This article is a translation of the original French version that appeared in Le Grand Continent on May 13, 2026.
The nationalist counter-revolution that has marked recent years was born in reaction to a revolution that began in the 1960s, reached its peak in the 1990s, and entered into crisis at the turn of the 2010s.
This revolution’s dynamic rested on a radical conviction: that a depoliticized order, articulated around a universalist ethic, individual rights, the rule of law, and the mechanisms of the market would suffice to guarantee the maximum emancipation of individuals as well as rapid and continuous progress on a planetary scale. It collapsed under the weight of its own utopianism and the hyperbolic promises that it did not know how to keep.
In reaction, a rebellion slowly and confusedly took shape against this millenarianism, carried by a unilateral anthropology, incapable of grasping human complexity in its contradictions, and nourished by abstractions that tore people from their contexts, whether historical or geographical.
This rebellion finally took the form of a nationalist counter-revolution.
The Counter-Revolution and the Meloni Model
Judging by the present situation, it is clear that this counter-revolution is far from exhausted. Yet, even though it has been underway for at least a decade, if one asks what new order it intends to build to replace the one it rejects, the answer is often unclear. Even if the negative analysis of late modernity that it presents seems well-founded in many respects, it is largely incapable of proposing an effective remedy.
Much attention has been given to studying and labelling the intellectual undercurrents that accompanied Donald Trump’s second presidential term. However, this discussion is undermined by glaring contradictions, both within the writings of individual authors and between them. It also remains an open question as to whether the White House is actually using these theoretical texts when making decisions. As is always the case during interregnums, once the summits of power are no longer governed by shared rules, their behavior comes to rely on improvisation, if not narcissistic psychoses. Hostility toward the old, moribund order becomes so violent that it rewards outrage and provocation, even when these reactions are ultimately futile. Under such conditions, intellectual reflection risks being regarded by those in power not merely as useless, but as harmful.
During interregnums, once the summits of power are no longer governed by shared rules, their behavior comes to rely on improvisation, if not narcissistic psychoses.
The counter-revolution’s inability to advance viable solutions is all the more apparent because the order bequeathed by the radical revolution of the late twentieth century remains so deeply entrenched that it is difficult to imagine its unraveling except through some catastrophic rupture. Yet it appears even more improbable that the public opinions of advanced democracies—distrustful but concerned with preserving their goods and privileges—would consent, in the present state of things, to let themselves be carried toward an apocalypse. The Trump administration itself, which strives to dismantle the old order at any cost, nevertheless remains more radical in words than in acts.
By revealing the profoundly contradictory character of the international nationalist movement, the spectacular acceleration of the President of the United States, moreover, ended up placing it under strong pressure. To defuse this contradiction and succeed in creating a global alliance of all those who give priority to national selfishness, there would be needed a wholly different capacity for self-limitation and cultural reflection. The defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, although attributable in large part to internal causes, can be read as a sign that nationalism knows how to do nothing other than slow down and hinder the order to which it opposes itself. In the absence of a vision making it possible to rethink an interconnected globe, the counter-revolution is doomed to remain the symptom of a profound crisis, not its remedy.
The accession of Giorgia Meloni to the head of the government made the peninsula a laboratory of nationalist counter-revolution.
In this context, the victory in Italy of a center-right coalition in the elections of 2022 and the accession of Giorgia Meloni to the head of the government made the peninsula a laboratory of nationalist counter-revolution and made the leader of Fratelli d’Italia a credible example for conservatives to follow. The Italian case is all the more instructive because the peninsula is readily perceived as a “political laboratory” in which phenomena are announced that are then called to unfold elsewhere—from Berlusconism to the Five Star Movement, to cite only recent history. Giorgia Meloni thus became a textbook case and almost imposed a model.
After soon nearly four years of melonismo, it is therefore legitimate to ask not only whether the Italian counter-revolution has finally “returned to port,” but also to what extent the work of Giorgia Meloni could serve as a reproducible prototype and open the way to other nationalist counter-revolutions.
What we will seek to show is that, to the extent that it is possible to draw out the contours of a “Melonism” ideology from Fratelli d’Italia’s time in office, it would be illusory to see in it a transposable political model, beyond the political career of the current President of the Council.
