White Renegade of the Year — 2023

Credit: © Marco Lanni/ROPI via ZUMA Press

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The White Renegade of the Year is the person who could have done the most good for his people, but instead did the most harm.

We should know better by now. A promising candidate is poised for victory and the media erupt with warnings about fascism and the end of democracy. The leader takes power, not least because voters are so frustrated with “their” governments that they will support someone “extreme,” “radical,” and “untested.” After a surprise victory, the “enemy of democracy” assures the world that the election promises were unrealistic; nothing changes. This time it was Italy, where one of the most encouraging political victories of recent memory has been a squib. The White Renegade of the Year for 2023 is Giorgia Meloni.

Giorgia Meloni became prime minister after the election in September 2022. “Italians have sent a clear message in favor of a right-wing government led by Brothers of Italy (FdI),” she said. With about 26 percent of the vote, it was a dramatic increase from four percent just a few years earlier. The FdI was part of a right-wing coalition, including the Lega of Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia of the late former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The FdI was to the right of Lega, which was to the right of Forza Italia, so FdI’s triumph was a decisive move to the right.

Giorgia Meloni could be inspiring: “Yes to secure borders, no to mass migration.” She added “no to big international finance” and “no to the bureaucrats of Brussels,” which are far more powerful than the feeble Italian Left. Just before the election, she called for a naval blockade to stop ships full of migrants, noting that “the best solution to the problem of migration is to prevent departures instead of arrivals.” She said this was “the only way to restore compliance with the rules and stop deaths at sea.” The Brothers of Italy was considered to be the only opposition party to Mario Draghi’s national-unity government. If you opposed “the system,” the FdI was your choice.

Miss Meloni was also a traditionalist. “I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian, and you can’t take that away from me!” she cried in a 2019 address that thrilled American conservatives when it circulated in 2022.

Her victory panicked the media. “The Return of Fascism in Italy,” said The Atlantic. The Intercept complained that she was the latest “part of a long tradition of white womanhood being central to fascism.” CBS said “Giorgia Meloni sparks fears of fascism.” When she was a teenager, Prime Minister Meloni had been an activist with the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a “post-fascist” group. “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy,” she said at age 19. “And we haven’t had any politicians like that in the last 50 years.”

It would be unrealistic to expect an Italian leader to defend her adolescent enthusiasm for Il Duce, but Miss Meloni made a humiliating about-face. In her first speech to the European Parliament, she pledged to fight “every kind of racism, anti-Semitism, and discrimination” and claimed Mussolini’s racial laws of 1938 were “the worst moment in Italian history.” She promised to support the EU and Ukraine.

This maiden speech roused my suspicions, but I wanted to give her a chance. She was just starting out, Italian politics is fractious, and results are more important than talk. (I wish President Donald Trump understood that). Many white advocates also support Ukraine’s war against Russia, and there is a case for saying that backing Kiev is the pro-white position.

But there was another warning sign in 2022 when Miss Meloni blasted French president Emmanuel Macron for criticizing Italy’s stance on immigration. It was bad enough to say Mr. Macron was responsible for “bombing Libya” and thus leaving Italy with the “chaos of illegal immigration we are facing now.” She then blamed France for exploiting Africa and thus encouraging emigration. “The solution is not to transfer Africans to Europe, but to liberate Africa from some Europeans,” she said, suggesting stupidly that Africa isn’t responsible for its fate. I could have forgiven her if she had stopped illegal immigration and pressed France to do the same.

She took a step in that direction when Italy redirected an NGO ship loaded with illegals away from Italy to France. There followed a sharp diplomatic fight that jeopardized the financial help Italy gets from the EU. Would Giorgia Meloni be able to balance her pro-EU stance with firm measures against illegal immigration? It’s been more than a year since she took power. We would know if there were going to be results.

