Two years ago, the most right-wing government was installed in Italy, starting with Benito Mussolini. The European press talked about the huge danger created by the coming to power of a neo-fascist politician – Giorgia Meloni – and did not stop to mention his earlier or more recent statements that suggested leaning towards fascism.
In 2024, the “neo-fascist” Meloni was awarded, in New York, with the “Global Citizen Award” by the Atlantic Council, a think tank created in the 1960s to become an interface of NATO, to gather more support for the military alliance and advance the interests of the American government and corporations. Meloni, a pariah politician until 2022, spoke in New York about “nation” and “patriotism” before the Atlantic Council and was applauded by the globalist audience. The award was handed to him by the richest man in the world, Elon Musk.
Giorgia Meloni, who entered the political world as a teenager, became one of the most influential politicians in Europe. The government he leads can be considered more stable than the motley and permanently unpopular government in Germany, certainly more stable than the new government of “losers” in France, than the progressive government of Pedro Sanchez in Spain (which depends on the whims of and the ambitions of several deputies loyal to Catalan separatist Carles Puigdemont). But it wasn’t just this surprising stability for an Italian government that earned Meloni the applause from The Atlantic Council.
After, during the election campaign in Italy, Meloni posed for pictures with Prime Minister Viktor Orban and spoke of their shared visions, after taking over the government she became a strong supporter of NATO’s position in Ukraine, forged a strong bond with President Joe Biden and supported the pro-austerity economic framework of the European Commission, closely following the line of the previous technocrat government led by Mario Draghi, a former Goldman Sachs banker and ex-president of the European Central Bank.
And on an economic level, Meloni totally opened Italy to the big American corporations. The government has passed a law giving foreign space companies permission to operate in Italy. Hence the wide smiles of Elon Musk when presenting the Atlantic Council award – Spacelink will be able to win the monopoly in areas of Italy that do not yet have data traffic coverage and eliminate competition from domestic companies Optic Fiber and Telecom Italia (TIM).
In the US, Meloni also met with the CEO of BlacRock, the world’s largest asset management company. Larry Fink manages assets larger than the combined GDP of Germany and Japan, and in Italy he is the largest foreign institutional investor on the Milan Stock Exchange, holding large stakes in top Italian companies. The Meloni government approved the takeover of the fixed telephony division of the aforementioned TIM company by one of BlackRock’s major partners. It is about KKR, an American investment fund on the payroll of which, for more than a decade, General David Petraeus, former head of CENTCOM and the CIA. “Beyond the fact that this telephone network is a national asset, and now the sensitive data of Italian citizens is falling into foreign hands, these government moves are the culmination of a long series of privatizations that began in the 1990s,” writes journalist Thomas Fazi, for UnHerd. “If you put this together with BlackRock’s future plans – among other things, it hopes to buy Italy’s rail and highway network, which is now under public or semi-public control – it looks like the country will become an outpost of capital American, remaining with little economic sovereignty”.
The Meloni government has the right to ban major decisions by private companies registered in Italy if the latter are leaders in strategic areas such as energy and the banking system. The Meloni government gave the green light for the UniCredit bank to begin the takeover of the German bank Commerzbank, one of the largest in the country. In the middle are also the Americans from BlackRock, because they are important shareholders in both banks. Italy is in Larry Fink’s camp in this case as well. “Europe needs a stronger capital market system,” said the latter, when asked about UniCredit’s decision to take over the German bank, suggesting in this way that it facilitates this project. In Berlin, Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a harsh reaction and accused UniCredit of unfriendly actions towards Germany. German officials have indicated that the Italian bank wants a hostile takeover of Commerzbank, in which the German federal state is a major shareholder, having lent heavily to the bank during the euro crisis. Now, UniCredit has increased its stake from 9% to 21.5% and is awaiting approval from the European Central Bank for this increase. In case of a positive answer, UniCredit can acquire 30% of Commerzbank.
And thus, the “sovereignist” Giorgia Meloni ended up being presented in the world’s economic press as a positive hero, while the Chancellor of Germany seems to be approaching the image of the Prime Minister of Hungary, who wants the state to control a relevant segment of the market banking of the country.
Moreover, it was the Meloni government that officially withdrew Italy from China’s New Silk Road project, where it had been brought, in 2021, by another anti-establishment government, the Five Star Movement and the League (the party of Matteo Salvini, who is now part of the coalition led by Meloni). Italy was the only G7 member country to join China’s project.
“In short, we are witnessing the economic cannibalization of Europe by American capital. But that should not surprise us. French historian Emmanuel Todd wrote in his latest volume: “As its power declines worldwide, the American system ends up burdening its protectorates, which remain the last bases of its power.” European industry is essential to American interests and, says Todd, we must expect even more “systemic exploitation” of Italy and Germany by the Washington powerhouse, writes leftist journalist Thomas Fazi.
On the other hand, we can consider that Giorgia Meloni is one of the most skilled politicians in Europe. With the takeover of the government, he understood that compromise with the Brussels and Washington system, not antagonism, is essential to stay in power. In this way, Meloni was able to bring topics such as migration to the center of the discussion and thus satisfy his own electorate and maintain domestic political stability. The political experience makes Meloni cautious in political interactions with America – she decided not to take the side of the Trump camp, nor the Democratic Party camp, waiting like a chameleon for the results of the November elections. He is at war with the humanitarian NGOs that operate as taxis across the Mediterranean for immigrants, he is building camps in Albania for these immigrants and he is fighting with EC President Ursula von der Leyen to get the best possible job in the new Commission (European Affairs Minister Raffaele Fitto is proposed for one of the executive vice-presidencies of the new Commission). All these fronds seem like dispensations given to the government in Rome to preserve its electorate and stability, so that it can continue to act as a Trojan horse of international, especially American, financial interests. There is evidence that Italy has a very skilled politician in power, but also that Europe’s politics is very weak.
Source: www.cotidianul.ro
