Who is Giorgia Meloni? Meet Italy's new far-right prime minister

The results of Italy's snap election on September 25 are in, and with 44.04% of the vote, Giorgia Meloni has won and is now Italy's first female prime minister.

Meloni's "Mussolinian" youth (as an activist of the Italian Social Movement, heir to fascism) may be behind her, but not her ultraconservative ideals. Giorgia Meloni is well known for being unapologetically anti-LGTBI, anti-abortion, etc.

But who is Giorgia Meloni, the woman that CNN calls "Italy's most far-right prime minister since Mussolini"? And how did the leader of the Brothers of Italy political party get to where she is today?

Giorgia Meloni was born on January 15, 1977, in Rome, in the famous historic district of Garbatella (pictured), where years later, when she was still a teenager, she would begin her political career. Her childhood was marked by the absence of her father, who left his family to go to Spain, to the Canary Islands, shortly after the birth of Giorgia.

Giorgia Meloni told Vanity Fair: "My dad was never there. He left home when I was one. He lived in the Canary Islands, and we would go to his house for a week or two, and that was it." Eventually, Meloni broke ties with her father at the age of eleven.

In 1992, at age 15, she joined the Fronte della Gioventù (Youth Front), part of the Italian Social Movement, a party with obvious fascist leanings. Here we can see Giorgia in 1971 during a rally in Rome.

Giorgia Meloni has been passionate about politics and activism from an early age. While studying at the Liceo Amerigo Vespucci, she founded the student group Gli Antenati (meaning The Ancestors) to fight against Minister Rosa Russo Iervolino's education reform (pictured).

After graduating from secondary school with top marks, Giorgia Meloni decided not to enroll in college. Despite this, in 1996, at the age of 22, she became the head of Student Action at the national level.

The Student Action movement is linked to the National Alliance, the transformation of an Italian social movement that, in the 1990s, adopted more moderate postures or, at the very least, concealed its fascist past.

Image: By AzioneStudentesca - Own work, Public Domain

Meloni ran for the first time in 1998 as a National Alliance candidate for the Rome Provincial Council for the area of Garbatella, her home constituency. She was elected and appointed as a member of the Commission for Culture, Schools and Youth Policy, a position she held until 2003.

Gianfranco Fini (pictured), the undisputed leader of the National Alliance at the time, took notice of Meloni and proposed she become the national coordinator of the party's youth movement in 2001. She became the first female president of the right-wing national youth organization, and in April 2006, she was elected as a National Alliance MP.

In 2008, she returned to the Italian Parliament and was appointed Minister of Youth Policies by Berlusconi, which she then transformed into the Ministry of Youth. Giorgia Meloni was, at the time, 31 years old and the youngest minister in the history of the Italian Republic.

In 2012, Berlusconi promoted the unification of the entire Italian right within the so-called Polo delle Libertá. However, Giorgia Meloni had serious disagreements, abandoned ship, and created a new party: Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy).

In 2013, she came out openly against gay adoption. Then, in 2014, she shared a propaganda message on Twitter on behalf of the Brothers of Italy with the slogan: "A child is not a whim. No to adoptions for homosexuals. A child must have a father and a mother".

Photo: Twitter @OToscani

The photo accompanying the Brothers of Italy's controversial message was also a problem. It was a photograph taken by Oliviero Toscani, a photographer famous for his campaigns favoring diversity and tolerance (for Benetton, for example). Toscani asked, "But what's going through @Fratelliditalia's mind to use my photo for such a motive? I will sue them."

Photo: Twitter @OToscani

In 2014, during the European elections, Meloni's party failed to pass the threshold of 4% of the vote, obtaining only 3.7%. To keep the party active in Italy, the Brothers of Italy allied themselves with Salvini's Northern League, and the two right-wing leaders launched a malicious campaign against the government of Matteo Renzi, reaffirming the Eurosceptic position of Meloni's party.

In 2016, during the discussion of the Cirinnà bill aimed at approving marriage between people of the same gender, Meloni declared bluntly: "No to same-sex marriage; it would be a huge expense for the State and and lead to the unacceptable possibility of homosexuals adopting children." The Brothers of Italy then fought in Parliament against the Cirinnà bill.

There is little doubt about Meloni's feelings toward the LGBT community. In an exclusive interview with ProVita, Giorgia Meloni attacked what she refers to as "LGBT lobbies," declaring that "fighting against all forms of discrimination is one thing, banning traditional fairy tales or modifying them to adapt them to the demands of LGBT lobbies is another."

Giorgia Meloni likes to mix politics and private life, for the two are nearly inseparable. So it is not surprising that she announced that she was going to be a mother in the middle of a massive rally in support of the traditional family modal in front of thousands of people.

Surprisingly, despite her adamant defense of the traditional family model, Meloni chose to have her child out of wedlock. Giorgia told Verissimo magazine: "I suffered when I announced that I was expecting my daughter Ginevra on Family Day. Many critics wanted me to have an abortion. I suffered because I felt guilty like I couldn't pass the test of motherhood."

Giorgia Meloni (pictured here during her pregnancy) is not married to her partner and the father of her daughter, journalist Andrea Giambruno, despite her defense of traditional marriage. They met on a TV show and both say it was love at first sight.

In May 2016, a law was passed in Italy, allowing same-sex couples to register as common-law couples. Meloni, of course, had strong feelings about the law and said, "It is a hypocritical law because it only concerns the rich and allows homosexual couples to go abroad and buy a child. It is a law for Elton John."

In 2016, Giorgia Meloni ran for mayor of Rome with the support of Matteo Salvini. She didn't score too badly (she got 20.64% of the vote), but that wasn't enough to get her through to the second round. Virginia Raggi of the 5 Star Movement eventually became Rome's mayor.

At the 2018 Italian elections, Giorgia Meloni did not hesitate to have her photograph taken with Viktor Orbán, the controversial Hungarian far-right leader. Meloni's party, Brothers of Italy, did not do well though, with a meager 4% of the vote, insufficient to obtain parliamentary representation.

Photo: Facebook @Giorgia Meloni

However, the following year, the results of the Brothers of Italy in the European elections showed an increase in the percentage of votes: the party reached 6.5%. The rise of Giorgia Meloni within the Italian center-right and abroad was undeniable, and in 2020 she was elected president of the Party of European Conservatives and Reformists.

In the 2022 elections, the Brothers of Italy overtook Salvini's League throughout the country, consolidating its position as the leader of the national right. Giorgia Meloni then declared herself ready to govern in 2023, as reported by La Repubblica. "We are no longer the children of an inferior deity," said Ignazio La Russa, the party leader.

In 2021, she published an autobiography titled: "I am Giorgia. My roots, my ideas". Interestingly, the book's title was taken from a song by the Italian group Mem & J ('Io sono Giorgia'), which, in reality, was meant to be a criticism of Meloni.

Giorgia Meloni is now the Prime Minister of Italy. A position that she most likely earned by moderating her messages during her campaign (going so far as to disavow fascism in a video), and low voter participation. With Meloni's far-right credo on immigration, LGTBI rights and abortion intact, Italy may be in for some big changes.