Politics "WOKE" America

Northerner: Regarding what I said about Italy forming partnerships with SE Europeans countries (i.e.Balkans), I also said along with Central and Eastern Europeans. Greece should be a natural ally. Turkey wants to ship Gas into Greece and wants to link up that pipeline with Italy (The TANAP pipeline) in Brindisi (Puglia). I think Turkey has a huge Gas field in the Black Sea (in its territory) that is expected to come on line in 2023.

If Meloni wins, call the Polish leaders. Poland in 2020 signed a 20 year LNG gas deal with the USA (during Trump's presidency) specifically to reduce reliance on "Russian Oil and Gas". Remember Trump calling out Frauleine Merkel and the Germans for "getting Europe to dependent on Russian Oil and Gas". I sure do.

https://www.reuters.com/article/poland-energy-lng-idUSL8N2E12PB

Again here is the current North African to Europe pipeline network. Notice the red line from Nigeria to Algeria. Morroco just signed a deal with Nigeria to let Nigerian gas flow through its borders to Spain. Even you pointed out that the Germans are now "working with Spain" (not dictating to Spain) to get France on board. France and Algeria are not on best terms do to France not acknowledging it did many Nuclear test in Algeria's desert on the one hand (Algerian perspective) and Algeria not working with France to help deport criminal illegal migrants. I suspect the diplomatic tension between France and Algeria is the hold up.

https://en.populationdata.net/maps/africa-europe-gas-pipelines/

But in light of the North African gas network into Europe. Italy is indeed in a strategic position. Italy can sign a deal with Tunisia, Algeria and Nigeria to ship Gas into Italy via Sicily and Sardinia along with working with Libya to ship it directly into Gela in Sicily. Connecting Brindisi with Greece and linking up Turkey could provide another source. Seem to me a network from Turkey through Greece into Italy in Brindisi (Puglia) can be linked with the pipeline coming into Sicily somewhere in Calabria. Gas then can be shipped from Nigeria all the through North Africa into Italy and then back through Greece into the Balkans then well into Central Europe, etc.

So I can look at a map, look at existing infrastructure (which Italy is already significantly linked into) and see Italy's potential to be a major player in the Gas distribution process in Europe. And rather than being dictated to by the likes of Merkel when she was in charge of Germany, or Macron in France, they can negotiate the terms from a position of lets say "equal partners" or lets say strategic leverage (to be diplomatic, not a power play which has always been the method of the major EU Western European powers, Germany and France).
 
Northener said:
Indeed no conclusion. Partly practically because I was too tired and not sharp enough to draw a conclusion. Besides that I think I can't draw conclusions. I have the feeling that I have a correspondence with someone who has definitely another worldview, nevertheless with a quit calm tone...

My personal experiences with Brussel the EU are sort. I did a job(not for long) for the University and had some meeting in Brussel. Pfff I don't fit in that technocratic bubble. I'm too hard mouthed and in general I don't fit in that Brussel technocrat picture...I'm more into local, regional, national an in fact international political things. The EU never drew really my attention. May be to short sighted from me because it's certainly a factor (indeed take the food regulations etc). But the passion for that fails. So may be I'm not quit the person to function as a kind of 'EU spokesman'.

The thing that I find important is that we lived after ww2 (apart from the Balkan) for about 75 years in peace and prosperity. That's really a core thing. Until Putin invaded the Ukraine. To forcible his czarist dreams, or Rus dreams (Kyiv as starting point etc). All exaggerated things because in fact the decline of the SU. Putin staid the KGB man he ever was, but now mixed with Eastern Orthodox and ultra nationalist visions. Now the invasion of the Ukraine, initial aimed for a few days, is going to be a debacle. And the 'brother folk' is terrorized, raped, tortured. And from fare away -stan boys are delivered as cannon fodder.

