There's a TV clip of the 19-year-old Giorgia Meloni, out electioneering in 1996, where she makes a comment about Benito Mussolini.
Most Italians consider Mussolini – the fascist, dictator and World War II ally of Adolf Hitler – a stain on their country's past.
But, in this clip, Meloni is not one of them.
"I think Mussolini was a good politician. Everything he did, he did for Italy," she told the interviewer.
"And we haven't had any politicians like that in the past 50 years."
Fast forward to today and Meloni is now Prime Minister of Italy, the first woman to ever hold the role.
But with her far-right political trajectory that has included positive comments about Il Duce, critics are quick to accuse her of being a fascist.
Is it true? Turns out it's a bit more complicated.
'A fighter'
Born in 1977, Meloni grew up in Rome's Garbatella neighbourhood, a blue-collar, left-wing neighbourhood.
When she was about a year old, her father, who was a tax advisor, left the family and moved to the Canary Islands.
At first, Meloni visited him for a few weeks each year. But tensions between them flared, and ties were severed.
When her father died some years later, Meloni said she couldn't feel any real emotions – this man had become a stranger to her.
So did this relationship, or lack of it, shape what came next?
"I think it turned her into a fighter," Italian-born, UK-based journalist Barbara Serra tells ABC RN's Take Me To Your Leader.
"[This] might explain how she also managed to succeed as a woman in what is still quite a sexist country … It toughened her up."
Rise to the top
Meloni became politically active when she was young or, as Serra puts it: "Very, very young."
And her rise was meteoric.
When Meloni was 15, she joined the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, a neo-fascist party founded by Mussolini supporters in the years after his death.
The party later rebranded as the "post-fascist" National Alliance and Meloni became the national leader of its student wing.
By her early 20s, she was a councillor of the Province of Rome. By her late 20s, she was elected, as a member of the National Alliance, to the lower house of the Italian parliament, the Chamber of Deputies.
Enter Silvio Berlusconi. Then serving his third stint as prime minister, Berlusconi's coalition included the National Alliance. He appointed the 31-year-old Meloni as the country's youth minister.
In 2012, Meloni started a new far-right political party – or a new far-right political movement – called the Brothers of Italy. Its logo is a flame, a symbol that was once used by the fascists.
Summing up her brand in a now-famous 2019 speech, she said: "I'm Giorgia. I'm a woman. I'm a mother. I'm Italian. I'm Christian" (it's since been remixed into a dance music track that's had 13 million views).
In a 2021 speech, she laid out some of the priorities of her party: "Yes to the natural family, no to the LGBT lobby. Yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology."
The list kept going with "no to Islamist violence, yes to secure borders, no to mass migration".
And a big "no to the bureaucrats of Brussels".
Then last September, her right-wing coalition (which also included Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and Matteo Salvini's League party) won the election, with Brothers of Italy getting the biggest share of the vote.
So, is she a fascist?
Andrea Benvenuti is a senior lecturer in international relations and European studies at the University of New South Wales.
He says it's important to get the definition of fascism correct.
"What constitutes fascism, from a political point of view? Essentially, I would say, embracing authoritarianism and totalitarianism as a mode of running a country, or conceiving a society," he says.
So he says by that definition, both Meloni and her Brothers of Italy party are not fascist.
It's a comment echoed by Serra.
"Has Italy elected a fascist leader? No, of course, Italy hasn't elected a fascist leader," she says.
"Fascism, by definition, cannot co-inhabit with democracy. So are Meloni supporters really trying to reverse democracy? From the people that I've spoken to – I would say no."
Francesco Giubilei, who leads the conservative foundation Nazione Futura, is even more direct.
"Fascism ended with the death of Mussolini … [Meloni] is not linked with the history of fascism, she's linked with the democratic history of the right in Italy," he says.
"Brothers of Italy is a totally democratic party … they believe in our republican constitution."
He also points out that Meloni "changed her view of politics a lot in the last 10 years".
In one speech to parliament Meloni said: "I have never had any sympathy or felt any closeness to undemocratic regimes, for any regime, including fascism." This is despite what she said in that 1996 TV interview.
She added: "I have always considered the racial laws of 1938 as the lowest point in the history of Italy, a disgrace that will mark our country forever," referring to Mussolini's laws that persecuted the country's Jewish people.
