President Joe Biden will travel to Rome in January to meet with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who liberals and the corporate media have frequently attempted to characterize as a fascist and racist due to her conservative views.
Biden accepted an invitation to the Vatican from Pope Francis, according to a White House readout, with Jean-Pierre telling reporters Thursday the lame duck president will also meet with Meloni and Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
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Meloni, who leads Italy’s conservative coalition, became the country’s first female prime minister in 2022 and has been relatively popular, enjoying an approval rating that is roughly twice as high as those of President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, The Economist reported in October. However, Meloni has often drawn the ire of the corporate media and the left, with her election being described by The Atlantic in 2022 as “The Return of Fascism in Italy,” and CNN claiming the same year that she was set “to become Italy’s most far-right prime minister since [Benito] Mussolini.”
“Giorgia Meloni is a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe,” Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, who has previously been tied to the Italian Marxist-Leninist Party, wrote in a September 2022 article for The Guardian.
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Meanwhile, George Newth, a lecturer in Italian politics at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, called Meloni’s election “the return of fascism” saying “[Meloni’s] racism is also evident in a depiction of immigration as an invasion.” American transgender activist and instructor at Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic Alejandro Caraballo echoed Newth’s sentiment, saying, “Fascism is once again rising in Europe. Italy learned nothing from World War II.”
Many liberal leaders in Europe have faced popular backlash in recent months, with Scholz losing a vote of confidence Monday and trailing a coalition led by Friedrich Merz of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the polls. Much of the backlash in Germany stemmed from immigration policy, with 77% of Germans saying the country needed a “fundamentally different asylum and refugee policy so that fewer people come to us,” according to a September Deutsche Welle poll.
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In France, the right-leaning National Rally party saw a surge in support during the first round of the country’s June elections, with 39% of French voters saying immigration was a top issue.
Meloni has even been praised by liberal British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for cracking down on mass immigration.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.