I don't think the EU ought to be a factor in this, at least not as a warmachine, it was never build as a state with an army etc. I really think the Germans have to be on track again. Are the Italians, Dutch, French ready to accept this? Until then the NATO is still in position for this, it's no coincidence Finland and Sweden want to join it! I don't have much trouble with the US. Unless they still continue to choose president that functions as unguided projectile, leaving top state secrets lying around in private homes and having conducted 4000 trials in 30 years...idiotic. Prudence, prudence, prudence!

Grandpa Biden has also clearly had his day (which includes that man wanting to choose another four years). But Putin has repeatedly indicated that he sees a formidable opponent in him. He is one of the most eloquent politicians in foreign affairs. He did not allow himself to be reared in the Ukraine crisis (directed by a department or not). What do you think he did wrong for the Ukraine?

And for the blue-banana you gave to the interests of others, but what is the importance of Northern Italy in this matter? What's the point of drawing borders against other parts of the European economic core area? What do you think of the Palermo ideas to focus Italy completely on the Balkans? Is that glorious future there?
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@Northener,


I obviously didn't mean to attack you: I am rarely radical in my opinions, the world is too complex for reason to be only on one side, so I respect your ideas.
It is true that Europe has experienced and enjoyed 70-odd years of (apparent) peace and prosperity. However, I believe at this point that it was more the result of a fortunate conjuncture, a phenomenon that proceeded by inertia until it basically died out in recent decades. It is very complicated to synthesise this process, but I believe that once the effects of the Marshall Plan with which the Old World was rebuilt and put back on its feet by the US after the Second World War wore off, and once the 'Founding Fathers' - i.e. the old generation of politicians who experienced the world conflict at first hand - were gone, there was no longer an effective and genuine propulsive thrust to this project.


As I wrote in Palermo, the EU was already born a bit lame, because at its origins it is a mere economic community (and perhaps it could not have been otherwise, given the very different nature and history of its members). And the moment it was decided to make it a supranational political structure, the economic interests of the most prosperous member states inevitably prevailed. This is why I speak of 'apparent peace': there are conflicts within the union, only instead of guns, financial turbulence (see the spread) is used and/or common funds are taken away from this or that country to put it in difficulty. It happened to Berlusconi, quite easily it will happen to Meloni if she wins.
What little politics the EU shows is more a reflection of what happens and what is wanted in Washington (especially if it is of the Democratic brand, and from this channel comes that heavy aura of woke culture that is adopted in our continent with manifest levelling and propagandistic functions). While NATO acts as a common army that recruited locally could hardly exist, because there the divergent political wills of the various countries would become apparent.


In practice, such a mess can only stand up in normal, run-of-the-mill times.
The Russian-Ukrainian conflict, on the other hand, brings many knots to the boil. There are at least two unforgivable mistakes: the first is to have understood nothing about Russia and its styles of government and power management. They made it a residual phenomenon, but that is not the case. Certainly, it is autarkic, archaic and in its own way 'barbaric' by our standards, but precisely for that reason it deserved an attention and caution that in the past decades has not been forthcoming in the West. If I have a ferocious animal in front of me, I do not go and tease it, neither now nor then. Full stop.
The second mistake is to forget that the geopolitical space in which the war would take place would be Europe itself. This time there are no buffer zones to allow us to be just listless and distracted spectators, this time the protagonists are us.
And the EU has really turned out to be a dwarf at this juncture.


On the possible influence that Italy and northern Italy in particular may have in the Balkans, I think Palermo can give you a better answer. Somewhere I read that Germany is already surreptitiously extending its sights on those areas, which makes me think that it is an area with a lot of potential, but now I cannot be more specific. As far as I see it, as long as our political class proves to be subordinate to certain Franco-German approaches, northern Italy may well be part of the Blue Banana, but under marginal conditions. In the Balkans it could perhaps become a leader, also thanks to a certain old cultural and rural background common to Old (Mediterranean) Europe.
 
Stuvane: Any updates on the elections. I am trying to watch Tele Italia but the "parlare Italiano" is moving a little to fast for me to keep up in real time. But from what I gathered, Her party is the primary party in the elections.
 