But perhaps it's not that simple. While Meloni is not an outright fascist, some in her orbit and especially some supporters do seem to have fascist sympathies.
And, importantly, some have fascist nostalgia.
Fascism in Italy
Barbara Serra has a personal connection to fascism in Italy.
"My grandfather was a fascist in Mussolini's Italy, he was actually the mayor of a key town in Sardinia," she says.
This prompted her to make a recent film, Fascism in the Family. As part of this, she visited Mussolini's tomb and spoke with people who still admire him.
"What you definitely have in Italy, is what we call 'nostalgia'. So people that look back and praise the Mussolini years, and say phrases like, 'he also did good things' and 'things were built' and 'things worked'. And that was a sort of 'golden age of Italy'."
As a result, Serra says, "Brothers of Italy will have members of the party that still celebrate key fascism dates, they will still give the fascist salute, they [visit] mausoleums in honour of people that are war criminals".
It speaks to a bigger issue in Italy, which Benvenuti also cites.
"I would agree with many in Italy and abroad, that Italy – in many ways – hasn't done the same work that Germany did, in terms of reconciling itself with fascism."
Unlike Germany, there was no process like de-Nazification in the aftermath of World War II.
Serra says it's important to understand the electorate in bigger terms.
"The other point I would make [would be] were the millions of people who voted for Giorgia Meloni fascist sympathisers? No, of course not," she says.
"But did those millions of people vote for a party that they know has fascist nostalgia in there, without caring about it? Yes, they did.
"And that is the part that I find a bit concerning."
Meloni's appeal
At the last election, Brothers of Italy secured 26 per cent of the vote, compared to just 4.3 per cent four years earlier.
So how did she pull it off?
Giubilei says Meloni was able to connect with working-class voters and that her "pro-family" politics resonated.
He also points out that in the biggest cities of Italy, "in the city centre, the people in the richest part of the town voted for the left, but in the poorer parts, parts where there are difficulties, people decided to vote for Brothers of Italy".
Benvenuti says Meloni's right-wing success follows events like Brexit and the rise of the right in other parts of the world.
"There is, I think, a reaction or pushback to the 'woke agenda' espoused by a number of groups in the Western world," he says.
Migration was one main reason why people turned to the Brothers of Italy.
"I think there's an issue here at play – how to deal with significant migration movements from outside Europe, into Europe, and how to manage that process. And the process hasn't been managed very well," Benvenuti says.
Serra says "the true issue with Italy has been low growth for a very long time".
"Ever since the Eurozone crisis, I saw literally hundreds of thousands of young Italians come [to the UK], because they simply didn't have job opportunities in Italy," she says.
Serra adds the left in Italy has been a "disaster" of late.
But Serra stresses that to really understand Meloni's victory, one thing mattered more than everything else.
"The key word isn't 'immigration'. And it's not 'fascism'. The key words are 'COVID' and 'opposition', because Giorgia Meloni was the only [major] politician in opposition during COVID," she says, as most others joined a national unity government.
"And she could fuel and channel a lot of the anger of Italians."
But like many opposition leaders, the real test starts now.
"[Meloni] wanted power. Now she's got it. And now she's figured out that she's got to be pragmatic," Serra says.
All these experts agree, there are early signs of pragmatism from the new leader.
"The biggest problems for Giorgia Meloni's government are linked to the economic situation and are linked to energy. And so I think that this government, the centre-right, will not touch, for example, 'ethics' things or 'identity' things," Giubilei says.
Broader impact
So what does Meloni's election mean for those outside Italy? Can her brand of politics send ripples across Europe or even the world?
Giubilei gives a lighthearted answer.
"I think that Italy is a great country. We love our country, of course. But it's quite difficult for the Prime Minister of Italy, be it Giorgia Meloni or someone else, to change the world, unfortunately!"
But Serra has a more pessimistic assessment.
"Italy can change the world by failing," she says.
"Italy is the third biggest economy in the Eurozone. If the Italian economy goes down in any way, the Eurozone cannot sustain it, in the way that it could sustain other smaller economies."
Serra says for now, Meloni "is very much supportive of Ukraine against Russia … but if she were to change her mind, to perhaps give in to [Matteo] Salvini – her coalition partner who's much more pro-Russian – then that's a way that she could change the world".
"She could destabilise things like the NATO alliance and the EU – if Italy fails."
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