Italian Politics
by Mike James
On September 25, Italy voted for Giorgia Meloni from the Brothers of Italy party as the new Prime Minister. This is significant because Meloni is the first Italian leader from a political party with a fascist lineage since the time of World War II.
Due to the instability in Italian politics, Meloni is able to rise to the top because her party just needed to get a plurality of the voters. Her party only needed about a quarter of the voters to prevail due to forming a coalition with other parties on the right. Infighting between parties on the left has also helped.
Meloni's social views are similar to Hungary's autocratic leader Viktor Orban. Italy never had a clean break with its past like the Germans did. There was never a complete break with the Benito Mussolini-era administration. Some of Mussolini's people formed a party called the Italian Social Movement after World War II. It was a neo-fascist group that never got more than single-digit support in elections. It dissolved in 1995. Other groups began to form after this that picked up the mantle of the Italian Social Movement, but they were less extreme. Meloni's group is one of these groups; it was founded in 2012.
The connections to the former fascist party include two Mussolini descendants that have run under Meloni's party banner. In 2019 Brothers of Italy party members attended a dinner commemorating Mussolini's March on Rome, which brought his fascist party to power in 1922.
Meloni's victory is coupled with a far-right victory in Sweden's election just two weeks ago. The Sweden Democrats are a right-wing party gaining power in Sweden. They were originally a fascist party that started distancing itself from its origins in the late 1990s. It is the largest group in Sweden's right-wing bloc and will be the second largest group within the Swedish parliament.
Both Meloni's party and her coalition partner on the right, Lega, have expressed in the past leaving the euro, but their stance on that has softened. They have also talked about slimming down the European Union (EU) and cutting out some of the bureaucracy.
Ettore Greco, executive vice president of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, told CNBC that Meloni has managed to soften her past anti-EU rhetoric but could find it hard to establish a good rapport with her partners in the EU.
"For many years she campaigned on a platform that was very critical of the EU, even arguing for Italy's exit on the euro from time to time, but now she has changed her position reflecting in a sense this strong widespread support for Italy in the EU," he told CNBC in Rome.
Now why would I mention something as obscure as Italian politics in a CGI blog? I think it is important for us to just have an awareness of what is going on in other parts of the world that MIGHT at some point relate to what will happen before Christ returns.
I see no real significance in Meloni's victory other than the fact that since World War II, most of Western Europe has had a liberal democratic leaning. The fact that the EU has expanded over the years and now has some nationalist and right-wing parties developing more power is an indication things do change.
The Church of God movement has had a prophetic scenario that conjectures that the European Union may play some part in the formation of an end-time Beast power. Speculation about the King of the North (Daniel 11:40) emanating from somewhere north of the holy land has led to the consideration of Europe because of its origins in the old Roman Empire. Daniel 2:40-44 begins by addressing the ancient Roman Empire but ends with some similar type of empire in the end times. The end-time empire appears to be like Rome in some ways, but also different due to the mixing of iron with clay.
If you have ever studied the EU at any length, this idea of power and weakness is very characteristic of the EU. Since this is a short blog, I won't get into all that here, but I will leave you with a recent example pertaining to the Italian elections.
Some commentators speculate that the unpredictable nature of this new right-wing coalition in Italy is going to make EU officials nervous. So much so that during a visit to Princeton University in September, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was asked whether she had any concerns over the elections in Italy. She said that if relations went in a "difficult direction", then the EU had "tools" to deal with such crises, appearing to suggest Italy could see its EU funding curbed, as it had done with Hungary if it broke European treaties.
One of the goals of European unity since the close of World War II was to keep Europe from ever having another major war. It has been difficult to create a European Union and more difficult to keep everyone on the same page. Will the future lead to some reorganization of the EU? Something to just keep in the back of your mind in case the now 27 states of the EU ever become 10 (Revelation 17:12).
The earliest form of the EU began with six nations in 1957. Since that time, the EU has grown and changed. What the EU is now is not necessarily what it will be 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now. There is always talk of nations joining or leaving the EU. Just something to be mindful of if you are into looking at possible prophetic scenarios.
Sources:
"Voters in Italy are Poised to Give the Levers of Power to the Far Right. Here's why." By Chico Harlan and Stefano Petrelli, The Washington Post, September 25, 2022.
"March on Rome," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Rome.
"Sweden Democrats," Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats.
"The Far Right Wins Big in Italy. Here's What that Means for Europe," by Holly Ellyatt, September 26, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/26/italys-relationship-with-europe-with-fratelli-ditalia-at-the-helm.html.