Palermo Trapani said:
Thanks Stuvane: Meloni did well in every region.
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YPUHZvO.png


Indeed, this is what legitimacy looks like. I'm sure Joe Biden and Ursula Von Der Leyen will now be the enemies of democracy, because they believe they voted "the wrong way".
 
I agree with many of her positions, but I most emphatically do not agree that ALL abortions, without exception, should be banned. Nor do I think same sex couples should not be allowed to form civil domestic partnerships.

I also smell hypocrisy. If she's such a Christian woman, why isn't she married in the Church.

Even more worrying, I do not at all like her approval of Giorgio Almirante, a Nazi collaborator, Anti-Semite of the first order, and racist extraordinaire. A proponent of the disgraceful racial laws foisted upon us by the Nazis was a "great patriot"? A great traitor is what he was, like all the unforced supporters of the Republic of Salo.

As for not celebrating the defeat of the Nazis and the Fascists, that's a complete disgrace. Many of the partisans may have been Socialists and Communists, and so deluded imo, but they were on the right side of history, not the Italians licking German boots.

Also, let's not forget that these are votes for a central-right coalition, not for Fratelli Italia itself, which pulled about 25% of the vote.

As Stuvane alluded to, I hope that the votes represent people who support this coalition because it's the only alternative to the left, and not because they want a return to the idiotic policies of the 30s, policies which led once again to the destruction of our country.
 
Angela: I understand your points about Meloni using the I am Christian, I am a Mother, etc, etc. Perhaps that is taking a shot at many of the EU Leaders I would assume, most who do not have kids, etc. I don't know. I do know the EU pushed Italy to I think stop local business owners from having religious references in their business, for local politicians to not make mention of Christmas, Easter (Pascha), no references to Christ, Mary, Joseph, etc. etc. and take out any references to historical ties of Italy to what amounts to a 2,000 year history dating back to the Apostles Peter and Paul

You I am quite sure I have been to more parts of Italy than I have (I have only been to Rome and Sicily) but in Sicily at least, there is still a strong at least cultural attachment to traditional Catholicism at the local level. If some politician would push for a town to not to have a day to honor the local patron saint, that politician will not survive. In every shop and restaurant I went to. it seems I saw a painting the Last Supper, a Crucifix, maybe a picture Mary and Infant Christ, Padre Pio was often seen, in Palermo region references to Santa Rosalia (my maternal Grandmothers first name) are common. There is a major, major, feast day all over the Palermo province in honor of her there.

So perhaps her use of I am a Christian and a Mother was heartfelt and at the same time also somewhat strategic in that here usage of that was a direct shot at the EU in Brussels again dictating on the internal affairs of Italy regarding religious symbolism. Why she isn't Married in the Church? Not sure.

Yes it was a Center Right Coalition with Salvini's League and Berlusconi's Forza Parties also gathering significant votes. So in that regards, it will not be a party dominated by Meloni herself. If I were her, I would work with Salvini more so than Berlusconi, but that is just me.

As for Almirante, was his involvement in the shooting of partisans rooted in support for Germany are his strident anti-Communist views. In other words, was it more rooted say in Nationalistic vs. Communist inter Italian dynamics, similar I guess to Franco's Nationalist vs. the Communist in Spain.

Perhaps I am wrong but I never got most of the Italian Fascist were pro Hitler, they were just stridently anti-Communist and anti Stalinist. Now I agree the partisans were as you say fighting against the Germans who were occupying the country, since the fall of 1943 Italy declared neutrality and the Germans cracked down. So the partisans/Communist were at least on that correct side of history in that regard, but the Italian communist being a puppet of Ole Joe Stalin to me was the just the opposite side of the same totalitarian evil coin, in my view.
 
^^
For years he wrote for a journal called La Difesa della Razza. It was the worst kind of Jew baiting publication; an absolute disgrace.

It slavishly copied the filth coming out of Germany for an Italian audience.

