Giorgia Meloni...Wow, That Escalated Quickly

[JasonBlack]

Italy's new right wing leader has taken international news by storm over the past few weeks. Love her or hate her, she is a firebrand personality bound to spark strong opinions on either side of the fence. What are your thoughts on her?

[JasonBlack]

Before I begin, we should clarify one thing: she isn't "far right". She's socially conservative and economically moderate. With that out of the way.

we'll start with the bad/concerning:
- her stance of "against LGBT" is way too vague for my liking. There is a difference between "I disapprove of many aspects of LGBT culture, but I don't want to go after their rights" (a good opinion) vs "we should go after LGBT people under the law" (a very concerning opinion)
- most of her positions don't sound as extreme as they are made out to be, but all the same, she does have a background of supporting more fascist policies and has worked closely with several figures who were fond of Mussolini. I can't ignore this
- she could stand to be a bit less draconian on immigration. Massive waves of uneducated African and Arab immigrants is a problem, but even if she manages to get fertility to pick up, Italy is still going to face a worker shortage without more imports of skilled labor who are willing to work hard, play by Italy's rules and become Italian.

and now the good
- it's not supposed to be "far right" to be proud of your country or your heritage. you shouldn't have to choose between being patriotic and being not-racist.
- one of the best indicators of how well a country is doing is...how easy is it to start a family? In America, we all seem to believe this is easy over in most of Europe, and the truth is...it isn't, and something needs to be done about it there just as it does here.
- She has balls. Idgaf what you think about her politics, but they are in a 4th turning just like we are, and no country is getting out of this mess without a leader that has balls. 
- You have one job as a holder of political office. It isn't to be a moral paragon to the world, it isn't to bring together all of humanity. Your goal as a statesman is to make decisions about what is best for your country. 


My overall impression is one of cautious positivity. I hope she gets enough support to get something done, but I also want to make sure the opposing parties have enough leverage to check her should she overextend her authority.

[Eric the Green]

I made a post about her somewhere on facebook. Meloni is described as "far right." It mostly seems to be about her background and that of her Party, which may not be as far right now. And the issues that she seems "far right" about, as discussed in the news so far, seem to be mainly culture war/identity issues. She may try to repress LGBTQ people, and restrict immigration. Italy has a worse immigration problem than the USA does; with the constant flow of refugees from middle east tyrants like Assad, as well as people fleeing destroyed environments and wars in Africa. Immigration will be a constant and increasing issue from now on. As George Monbiot said in his great video, in many countries there will simply be nothing there for people where they live, no social, environmental or economic basis for them, pushed out by war, tyranny, climate change and more, so they will try to enter other countries.
https://youtu.be/Z7MFJ4EFezQ?t=709

It's no wonder Europe is reacting against all this immigration. It can't be helped, and the people need to go somewhere. But it's hard to handle, inspect and provide for so many people at once. Many Europeans feel that their identity is threatened if too many people from other ethnic groups and religions settle there, so they vote for cultural-conservative "right-wing" candidates. These migrants may only be there for a few years, perhaps, until things can be restored back home, and Europeans should remember that. Refugees are not necessarily permanent settlers. People are going to need to let loose with their identities more, because we live in a global society and nowhere will be free from ethnic diversity, as migration and immigration continues.

There are limits on what a prime minister can do in Italy; there's lots of checks and balances and barriers to a return to fascism. Maybe Meloni will try; we don't know if she will decrease democracy and assert greater tyranny as has happened in the other "far right" countries she wants to associate with, like Hungary, Poland and Turkey. But she seems to be steadfast in her support for Ukraine and its freedom against the Russian monster. That's good. "Far right" leaders in places like the USA and Poland are more concerned about freedom and justice abroad than at home, so we'll see. But if she's really "far right," it's hard to tell, because they don't tell us much about how far she wants to cut back on the social and economic safety net for the poor and out-of-luck people, although she seems to favor welfare cutbacks (in other words, is she a neoliberal like Truss?). What is her willingness to act on climate change? I haven't heard. What is her approach to crime? Is she really "far right" beyond the culture war? We don't really know.

Quote:"It isn't to be a moral paragon to the world, it isn't to bring together all of humanity. Your goal as a statesman is to make decisions about what is best for your country."

As I often point out, that's easy to say and to fall back on such outdated ideas, and it's fine to be proud of and interested in your country, but to make good decisions about what's good for your country can't be separated anymore from what's the best decisions for the world and all humanity. Issues like the economy and climate change/the environment and pandemics and even identity/migration issues cross borders and continents. And if a leader rips up democracy in one place, it detracts from everyone, and if that leader thinks what's best for their country is to start a war, that would certainly affect those countries that are attacked and all their allies, and would cause more refugees that other countries must deal with. Putin and Assad are exhibits A and B in that respect.

[pbrower2a]

(10-01-2022, 12:07 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: Before I begin, we should clarify one thing: isn't "far right". She's socially conservative and economically moderate. With that out of the way.

we'll start with the bad/concerning:
- her stance of "against LGBT" is way too vague for my liking. There is a difference between "I disapprove of many aspects of LGBT culture, but I don't want to go after their rights" (a good opinion) vs "we should go after LGBT people under the law" (a very concerning opinion)
- most of her positions don't sound as extreme as they are made out to be, but all the same, she does have a background of supporting more fascist policies and has worked closely with several figures who were fond of Mussolini. I can't ignore this
- she could stand to be a bit less draconian on immigration. Massive waves of uneducated African and Arab immigrants is a problem, but even if she manages to get fertility to pick up, Italy is still going to face a worker shortage without more imports of skilled labor who are willing to work hard, play by Italy's rules and become Italian.

and now the good
- it's not supposed to be "far right" to be proud of your country or your heritage. you shouldn't have to choose between being patriotic and being not-racist.
- one of the best indicators of how well a country is doing is...how easy is it to start a family? In America, we all seem to believe this is easy over in most of Europe, and the truth is...it isn't, and something needs to be done about it there just as it does here.
- She has balls. Idgaf what you think about her politics, but they are in a 4th turning just like we are, and no country is getting out of this mess without a leader that has balls. 
- You have one job as a holder of political office. It isn't to be a moral paragon to the world, it isn't to bring together all of humanity. Your goal as a statesman is to make decisions about what is best for your country. 