An Anticlimax: the Meaning of the Meloni Moment
Giorgia Meloni did not win the elections of 2022 due to the enthusiastic push of a nationalist wave: she received no ideological mandate from Italian voters. Two figures suffice to demonstrate this: with 63.9% participation, 43.8% of the votes were gathered by the center-right coalition, that is, a little more than one quarter of the population. The leader of Fratelli d’Italia therefore imposed herself in a climate of resignation appearing at the end of a cycle of political agitation lasting a decade that had revealed itself, for the umpteenth time, incapable of halting Italian decline.
This cycle began in 2013, in the aftermath of the pro-European and technocratic experience of the government of Mario Monti which culminated in the electoral explosion of the Five Star Movement. It continued with Matteo Renzi’s attempt to defeat populism by imitating its methods alongside a dynamic reformism, but this too failed. The Five Star Movement then formed a government for an entire legislature, from 2018 to 2022, allying itself first with the right and then with the left, finally supporting a pro-European and technocratic government led by Mario Draghi — that is, the exact opposite of everything that its founder Beppe Grillo had always represented. Meanwhile, the sovereigntist leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, had experienced the trajectory of a sort of shooting star, extinguishing itself very quickly after having reached its political zenith.
Between the two Marios—Draghi and Monti—from 2011 to 2022, Italy tried and exhausted all possible options. By opting for Meloni at the end of this cycle, voters turned toward the only leadership that had not yet been worn out by compromises and the daily management of power.
[Meloni] offered the face of a reliable leader, a capable set of hands to turn the page on a male leadership that had marked the populist decade.
Fruit of a collective weariness more than of a proactive choice, it was a sober victory, devoid of the enthusiasm that accompanies great historical turning points. The first woman to preside over the Council of Ministers did not seek to embody the freedom that pushes the people to mount the barricades. She offered the face of a reliable leader, a capable set of hands to turn the page on a male leadership that had marked the populist decade. To take the proper measure of the 63.9% voter turnout 2022, it must be recalled that it was more than 75% in 2013. The last Italian legislative elections therefore constituted a disappointment, not the harbinger of a counter-revolutionary acceleration.
A Distorted Reading
Commentators often commit two errors when trying to understand the Meloni phenomenon.
The first, and the most serious, consists in wanting to understand this political phenomenon—or rather, to demonize it—as a direct continuation of fascism. In Italy, this error has been nourished by the chronic fragility of the political left and by the sectarianism of a large part of progressive culture, relayed by a substantial minority of public opinion. Outside Italy, it is due to the laziness of journalists who have not taken the trouble to correct the stereotyped image that their readers have of the peninsula: that of pizzas, mandolins, and black shirts.
There is no doubt that Fratelli d’Italia presents itself—even in its logo, with the symbol of the flame—as the last heir of the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano, MSI), which included clearly neo-fascist elements. The decades have however passed and, in particular since the end of the Cold War, this political tradition has undergone a profound metamorphosis. One could easily argue that their repudiations of their fascist past could have been more convincing. But it is no longer possible to ignore the now innumerable occasions on which Meloni has explicitly and clearly disavowed the fascist regime and pledged her adherence to constitutional values.
It suffices to read the speech she delivered in the Chamber of Deputies during the solemn ceremony of her inauguration, on 25 October 2022. She declared: “freedom and democracy are the distinctive elements of contemporary European civilization, with which I have always identified myself […]. I have never felt sympathy or closeness toward anti-democratic regimes — any regime, including fascism, and I have always considered the racial laws of 1938 as the lowest point in Italian history, a shame that will mark our people forever.” She added: “the political community from which I come has always progressed toward a full and conscious historicization of the twentieth century, it has assumed important governmental responsibilities, by swearing on the republican Constitution, as we had the honor of doing only a few hours ago. It affirmed and embodied without any ambiguity the values of liberal democracy, which are the foundation of the common identity of the Italian center-right and from which we will not move one centimeter. We will fight every form of racism, antisemitism, political violence and discrimination.” To see in these declarations a hidden apology of Benito Mussolini amounts, at the very least, to bad faith.
