Ida Dominijanni speaks on new Italian PM
By Gregoire Winston ’26, Staff Writer
Last Friday, Nov. 11, the Italian, German, Russian and Arabic Studies Departments came together in collaboration with the Government Department to host Italian philosopher and political theorist Ida Dominijanni. As a prominent author and journalist, publishing her newest book “Il Trucco. Sessualità e biopolitica nella fine di Berlusconi,” Dominijanni has passed down her rich historical perceptions to the students at Roma Tre University, the Universities of Siena and Verona and Cornell University. Titled “The March on Rome: Italian Politics between Mussolini’s Ghost and Meloni’s Rise,” this guest lecture allowed students from a variety of departments to gather insightful first-hand geopolitical experience from the comfort of Red Pit (KJ 127).
The hour and a half lecture was split into two sections: the first was reserved for Dominijanni to express her thoughts regarding the recent election of far-right Italian candidate Giorgia Meloni, while the second was geared toward a Q&A style discussion.
During the first 45 minutes of the talk, Dominijanni traced Italian politics back to the roots of the country’s political parties and the rise of Mussolini, more than often brought up as a mirror image of Meloni’s political perspectives. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, corruption and judicial trials brought a significant decline to Italy’s most powerful parties of the time: the Democrazia Cristiana (DC), the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) and Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI). The rapid collapse of socially-democratic ideology paved the way for the rise of conservative oriented parties, including Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, the Lega Nord and Alleanza Nazionale. From that point on, conservatism held a stronghold in Italian minds, placing Italian nationalism and self-centered ideals at the forefront of their priorities.
Dominijanni repeatedly used Meloni’s autobiography “Io Sono Giorgia” as a reference for her commentary, combined with an in depth dive into Italy’s new leader’s past. Born in 1977, at the height of the “Long Sixty-Eight” social conflict featuring the Red Brigades terrorist attacks on then president Aldo Moro, Meloni often draws from this time period in her speeches. Yet, due to her young age at the time, the majority of her understanding was an indirect memory. Her mother, a “sympathizer of neo-fascist movements,” laid the base for the political rhetoric we associate with her to this day, as commented Dominijanni, while her father, a leftist partisan, abandoned the family early on. Years later as a young adult, Meloni began her career under the wing of Berlusconi, who reformed the Alleanza Nazionale into a traditional center-right party. Moreover, both Democratic and Conservative parties circled around the question of feminism and gendered relations. The 1990’s were a time of great ideological reflection in regards to women: Dominijanni states that although the Democratic parties emphasized pink quotas and a push for a change to conventional patriarchal values, the right has made this dream a reality. In her autobiography, Meloni stated that “on the left they talk a lot about equality, but it is the right that has brought more women on top.” In this vein, Meloni took direct inspiration from her political orientation’s feminine success to forge a rise to power rarely seen throughout history.
Early 21st century drama within Berlusconi and other right-wing figures led to a progressive decline of the party. Understanding the future of her party at stake, Meloni was tasked to redirect a majority of right-wing Italians towards a more stable party, free from corruption and mediatized scandals. In this, Meloni began laying cornerstone values of her rhetoric she still holds to heart today. Glorification of national sentiment, strong Christian values, no to Islamist violence, no to mass immigration and no to the LGBTQ lobby, among many other principles.
“I found the way [Dominijanni] described Italian politics eye-opening to say the least. The polarization she described in Italy was incredible to relate to from an American perspective, though it might have been a little hard for me to follow her advanced Italian!” declared Daniel Gerard ‘26.
In her concluding remarks, Dominijanni clarified that although it might be inferred that Italy has drastically shifted to a far-right governance, in actuality, Italy has barely transitioned from “the center-right towards the far-right.” While it may very much look like a “replica of historical fascism,” political parties are known to shapeshift, changing policies and identities from what was commonplace decades back. Today, Meloni’s position of power as Italian Prime Minister could go two ways: she could either succumb to economic and social pressures having currently plagued her country for years, or mount her pundits’ criticism and stabilize her hold on Italy’s political spectrum in the coming months. Regardless, it is critical to note that “Italy could again become the political laboratory of a reactionary experiment with devastating effects for the old continent and the West as a whole,” mentions Dominijanni. Only history will tell whether a theater of chaos similar to that of Mussolini’s regime will end up repeating itself.
