”

We know how to face the impossible challenges that this era confronts us with only when we learn from the lessons of the past. We defend Ukraine, for we have known the chaos of a world in which the law of the strongest prevails. We fight human traffickers because we remember that, centuries ago, we fought to abolish slavery. We defend nature and humankind, because we know that without the responsible work of humans it is not possible to build a more sustainable future.

As we develop artificial intelligence, we attempt to govern its risks because we fought to be free and we do not intend to trade our freedom in exchange for greater comfort. We know how to read these phenomena because our civilization has given us the tools.

The time we live in requires us to choose what we want to be and what path we want to take. We can continue to fuel the idea of the decline of the West; we can surrender to the idea that our civilization has nothing more to say, no more routes to chart.

Or we can remember who we are, learn also from our mistakes, add our own piece of the story to this extraordinary walk, and govern what happens around us, to leave our children a better world. Which is exactly my choice.

And I like to think that the reason why you have chosen me for this precious award, is that you share this choice.

Thank you.

Giorgia Meloni is the prime minister of Italy. This is a lightly edited version of a speech she delivered at the Atlantic Council Global Citizen Awards in New York City on Monday, September 23, 2024. 

To support The Free Press, become a subscriber today: 

Subscribe now