There is absolutely no defending it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Difesa_della_Razza

Fascism was supported by and benefited the industrial and agricultural oligarchs of Italy. Ironically, that's why so many early Fascists were Jewish industrialists from the northeast.* National pride and a supposed concern for the poor was how it was sold to the people. The real nationalists, at least in my area, supported the King, not the Fascists. Some of the partisan groups whom the Italian fascists happily killed were supporters of the King, ex-soldiers from the army and navy of the King, and members of various Catholic groups.

The fact that Meloni joined right wing organizations so young tells me she probably comes from a family of collaborators, as often happens in Italy. Political allegiances can travel down the family tree.

Had I voted, I could not have voted for her unless she denounced the alliance with the Nazis which Mussolini made, the Republic of Salo, and the murders committed by the Italian fascists of their own people.

Young and even middle-aged Italians apparently have a very short memory. I don't.

There is no excuse for Fascism as a political ideology, even without the accretion of Anti-Semitism thanks to the Germans, and belongs on the dust bin of history, along with Communism.

Ed.
* Northwest, primarily Piemonte and some from Lombardia.
 
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Angela said:
^^
For years he wrote for a journal called La Difesa della Razza. It was the worst kind of Jew baiting publication; an absolute disgrace.

It slavishly copied the filth coming out of Germany for an Italian audience.

There is absolutely no defending it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Difesa_della_Razza

Fascism was supported by and benefited the industrial and agricultural oligarchs of Italy. Ironically, that's why so many early Fascists were Jewish industrialists from the northeast. National pride and a supposed concern for the poor was how it was sold to the people. The real nationalists, at least in my area, supported the King, not the Fascists. Some of the partisan groups whom the Italian fascists happily killed were supporters of the King, ex-soldiers from the army and navy of the King, and members of various Catholic groups.

The fact that Meloni joined right wing organizations so young tells me she probably comes from a family of collaborators, as often happens in Italy. Political allegiances can travel down the family tree.

Had I voted, I could not have voted for her unless she denounced the alliance with the Nazis which Mussolini made, the Republic of Salo, and the murders committed by the Italian fascists of their own people.

Young and even middle-aged Italians apparently have a very short memory. I don't.

There is no excuse for Fascism as a political ideology, even without the accretion of Anti-Semitism thanks to the Germans, and belongs on the dust bin of history, along with Communism.
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Ok, thanks for the information. I always assumed the conflicts were with the Communist, so the it appears the internal Italian political situation was also tied to some who still supported the Monarchy (Monarchist) and Catholic groups.

As for Meloni, I think her Mother was actually from a Sicilian working class family who moved to Rome and got married there. Her Father, from what I gathered was a Communist, active in the 1970's which was a time when the Communist were the major domestic threat internally (The Red Brigades). I think her Father left the family and she was raised in Rome by her mother.

I am no Psychologist but perhaps some of her stances are deep down tied to a hatred of her Father and failure to forgive him and move beyond him abandoning her and her Mother for Communist politics.
 
The armed forces of the nation state of Italy were under the nominal control of the King, although he became a puppet of Mussolini.

The chaotic nature of the Italian Armistice meant that many Italian soldiers and naval men were imprisoned or killed by the Germans as traitors. Those who could escape from the POW camps went to the mountains to join the partisans.

The Fascist Brigades are another story completely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Brigades

"The Black Brigades were frequently involved in support of German units during anti-partisan operations which resulted in massacres of the Italian civilian population, like at the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre in Tuscany where the 36th Brigata helped the SS kill the entire village population of around 560 persons in August 1944. Or the Vinca massacre where 162 civilians were executed and where the 40. Brigata nera “Vittorio Ricciarelli” di Livorno was involved.[13]"

All of them and others like them, as well as the members of the SS and Wehrmacht who participated in war crimes on Italian soil should have been executed after the war, but few were.

