In Trump She Trusts? Giorgia Meloni, Brothers of Italy (FdI), and Their American Siblings

This chapter examines the international political culture of the Italian right from the rise of Berlusconism to Giorgia Meloni’s government, focusing on the historical trajectory linking Alleanza Nazionale and Fratelli d’Italia to the United States and to the neoliberal order at two distinct historical junctures: its consolidation and its crisis, respectively. Challenging interpretations that reduce the Italian right to Berlusconi’s personal interests or portray Meloni’s success as a rupture with neoliberal globalization, it identifies significant ideological and geopolitical continuities alongside equally significant discontinuities. After the Cold War, Alleanza Nazionale embraced a Western exceptionalist worldview combining Atlanticism, anti-communism, and support for US military interventions. Its vision of the West as a besieged citadel was tempered by confidence in Western expansion and the triumphalist outlook that followed the end of the Cold War. Fratelli d’Italia inherited primarily the communitarian and defensive dimension of this political culture, emphasizing external threats to Western identity. This helps explain both its affinities with the American Republican right and Donald Trump and the contradictions emerging from that relationship. Meloni’s nationalism coexists with a marked subordination to US geopolitical priorities, exposing the tensions within her sovereigntist discourse and her representation of the West as a homogeneous entity, increasingly challenged by Trump’s own political choices. Reflecting broader international developments, the Italian right’s trajectory represents neither a rejection nor a mere reproduction of the neoliberal order, but its transformation and selective reformulation amid the crisis of Western-led globalization.