My overall impression is one of cautious positivity. I hope she gets enough support to get something done, but I also want to make sure the opposing parties have enough leverage to check her should she overextend her authority.

I hope that I do not seem a rigid ideologue. Plenty about me is conservative... even arch-conservative. The concern about "family values" is legitimate. We should have 'pro-child' economic policies if we are not to be the sort of country that relies upon immigration to solve a demographic disaster. People living in cramped. overpriced tenements are less likely to have children than those who  can afford to own or rent single-family housing.  Children are a luxury more expensive in some places than a high-cost marque of automobile. 



 

Jimmy "The Rent IS Too Damn High" McMillan. 

High rents destroyed much of the American dream, as shown in the retail apocalypse that has written finis to a large number of retail chains that once had reliable middle-income customers. To be middle class in some parts of America means that you get to spend more than half your income on rent, something unconscionable when such was below the threshold for housing loans for the total cost of housing, including mortgage payments, taxes, and insurance. Jimmy McMillan makes the argument more fully in an entertaining video than I can put into a few words, so I leave it to him.  

OK, there is much 'lifestyle culture' that I find odious. Drugs, drunkenness, child abuse, spouse abuse, and some other stuff are abominations. To be sure, I support LGBT rights because the alternative is to endorse tendencies that foster homophobia which makes life unsafe even beyond LGBT people. (Law and order is an old conservative virtue to the extent that we need it if we are not to be at risk from lawlessness, including lynching, and homophobic violence is incompatible with law and order)  LGBT people got same-sex marital rights, adoption rights, and protection from workplace discrimination by sacrificing the child-abusing perverts, which I consider a win-win proposition for everyone but the damnable child-abusing perverts.

Even Mussolini had some good ideas. See also Fidel Castro. Dictatorship and military adventures where such were crimes against Humanity and peace were very bad ideas. 

Who will be the immigrants to Italy? Most likely, Latin-Americans have much more in common with Italian culture (start with the Spanish and Portuguese languages, and Haitian patois, which are obviously close relatives of Italian than any other peoples in large numbers from poor countries. Were I Italian I would be seeking to let Ukrainians in to escape Putin's insane invasion. 

It is possible to be a patriot and not a fascist, as shown in the Italian resistance to the thug rule of Nazis occupying much of Italy after Italy first cast off Mussolini. That resistance went from Communists to Churchill-like conservatives. In America it is practically impossible to be a genuine patriot and fail to recognize the abominable disaster that Donald Trump is. Conservative Republicans used to rub our liberal noses in Communism (because we fail to believe in the shabby principle "He who owns the gold rightly makes the rules for the rest of us") that underpins their dream of pure plutocracy. Fascist excoriation of plutocracy may have been a sham appeal to populist sentiments, but plutocracy has never served Humanity well. 

Italy has its regional diversity; northern and southern Italy are very different places. Northern Italy is more like German-speaking Bavaria and Austria than it is to Italian-speaking Sicily. Even in 1946 the referendum on preserving the House of Savoy or establishing an Italian Republic tended monarchist in the South and republican in the North. Italian unification was a marriage of convenience, and the one part of Italy under foreign rule (mostly the former Republic of Venice) was not going to have freedom except within a united Italy. 

America has huge regional divides, but it also has ethnic divides. Many of us deal with the ethnic divides by recognizing the validity of traditions that have their differences but much more in common. The regional divides create a far sharper divide in America than that between, for example, Jews and Arab-Americans. 

Then again, the United States is not really a nation-state so much as it is a citizenship offering much convenience in a political entity that offers far more than it demands.

[JasonBlack]

I'm pleased to see people here can see the validity of Europe's concerns over immigration. With regards to the states, I'm pro-border security, but I don't see immigration (especially legal immigration) as one of our make or break issues. For comparison: immigrants to the United States are about 4 times less likely to commit crimes, while immigrants to France are about 3 times more likely to commit crimes. 

Imo, it's important to look not just at the numbers and nationality of the immigrants themselves, but also at the incentives of all our policies: what kind of people are we encouraging to come here?

[pbrower2a]

(10-01-2022, 03:18 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: I'm pleased to see people here can see the validity of Europe's concerns over immigration. With regards to the states, I'm pro-border security, but I don't see immigration (especially legal immigration) as one of our make or break issues. For comparison: immigrants to the United States are about 4 times less likely to commit crimes, while immigrants to France are about 3 times more likely to commit crimes. 

Imo, it's important to look not just at the numbers and nationality of the immigrants themselves, but also at the incentives of all our policies: what kind of people are we encouraging to come here?

South, Southeast, and East Asians as a whole generally seem unobjectionable people. It's hard to tell many times which "Hispanics" are recent or even illegal immigrants and those who have a long heritage in the USA; Mexican-Americans can assimilate these, and they can assimilate Anglos. 

Latin-Americans are far closer to the cultural mainstream of American culture  by language and religion than are Arabs in France.  Remember well: nearly half of Western Civilization lies within Latin America, especially if one includes the large Hispanic community in the USA.