"After September 1943, partisan Resistance groups were active throughout northern and much of central Italy. Often they were former soldiers cut off from home and still in possession of their weapons. Many were young men fleeing Mussolini’s attempts to conscript them. Others were urban evacuees or released prisoners of war. Many were recruited, organized, and armed by the anti-Fascist parties or at least owed vague allegiance to one of them. They were most active in summer in the hills and mountains, where they were usually supported by the peasants, and they tied down thousands of German troops. In some areas they were a virtual armed uprising against not only the Germans and Fascists but also against the local landowners. Partisans were fighting three types of war: a civil war against Italian Fascists, a war of national liberation against German occupation, and a class war against the ruling elites. Communist Party groups fought all three types. Catholic or monarchist partisans, on the other hand, fought only one or two of these. There were also terrorist groups operating in the cities, and major strikes in industrial areas sabotaged war production. Sometimes, different partisan groups came into conflict with each other, but in general the Resistance was united. Nonetheless, those who actually fought as partisans were a small minority of Italians, and most civilians and ex-soldiers simply waited for the war to end. In all, about 200,000 partisans took part in the Resistance, and German or Fascist forces killed some 70,000 Italians (including both partisans and civilians) for Resistance activities."

If you count the peasants and "average" people in the cities, including a lot of women, who helped them, the number is much larger.

Perhaps you're right about Meloni; perhaps it's all personal, and given her ancestry (Sardinia and Sicilia, it seems) and history, and the lack of a university education maybe some of this would be news to her. Sad, if true.
 
Angela said:
^^
For years he wrote for a journal called La Difesa della Razza. It was the worst kind of Jew baiting publication; an absolute disgrace.

It slavishly copied the filth coming out of Germany for an Italian audience.

There is absolutely no defending it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Difesa_della_Razza

Fascism was supported by and benefited the industrial and agricultural oligarchs of Italy. Ironically, that's why so many early Fascists were Jewish industrialists from the northeast. National pride and a supposed concern for the poor was how it was sold to the people. The real nationalists, at least in my area, supported the King, not the Fascists. Some of the partisan groups whom the Italian fascists happily killed were supporters of the King, ex-soldiers from the army and navy of the King, and members of various Catholic groups.

The fact that Meloni joined right wing organizations so young tells me she probably comes from a family of collaborators, as often happens in Italy. Political allegiances can travel down the family tree.

Had I voted, I could not have voted for her unless she denounced the alliance with the Nazis which Mussolini made, the Republic of Salo, and the murders committed by the Italian fascists of their own people.

Young and even middle-aged Italians apparently have a very short memory. I don't.

There is no excuse for Fascism as a political ideology, even without the accretion of Anti-Semitism thanks to the Germans, and belongs on the dust bin of history, along with Communism.
Click to expand...

I wish the Italian people all the best and respect their sovereign choice. External interference is never welcome and the Italian people chose what they considered to be the best option to solve the country's problems.

I wouldn't vote for her either if I were Italian. It would even be nonsense, considering that I will vote against the current fascist government in Brazil this weekend, when the first round of the presidential elections takes place here. If it doesn't happen in the first round, I hope Bolsonaro is defeated in the second round (I hope there is no second round), for the good of all and the general happiness of the nation.
 
Angela said:
I agree with many of her positions, but I most emphatically do not agree that ALL abortions, without exception, should be banned. Nor do I think same sex couples should not be allowed to form civil domestic partnerships.

I also smell hypocrisy. If she's such a Christian woman, why isn't she married in the Church.

Even more worrying, I do not at all like her approval of Giorgio Almirante, a Nazi collaborator, Anti-Semite of the first order, and racist extraordinaire. A proponent of the disgraceful racial laws foisted upon us by the Nazis was a "great patriot"? A great traitor is what he was, like all the unforced supporters of the Republic of Salo.

As for not celebrating the defeat of the Nazis and the Fascists, that's a complete disgrace. Many of the partisans may have been Socialists and Communists, and so deluded imo, but they were on the right side of history, not the Italians licking German boots.

