New Italian Prime Minister Is a Bigoted Conspiracy Theorist; Republicans Love Her

GOPers flock to newest fascist on the block

Manny Otiko
4 min readSep 28, 2022
iorgia Meloni (CPAC 2022 con Hermann Tertsch y Victor Gonzalez./Wikipedia)

In an inadvertently funny comment, Steve King, the notoriously racist former Republican congressman, once said about European neo-Nazis, “If they were in America pushing the platform that they push, they would be Republicans.”

How true.

King, who was always an embarrassment to the GOP establishment, was one of the first American conservatives to develop ties with European fascists. He was an outlier. Now that fascism has gone mainstream.

This was evident in the fawning praise given to newly-minted Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Meloni is part of a rising wave of neofascists across the globe. Fascists have seen growth in Italy and Sweden. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats, a party originally founded by neo-Nazis, won big in recent parliamentary elections.

However, across the Atlantic, Meloni’s rise was met with applause from domestic fascists. This is not surprising because she has already developed ties to the Republican Party. She has appeared at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) and worked alongside Steve Bannon, one of many fascists in the Trump White House.

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Manny Otiko

Manny Otiko writes about race, politics and sports. He has been published in Salon and LA Weekly. Follow him on Twitter @mannyotiko.