When they inadvertently, indirectly and unwillingly acknowledge the real problems.

 An interesting Rorschach test.

Voters in Italy appear poised to elect a far-right prime minister tomorrow — Giorgia Meloni, the woman expected to win, leads a neo-fascist movement, reminiscent of Benito Mussolini’s own political party. pic.twitter.com/AzaD9SMRZC

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) September 25, 2022

I do not follow Italian news particularly closely.  Even less do I follow Italian politics.  Nor do I watch TV news owing to the dearth of facts, clear arguments and good evidence.

From Twitter, I saw this CBS News tweet to the effect that Italy was having an election.  Italy has elections like some people have the flu.  More or less annually it seems.  Leaving you feeling cruddy and weakened but hoping for better times.  

I see this news report.  I do not know the reporters involved, I do not know the politicians, I do not know the political parties, I do not know the policies being advanced, and I do not know much about the current context.

And Chris Livesay's (Livesay - really?  The name of a TV reporter?) does not shed much light.  At least not intentionally.  The main message is that Georgia Meloni = Fascism = Bad.  Which might indeed be true.  However, Livesay's report is so incomplete as to make it impossible to assess his attempted argument.  

The piece comes across as a combination of Godwin's Law, and the Association Fallacy mixed with some routine ad hominem argument.  The two minute segment is entirely devoted to making a case that Giorgia Meloni is a fascist and that that is bad.  I am comfortable that we can take 'Fascism is bad' as a working proposition with a reasonable body of evidence and argument to support it.

But is Meloni a fascist?  Now we get into the definitional details.  Which is tricky when it comes to both Hitler and Mussolini.  Both started out reasonably explicitly as Socialists.  Both evolved, incorporating extreme rationalism, nationalism, corporatism, and anti-religion.  Full blown Naziism and Fascism had many roots but were repugnant and failed because of their central attributes.  They were founded on central planning and authoritarianism.  

Livesay constructs a series of sounds bites all intended to paint Meloni as a modern-day evil.  I evaluate the evidence of his argument.  

"A hard right turn" - Really?  Since when?  And is it hard right?  Since 1946, Italy seems to have swung between hard left and hard right multiple times, usually averaging somewhere in the center.  Berlusconi, as recently as 2011 was characterized as hard right.  Is Meloni more or less right than Berlusconi?  We are not told.  

"Her party has roots in neo-Fascism" - Which roots?  Mussolini's political roots were in socialism from 1902 to 1917.  We do not usually consider him a socialist today.  Claiming she has roots is an empty effort at ad hominem.  Does her party have more or less political roots in fascism than do other parties today?  Maybe it does, but we are not told.  Making the association fallacy even more central to his piece, Livesay alludes to "Not all of that history is beautiful", 'Ugly chapter of Mussolini's march on Rome", "Two decades of dictatorship", and "Alliance with Hitler".  Indeed, all bad things.  But what do they actually have to do with Meloni and her party?  I don't know.  Livesay tars with the fascism brush but does not actually make an evidence based argument.  

"Many say" . . . - That old lazy mainstream media standby when the journalist wants to make an argument but can neither muster the argument nor find anyone else to say what the reporter wants to have been said.  At the bar, late at night, when posting copy, it comes out as "Many say . . ."  Which is  either manufactured or hearsay.  In either case, of little of value in discerning what is really happening (versus what the reporter wants us to believe).

"Most Hard Right government since WWII" - Quite possibly.  I am open to hearing why this might be the case.  While I think of Berlusconi's government as being characterized more by corruption than by being hard right, it certainly had some right aisle policies and was constantly portrayed as hard right.  Since that is recent history, why is Meloni not being compared to Berlusconi as a known benchmark?  I don't know why that is omitted.  