Also, let's not forget that these are votes for a central-right coalition, not for Fratelli Italia itself, which pulled about 25% of the vote.

As Stuvane alluded to, I hope that the votes represent people who support this coalition because it's the only alternative to the left, and not because they want a return to the idiotic policies of the 30s, policies which led once again to the destruction of our country.
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Meloni does not plan to ban abortion as she assured the current law won't be touched at all, her speeches about it were more cultural, in an ideal society (hers) abortion should be the last resort. She wanted to marry in the Church but her mate is not religious, so he refused.

As for same sex couples Italy now has civil unions but not marriage, main difference is lack of adoptions. She stresses the importance of the right of children to have a mother and a father so in this case too the status quo will remain as it is. What she does want to criminalize is the "uterus for rent", when male homosexual couples fly to America or some parts of Europe to basically buy children.

Almirante is admittedly controversial, a man of his time who grew up in fascist Italy, he later disavowed "The Defence of the Race" and saved a jewish family during the Republic of Salo, mainly remembered for his political career in the 70s-80s. As for not celebrating the defeat of Fascists I assume you mean 25 April, it's a day hijacked by americanized leftists who for the vast majority have no ties with the original partisans but still keep roleplaying the part, anyone with a slight different opinion is of course a fascist and they hold the ultimate truth. This on top of WW2 not being seen by many as black and white, between the bombardments from the Americans, the French letting loose North Africans on a murder/rape spree, fascists flipping sides to the partisans...not much to celebrate, even if Italy was indeed on the wrong side of history.

People voted Meloni as the leader of the coalition because she was a common sense candidate with a long term plan for Italy, be it migration, birth rates or debt and economy. She is also against China-Russia and wants a more democratic EU with less of a Franco-German pull.
 
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Carnimirie said:
Meloni does not plan to ban abortion as she assured the current law won't be touched at all, her speeches about it were more cultural, in an ideal society (hers) abortion should be the last resort. She wanted to marry in the Church but her mate is not religious, so he refused.

As for same sex couples Italy now has civil unions but not marriage, main difference is lack of adoptions. She stresses the importance of the right of children to have a mother and a father so in this case too the status quo will remain as it is. What she does want to criminalize is the "uterus for rent", when male homosexual couples fly to America or some parts of Europe to basically buy children.

Almirante is admittedly controversial, a man of his time who grew up in fascist Italy, he later disavowed "The Defence of the Race" and saved a jewish family during the Republic of Salo, mainly remembered for his political career in the 70s-80s. As for not celebrating the defeat of Fascists I assume you mean 25 April, it's a day hijacked by americanized leftists who for the vast majority have no ties with the original partisans but still keep roleplaying the part, anyone with a slight different opinion is of course a fascist and they hold the ultimate truth. This on top of WW2 not being seen by many as black and white, between the bombardments from the Americans, the French letting loose North Africans on a murder/rape spree, fascists flipping sides to the partisans...not much to celebrate, even if Italy was indeed on the wrong side of history.

People voted Meloni as the leader of the coalition because she was a common sense candidate with a long term plan for Italy, be it migration, birth rates or debt and economy. She is also against China-Russia and wants a more democratic EU with less of a Franco-German pull.
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What a concession: Almirante is "controversial". Hey, he was a man of his time. You know, the time when "some" Italians decided to adopt the Anti-Semitism, Anti-Gypsy, Anti-Black, Anti-Homosexual beliefs of their German neighbors so they too could be, well, if not Aryan, since they hardly looked the part, but honorary Aryans. I mean, if the Japanese could be honorary Aryans, why not Italians.

Yes, he was a man of his time. You know, the minority of men of his time who helped the Germans pack the Jews and gypsies, etc. onto the trains to concentration and extermination camps, and helped the SS slaughter old men, women, babies and their priests in the mountains because they gave food to their young sons hiding there so they wouldn't get conscripted and sent to Germany as slave labor, or forced to join the forces of the Salo puppet regime and kill their own people.