Under her watch, 26,800 migrants arrived in Italy by sea from January–March 2023, compared to just 6,400 in 2022. Most came from Tunisia and some from Libya. Many were black Africans. The United Nations says that in the first six months of the year, 64,930 “refugee and migrants arrived in Italy,” almost all men. By mid-December, 153,400 illegals had arrived, compared to 105,000 the previous year. In other words, a “right-wing government” that promised to stop illegals let in more than the previous government.

Miss Meloni is increasing legal immigration. Her government estimates that from 2023 to 2025, Italy will need 833,000 foreigners to fill jobs, and has approved visas for 452,000. Politico writes: “Given Italy’s rules on family reunification, which allow residents to bring in relatives, ‘it’s easy to predict that over something like 10 years, these figures will triple,’ bringing in about 1.5 million migrants, said Maurizio Ambrosini . . . an expert on migration at Milan university.” Politico twisted the knife in the wound: “Italy’s far-right leader [has] learned to stop worrying and love migration.” Italian businesses are recruiting workers straight out of migrant holding centers.

Most illegals are asking for “asylum” because they are from nasty non-white countries, but once they are in the system, they have a good chance of staying. Even if Italy kicks them out, they can come right back.

IPS Journal said that the Meloni government is “business as usual” — far from fascism. On migration, “a restrictive course is indeed being pursued, but not with the zeal of the [Giuseppe ] Conte era, [2018–2021] when Matteo Salvini, who has since been relegated to the infrastructure and transport department, waged an almost endless private war against various sea rescue organizations.” One Lega politician said, “The right is getting worse than the left” on immigration. “The results weren’t what we had hoped to see,” said the prime minister herself. She’s in charge; she’s supposed to do more than hope.

Now, it looks like Italy will start begging Third World nations to take people back. In October, it signed a deal with Tunisia, which sends 90 percent of Italy’s immigrants. The catch? Italy promises to take 4,000 workers from Tunisia. This is in addition to a “strategic partnership” the EU signed with Tunisia, which includes more than $1.12 billion for Tunisia to control immigration and pay for “green energy transition,” of all things. Will Tunisia do its part? President Kais Saied vowed that “the solution will not be at the expense of Tunisia” and that “we cannot be a guard for their countries.” Tunisia wants more foreign aid, and will squeeze Europe any way it can. Tunisians protested when Miss Meloni visited.

In November, Italy cut a deal with its former colony Albania to build migration holding centers while Italy “fast-tracks” their asylum applications. This failed; Albania’s “Constitutional Court” blocked ratification. Apparently hosting foreigners while another country deliberates would violate their human rights. Italy now has a backlog of about 82,000 asylum requests.

Italy is bribing Libya to stop migrants. In January 2023, with Miss Meloni watching, the Italian energy company Eni signed an $8 billion, 25-year deal that would contribute “to local development and job creation.” Libya gets help controlling immigration. Here, too, Italy agrees to take 1,500 “refugees and people in need of international protection” chosen by the UN and various churches. This is now the rule: Other people decide who will live in your country.

These deals are still too much for NGOs that remain fiercely dedicated to importing every migrant they can find. Such groups complain that making illegals cross the Mediterranean is a “human rights violation.” If that’s so, stop the ships.

NGOs keep shipping in illegals, counting on judges to grant asylum. Prime Minister Meloni complained to the German government, which was funding at least one of these NGOs, and about the judges, but got no results. She did impound one NGO ship and fined a few flagrant rule-breakers, but the flow continues. The government has also increased money for “guaranteeing quality services for unaccompanied foreign minors in the first reception centres,” which ensures many more will come. The Italian government doesn’t seem to run the country; NGOs do.

Prime Minister Meloni is trying to get the EU to cut migration. After Lampedusa was overwhelmed earlier this year, she toured the island with EU president Ursula von der Leyen. The EU chief said the Union would determine who came to the Continent, not the smugglers. Nothing changed; 10,000 more illegals arrived within a week. Miss Meloni proposed an EU naval blockade; again, nothing happened.