"Man in the street" clip's - The oldest dodge.  You search till you find someone who says what you want to have been said.  In this case a man in the street with a complaint about the immigration crisis and another man wanting more support for the traditional family.  Traditional family in this instance charmingly defined as "Mother, Father, and Sons."  I assume the omission of daughters is a trick of an incomplete grasp of English as a second language but who knows?  There might be some circles where the traditional family is indeed and only mother, father, and sons.  I know that I have seen Arab genealogical trees where only males are shown, so I suppose it is possible.  

'She is comfortable with the hallmarks of Italian fascism' - At this point we are almost into numerology type belief systems.  Meloni is accused of saying words used by fascists of yore, she uses some common symbols.  And it must be true because an American University academic explains that that is so.  As to what are the policies which she is advancing which might be characteritzed as fascist?  Nary a word.

Again.  Livesay has the advantage on me.  He is on the ground in Italy and everything he implies might be true but he sure seems to be working hard not to muster explicit evidence which I would imagine to be easy to find.  I go to wikipedia (not always a good source for political distinctions) and find that Georgia Meloni was a Minister in Berlusconi's government but that she split with him.  I see that the party she founded, Brothers of Italy, has as its main ideological trends, conservatism, nationalism, nativism, euroscepticism, and opposition to immigration.  Which, depending on the specific policies, might be far right but could also easily be center right overlapping with center left.  More realistically, I suspect that they might be a populist party.

Nothing I am seeing indicates anything towards the central elements of all evil governments - authoritarianism.  Perhaps it is there vestigially or perhaps it is only there in the imaginations of journalists.  I don't know.  

Inadvertently Livesay does tell a story that he doesn't want to tell.  It seems clear that he is alarmed and repulsed by Meloni.  But if she is an evil leader, why is her party so popular and growing so fast?  There is little or no correlation between the ethics of a government and its popularity.  Indeed, sometimes the correlation is negative.  

But it seems clear that there are problems which people desperately want to see improved (improved economy, reduced illegal immigration and less corruption all seeming to be key issues).  It also seems clear that the traditional parties and the center left parties are not trusted either.  

Is Livesay right to be alarmed?  Quite possibly.  Trying to discern what is actually happening in Italy versus the slanders Livesay is using to report, I can see why he would be alarmed.  Across Europe, new and center right coalitions are emerging to tackle the profound problems created by the traditional central planning parties which have been so prevalent for so many decades.  

It seems fair to say that there are deep structural economic, demographic, and cultural problems which need to be tackled; that the traditional parties either do not acknowledge those problems or have not forwarded credible plans for tackling them; and that the newly emerging parties and shifts in party platforms represent a risk to be considered.

But I think the concern about the risks of emerging parties masks the real issue.  The reluctance and inability of the establishment parties to be seen and trusted by the populace to recognize and address people's real world challenges in a positive and effective way.  

Livesay points out what would usually be an important point for his ilk.  Meloni is th first ever female Italian Prime Minister. But breaking that important glass ceiling is overshadowed for Livesay by her politics.  Livesay is emoting the panic of the establishment without doing real reporting and without acknowledging that the establishment parties have created the problems which are driving voters in many countries to try new parties.  

Demonstrate competence and rebuild trust would be the best approach for all concerned, especially the establishment parties.  But that seems beyond their grasp.  

UPDATE I:  Meloni won, though it will be some weeks or months before a new government is formed.  All the mainstream media outlets are in meltdown over her popularity and the immigration control platform of her party.  I am still not seeing much reporting on her actual policies.  

Tom Elliott has an extended explanation of the close relationship between Socialism and Fascism.  See the thread below.

Memo to my friends in the media covering Italy's elections:

Italian fascism — and especially Mussolini — were not "right wing," but rather another statist/collectivist ideology that was worshipped among left-wing intellectuals of the day.

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 26, 2022

UPDATE II:  Finally, here is a piece that begins to engage with Meloni the political leader rather than Meloni the caricature.   From Giorgia Meloni’s victory would be a triumph for Italian democracy by Nicholas Farrell.