Is Giorgia Meloni a Breath of Fresh Air?

Giorgia Meloni is an Italian politician and journalist. A member of the Chamber of Deputies in Italy since 2006, she has led the Brothers of Italy (FdI) political party since 2014, and has been the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party since 2020. After her party received the most votes in the 2022 Italian general election, Meloni is expected to become the next Prime Minister of Italy—the first woman to serve in the position.

This is an abridged and translated version of the speech that Giorgia Meloni – the presumptive Prime Minister of Italy – gave to the World Congress of Families in Verona on March 30, 2019. The original text can be found here.

They have told us that we are backward, that we are losers, that we are an embarrassment, that we are obscurantists, that it is a scandal to defend the natural family founded on marriage, to encourage the birth rate, to give due value to human life, to support educational freedom, to say no to gender ideology.

Return to sender! — each and every one of these accusations. Who is backward? A person who tries to bring censorship back to Italy by making it so that an event like this cannot take place.

Who is obscurantist? A government that, after having been a patron of anything and everything over the years, including exhibitions that portrayed a crucifix immersed in a glass of pee, is now ashamed to be a patron for an initiative like this.

Who is a loser? Those who have nothing to do except come here to insult us while we try to talk about what should be done for the Italian family.

Above all, I say that we are not an embarrassment. The embarrassing people are those who support practices such as wombs-for-rent, abortion in the ninth month, and blocking the development of children with drugs at the age of 11. That is an embarrassment.

They said that we want to restrict women’s freedom, that we want them at home doing the ironing. Me? At home? Ironing? I am the only female head of a political party in Italy!  

It’s the exact opposite: we want to guarantee rights that are absent today. Rights for a woman to be a mother without having to give up her job.  Rights for a woman to be a mother and choose not to work and not to starve. Rights for a woman who has to have an abortion because she has no alternative.

It is scandalous that Europe does not fund the issue of declining birth rates. This is the biggest issue for Europe. If we don’t address this, everything else we do is useless. If the European Union has an Erasmus programme for social mobility, if it has a Horizon programme for scientific research, why can’t it have a family programme to promote the birth rate?

These are our proposals. Do they seem crazy to you? Do they seem obscurantist?

People have attacked me on a personal level. Shame on you! You talk about a natural family based on marriage and you had a child out of wedlock. You talk about large families and you have one child.

But this simply shows that I support what I believe is best for Italian society. I believe that it is right for the State to incentivise the natural family founded on marriage. Even if I am not married, you will not find me demanding that the State recognise privileges for me that it should recognise for married families.

I believe in a society in which every choice you make has consequences, in which you take responsibility for them. I reject a society in which every desire becomes a right, every whim becomes a right, in which I have no responsibilities, only rights. I reject it! It is wrong!

I do not take a denominational approach to this matter. I do believe in God. But I am fighting for secular common sense.

I am a person who asks questions. What kind of society spends much more energy and resources on finding immediate, easy, quick ways to get rid of human life rather than favouring it? Is it fair? Is it normal? Can you call it civilisation?

Is it fair that while a puppy dog, quite rightly, cannot be ripped from its mother’s womb, but you can do the same with a child, the son of a desperate mother who sells it to two rich men?

Why did Italian judges take away the parental status of two married parents, the natural parents of a little girl because they consider that they are too old, 52 and 54, to raise their natural daughter. But, if two 50-year-old men go to buy a child abroad, that’s OK. Why? Why? Why?

And why do we panic about discrimination and pretend not to see the greatest persecution, which is the genocide of Christians around the world? Why? Give me answers to these questions, please!

And I have more questions.

There is one answer to all these questions: because it defines us, it is our identity.

Everything that defines us in this day and age is an enemy. Those who would like us not to have an identity want us to be slaves, perfect consumers. So our national identity is under attack, our religious identity is under attack, our gender identity is under attack, our family identity is under attack.

I am not allowed to call myself an Italian, a Christian, a woman, a mother! No! I must be citizen X, gender X, parent 1, parent 2, I must be a number. And when I am just a number, when I no longer have an identity, when I no longer have roots, I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of great financial speculators, the perfect consumer.

This is the reason why we are so frightening; this is the reason why this meeting is so frightening. We don’t want to be numbers. And we are here today to say that we are not numbers. We will defend the value of the human person, of every single human person, because each of us has a genetic code, unique and unrepeatable. And this, like it or not, is sacred. We will defend it. We will defend God, the fatherland, the family – those realities, which some people find so disgusting.

Chesterton wrote, over a century ago now — let’s see if I can find it for you — ” Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.”

That time has come, gentlemen, we are ready.