A new EU deal aims to reduce the burden on overwhelmed countries, such as Greece and Italy, by giving them money or moving illegals elsewhere. Apparently bribing north African governments to keep people is somehow better than stopping the boats. France and Italy said they would work together to “manage” immigration, not stop it.

No wonder the AP cheered that “there are sign’s Meloni’s perspective on history is evolving.” She praises women who, like her, broke the “heavy glass ceiling.” When a no-name rock musician called her a “fascist” and a “racist,” she sued for defamation. Her cultural initiatives are symbolic or marginal, such as banning lab-grown food and birth surrogacy. The Meloni government has a huge debt burden, but promises at least three billion euros to Africa over the next five years from the “Italian Climate Fund to Africa” — and it worries it can’t limit the deficit.

Some say Italy “needs” immigration because birth rates are low. Here, the prime minister gets some credit. The government earmarked one billion euros to reward people who have at least two children. “We want to dismantle the narrative that birthrate is a disincentive to work,” the prime minister said. “We want to incentivize those who give birth to children and want to work.” She says Hungary is the “perfect example” to follow. The Italian government subsidizes groceries for large families; leftists complain this encourages “traditional” families. The 2024 budget includes 2.5 billion euros for natalist policies, including “measures for nurseries, tax breaks for firms that give working mothers permanent job contracts and payment of the social-security contributions of women who have two children or more.” Says Miss Meloni: “There are people who have decided to bring a child into the world this year because today they see the institutions as being more attentive to the need of family.”

This will hardly matter in the face of the Great Replacement. Businesses always prefer low-cost migrants for low-skill jobs. NGOs and churches won’t change. Europeans can’t outbreed the Third World. And how many of the “Italians” getting money to have children are non-white? The invasion must stop. If the Italian government can’t do this, what’s government for?

The FdI still leads in the polls. Political skill, by itself, is worthy of respect — but not much. This is a triumph of appearance over reality, with a “nationalist” government occasionally throwing patriots a bone while making excuses and overseeing policies that will destroy Italy.

That’s the story of American conservatism. In October 2022, just after Miss Meloni’s election, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, called her a triumph for American-style conservatism. “What are Brexit, Orbanism, and Meloni but national rejections of the same globalist elitism Americans fought at Bunker Hill and Yorktown?” he asked. Brexit led to more non-white immigration. Mr. Orban preaches “illiberal democracy,” hardly Conservatism Inc.’s warmed-over “Enlightenment” bromides. Though Mr. Roberts couldn’t have known it, Miss Meloni’s government looks like another false start like Brexit or the Boris Johnson government.

Mr. Roberts is right in spite of himself. Post-Trump populism means railing against “elites” and doing nothing. It means nods to “Christianity” by people who don’t dare say “white” and fulminations about unspecified “globalists.” Italy’s problem isn’t “elites.” Foreigners are pushing its people aside. Italians can either end this corrupt system or watch invaders sack their country and the entire West.

The best defense one can make for Giorgia Meloni is that only the EU can stop immigration. But if that’s so, why care about national elections? Besides, with support for immigration restriction growing across the continent, forcing Brussels to fulfill its own duty to defend borders would be hugely popular.

Giorgia Meloni could be playing a long game. She has outlasted many Italian governments of years past and could lead a conservative victory in the upcoming EU elections. From there, the argument goes, she could impose a real solution. Her approval ratings are slightly better than when she won office. Yet, if the victory of the most right-wing government in Italy since World War II meant more illegal immigration, it’s not clear that a few more center-right MP’s in Brussels will make a difference.

There is a time limit to this struggle. The Great Replacement is real, and our nations have, at best, decades. Giorgia Meloni, despite a mandate to stop replacement, made it worse. It’s too late for “business as usual.” A woman who won’t even give Italians what they could expect from the center-left, richly deserves to be White Renegade of the Year.