The second error of perspective, less serious than the preceding one, has consisted in reducing “Melonism” to a form of populism. Born on the eve of the cycle of political agitation of 2013–2022, Fratelli d’Italia certainly addressed itself directly to citizens by using the dichotomous and moralizing arguments considered typical of populist rhetoric, opposing the virtuous people to a self-referential and corrupt establishment—the European Union and its bureaucracy, the centers of international finance, the progressive intelligentsia entrenched behind single thought. And the electorate of this party, who undeniably share populist views—even conspiracy thinking —no doubt appreciated this. But the roots of the political tradition to which Fratelli d’Italia attaches itself go back well beyond the populist decade. When Giorgia Meloni founded her party, she already possessed a solid political career as well as ministerial experience. She moreover explicitly rejected populism, which she described as an “anti-vision” founded on the pursuit of ephemeral social moods, whereas, according to her, politics should know how to guide society on the basis of a clear and coherent project.
The roots of the political tradition to which Fratelli d’Italia attaches itself go back well beyond the populist decade. When Giorgia Meloni founded her party, she already possessed a solid political career as well as ministerial experience.
Thus, if Fratelli d’Italia was, at the outset, a small political entity, it knew how to equip itself with a hierarchical structure inherited from the tradition of the mass parties of the twentieth century. Its leadership is not composed of outsiders foreign to public life but of career and long-standing politicians, whose selection process rewards militancy and loyalty; leaders are only selected once they have spent a long time on the ground. Finally, the party does not reject the traditional political dialectic between the right and the left, as populists often do. On the contrary, it relies upon it and even reinforces it.
A Tentative Definition of Melonism
If neither the labels of fascist nor populist define “Melonism,” it is because one must begin analysis from the conceptual void at the heart of the project. It lodges itself in a breach opened by the implosion of fascism, delegitimized as an ideology as early as 1945 and which, since the end of the Cold War, no longer even provides the modest political building blocks that the Italian Social Movement made use of.
This void was filled in two ways: on the cultural level first, but more profoundly, on the anthropological level.
In terms of political culture, one may argue that melonismo attached itself to conservatism. Beginning in 2020–2021, when the populist and Eurosceptic wave lost some of its force, Fratelli d’Italia began to prepare itself for the eventuality of conquering power and Giorgia Meloni acceded to the presidency of the party of the European Conservatives and Reformists. This explicit adherence to conservatism was not only instrumental. On the contrary, Meloni largely demonstrated that she knew how to move with ease within a framework of values anchored in the pillars of conservatism: realism and common sense, respect for religion, patriotism, and the defense of the traditional family.
However, this shift was not accompanied by a more deeply rooted cultural reflection. If, over the years, the conferences and publications of the foundations of Italian conservatism have not been lacking in content, their programmatic ideas have been modest in scope, confined essentially between two poles: on the one hand, the critique of progressive thought, accompanied by complaints concerning its hegemonic position, and on the other, the ritual reaffirmation of the historical principles of the conservative tradition.
If […] the conferences and publications […] of Italian conservatism have not been lacking in content, their programmatic ideas have been modest in scope.
In other words, one saw no real attempt to produce original thought, nor any effort to update the conservative tradition in the twenty-first century. Such an updating would nevertheless be urgent: is there still a meaning in speaking of “patriotism” in an Italy where only 16% of citizens say themselves ready to defend their country? What does “traditional family” mean in a state engulfed in a full demographic crisis which, between 2008 and 2024, saw the proportion of children born outside marriage increase from 20 to 43%? The Meloni government is not without a circle of intellectuals, yet it remains remarkably small and has yielded little of lasting significance. Since the 2022 elections, for instance, no major book comes readily to mind that the government has openly acknowledged as a guiding influence, even at the level of rhetoric. Nor does there exist a journal or review within its intellectual orbit capable of shaping the terms of public debate.
The true essence of melonismo is therefore not so much to be found on the level of political culture or ideology, but on the anthropological level. If fascism is unusable—even outright harmful—and conservatism is hardly more than a label, the common experience of the political family within which Meloni grew up is otherwise more determinant.
This community is no longer defined by the decades that it spent nourishing nostalgia for fascism, but it is still largely marked by the decades it spent defending itself against extreme marginalization by those who accused it of nourishing this nostalgia. It is during this period that, transforming ostracism and isolation into collective identity and a bond of loyalty, this political family became what it is: an existential tribe before a political one, welded together by a series of symbolic references and a cult of martyrs, like the young members of the MSI killed during the Years of Lead.
The fact that, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this political family was legitimized and brought to power by Silvio Berlusconi, that it governed the country in 1994, from 2001 to 2006, then from 2008 to 2011, that it managed innumerable regions and municipalities, that Meloni herself was the youngest minister in the history of Italy, nothing in all of this institutionalization modified the original identity of this tribe: once an underdog, always an underdog.