Do you have any idea how ridiculous this sounds? We're not talking about a "time" in ancient Rome when everyone believed in slavery. He, and others like him CHOSE this ideology, and they should have paid for it. Just as many others, the majority, I would submit, chose differently, although they lived in the same time.

As for this nonsense about April 25th being a creation of "Americanized" leftists, you have no freaking idea what you're talking about. Americans don't even know there was a virtual civil war in Italy or that we had partisans. The only partisans a few of them have ever heard of are the French ones, who were indeed a tiny percentage of the population.

I don't know where you come from. The Veneto? Lombardia? The South? On what side of the spectrum did your family fall?

Well, don't you dare tell me that we in Toscana, Liguria, Emilia, and other parts of the northwest celebrate April 25th because of the Americans. We celebrate it because our great-grandparents, grandparents and parents were among those who were killed by the Fascist Brigades who sided with the Germans against their own people. My mother's cousin was sent to a concentration camp for trying to sabotage production in the factories of Torino. Was he a Socialist? Yes, he was, but my great-aunt's husband, also a partisan, coordinated with the British in one of the Partisan that was decidedly not Socialist or Communist.

I also had a lot of family who served in the infantry and the navy, including my 17 year old father, who were sent into battle with no shoes, antique weapons and on and on, because that idiot Mussolini dragged us into a war for which we were unprepared. I abhor fascism, but Don't they teach history in Italian schools anymore? After the Armistice, when people like Almirante happily supported the puppet government of Salo, the Germans put our military men into POW camps, or disarmed and then executed them. I call men who would work with the Germans when they were killing and imprisoning Italian soldiers traitors.

Or maybe you want to talk about the average, non-political people who just wanted to survive the war; to protect their children. When, as a little child, my mother went to church one Sunday morning, there were four men and a woman hanging from the tree in front of the church for giving some food to the boys and ex-soldiers in the mountains. Germans regularly raided her uncle's farm, looking for young men, but also stealing all their food so that they were on the verge of starvation. There are memorials all over our hills to the people killed not just by the SS and the Wehrmacht, but by traitors like Almirante.

Don't you dare give me that twaddle about him being "a man of his time". Yes, he was one of the racist traitors of his time, siding with the Germans against his own people, and when he returned to Italy he continued to peddle the same bilge, bilge which Meloni thought was just fine, or she wouldn't have joined his party as a teen-ager.

Look, I get why 25% of Italy voted for Meloni, and 43% for the center-right coalition. I understand the frustrations with the stagnant economy, the high unemployment. I have wanted Italy to get out of the EU for more than ten years. I detest woke ideology, including gender ideology. I believe abortion on demand, past the first trimester, is wrong, and abortions in the last trimester are, imo, tantamount to infanticide. I don't think nationalism is a dirty word. I believe unregulated immigration of people with no skills and some of whom have no commitment to western values or democracy is a disaster for Italy and the rest of Europe.

How much real commitment to democracy does Meloni have, however? How sincere is she about anything? There are her speeches from the past and what she said to get elected. Now she wants to stay in the EU, she won't change the abortion laws or the laws providing for civil partnerships for gay people. She's a Christian woman, but she's not married, and she couldn't get her partner to marry in a church for her sake or even enter into a civil union for all I know. My father stopped going to Church after he was confirmed, never set foot in one except for weddings, baptisms and funerals of family or friends, was a complete anti-cleric, so much so that when I thought, in high school, that I wanted to be a nun, he went to my school and told the nuns to stop indoctrinating me. I could have died of embarrassment. Yet, he married in the Church because my mother was such a committed Catholic.

I don't trust politicians on principle, and I'm afraid Meloni gives me the same vibes that she's just another one who will say anything to get elected. What she'll do if she becomes Prime Minister, I don't know. I hope for my family's sake, for Italy's sake, that she does a good job, and I particularly hope that she's not a wolf in sheep's clothing.
 
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