Far-Right party Brothers of Italy’s leader Giorgia Meloni shows a placard reading in Italian “Thank you Italy” at her party’s electoral headquarters in Rome, early Monday, Sept. 26, 2022.
AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia
Far-right politician Giorgia Meloni is poised to become Italy’s first woman prime minister.
Her ultra-conservative party garnered the most votes in the country’s national election held on Sunday.
The 45-year-old ascended to power after she joined the Italian Social Movement as a youth activist in her teenage years.
Far-right firebrand politician Giorgia Meloni is poised to become Italy’s first woman prime minister after the 45-year-old’s ultra-conservative party garnered the most votes in the country’s national election held on Sunday.
Meloni led the Brothers of Italy party — which has roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement — to victory after co-founding the party in 2012 and becoming its president two years later.
Early Monday morning, Meloni called it “a night of pride for many and a night of redemption,” CNN reported.
“It’s a victory I want to dedicate to everyone who is no longer with us and wanted this night,” Meloni said to a crowd of supporters, according to the news outlet. “Starting tomorrow we have to show our value … Italians chose us, and we will not betray it, as we never have.”
Giorgia Meloni casts her vote at a polling station on September 25, 2022 in Rome.
Andreas SOLARO / AFP) (Photo by ANDREAS SOLARO/AFP via Getty Images
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in the election with about 26 percent of the vote, putting Meloni on track to become the next Italian prime minister.
With Meloni’s party in power, Italy’s government is expected to be the most right-wing since the era of late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who ruled the country from 1922 to 1943.
Meloni, a mother-of-one, was raised by a single mom in Rome’s working-class district of Garbatella after her father walked out on the family.
Giorgia Meloni takes a selfie with supporters during a rally.
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In her teenage years, Meloni got involved in the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, a political party that was formed in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini.
Meloni went on to head the youth branch of the party, which was renamed the National Alliance, according to the Associated Press.
She won her first local election at age 21. One decade later, Meloni became Italy’s youngest minister when she was appointed to the youth portfolio in 2008 during the reign of former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Giorgia Meloni (left) alongside Matteo Salvini and Silvio Berlusconi.
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Four years later, Meloni co-founded the Brothers of Italy party, which she has compared to the Republican party in the United States and Britain’s Conservative party, according to Reuters.
“Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death,” Meloni said in June to supporters of Spain’s far-right conservative party Vox, Reuters reported.
Meloni continued in the speech, “No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people, no to major international finance.”
Giorgia Meloni.
ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty Images)
In an interview with Reuters last month, Meloni pushed back on her party’s fascist ties and previous comments she made as a teenager about Mussolini being a “good politician.”
“Obviously I have a different opinion now,” Meloni said without elaborating, according to Reuters.