What Just Happened in Italy?

“Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni has claimed victory in a general election that seems set to install her as Italy’s first female prime minister, leading the most far-right government since the fascist era of Benito Mussolini,” CNN reports.

“Preliminary results put an alliance of far-right parties, led by Meloni’s ultraconservative Brothers of Italy party, on track to win at least 44% of the vote.”

Damon Linker: “Put it all together—populist hostility to immigration, pro-business economic policy, support for federalism, and social conservatism on religion and cultural issues—and we have an incoming coalition that overlaps in important ways with the post-Trump configuration of the Republican Party (without the embrace of election-fraud conspiracies), as well as with the current governments of Hungary and Poland, the recently elected anti-immigrant government of Sweden, and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally in France.”