From this history, Giorgia Meloni and her party drew an essentially reactive and vindictive psychology that fundamentally conditions all their other characteristics.
This political tribe was born in a hostile environment and constitutes itself as an instrument in defense of a minority facing the preponderant force of their oppressors. The references to conservatism can remain superficial, upon closer inspection, because their principal function is less to produce autonomous and original thought than to generate an identity in opposition to the hegemony of progressive culture.
[Melonism] does not know how to project itself as a hegemonic force in power, even when it is. Devoid of a culture of government, it was born and made for opposition.
When it is populist, it is because “Melonism” places its emphasis on its own opposition to the powerful, in a form defined by Pierre Ostiguy as “the antagonistic, mobilizational flaunting of the ‘low.’” Structurally conceived as minoritarian, it does not know how to project itself as a hegemonic force in power, even when it is. Devoid of a culture of government, it was born and made for opposition.
This anthropological outlook, which ultimately takes on a psychological dimension, appears almost perfectly suited to bringing Giorgia Meloni’s remarkable political talent to the fore. Indeed, it may even have contributed to its formation. For that talent is itself essentially reactive. The President of the Council has a solid sense of reality and of power relations, and she pushes distrust and prudence to obsessive degrees. She never anticipates, dares very rarely, but shows herself very skillful at responding—always after having taken care to leave a moment of hesitation—to the demands that history makes to her. In this, her political style, which remains fundamentally Roman, borrows something from Angela Merkel’s strategic waiting.
In total, a complete definition of melonismo could more or less resemble this: “a technique of government consisting in reacting with a slight delay to the challenges posed by a still strong but deeply crisis-stricken globalist and post-traditionalist order, by drawing from a pragmatic style vaguely inspired, when possible, by traditionalist and anti-globalist values.”
A Review of Three Years and a Half in Government
Marked more by adaptation to the constraints of reality than by structural reforms, the three and a half years of the center-right government confirm this definition. Without claiming here an exhaustive evaluation, one may pause on two crucial points: European and international policy on the one hand; migration and security policies on the other.
The autonomy of a country such as Italy—one of medium size, a member of the Eurozone, an importer of raw materials and exporter of manufactured products, burdened by significant public debt, and in demographic and productive crisis—can exist only through a coherent and prudent foreign policy. In theory, the detractors of Meloni’s most aggressive nationalist positions have always been right to emphasize this reality. But concretely, these same detractors have often lacked political sensitivity: in a democracy, one must know how to manage public opinion; it is not enough, can even be counterproductive, to give lessons in rationality from one’s pulpit. Yet in this regard, by approaching the European and global situation with realism while seeking to gain credibility and thus carve out a little space for autonomous national initiatives, Meloni has no doubt acted better than she preached.
This strategy first translated itself into rigorous management of public accounts. The gap between Italian state bonds and German Bunds, in constant decline since the end of 2023, has remained stable below one hundred basis points since the middle of 2025. Ratings agencies have positively evaluated the Italian strategy of debt control. This allowed the government to assume a stronger role in the internal geopolitics of the European Union, obtaining some successes like securing the post of Executive Vice-President of the Commission for Raffaele Fitto. Meloni also played a non-negligible role in containing Viktor Orbán’s attempts to paralze the EU by serving as a mediator to mollify Hungarian blockages on aid to Ukraine and the Union budget. This, of course, did not change her negative position vis-à-vis European integration. But she demonstrated that she had understood that the protection of the Italian national interest passed through the stability of the Eurozone and through Italy’s active involvement—even in a critical manner—in the decision-making processes of Brussels.
[Meloni] understood that the protection of the Italian national interest passed through the stability of the Eurozone and through Italy’s active involvement—even in a critical manner—in the decision-making processes of Brussels.
Much has been written, in Italy and abroad, about Meloni’s closeness to Trump. Yet, to see in their relationship a perfect political alignment would once again amount to an error.
In many respects, Fratelli d’Italia’s links to the conservative international, of which the American Republican Party is today the spearhead, are also governed by the logic of the conceptual void discussed above: devoid of a broader program, it was necessary for them to cling to the most visible conservative parties abroad. It is in this context that one must also understand Meloni’s support for Orbán during the last Hungarian election. On the ideological and political planes, in sum, Meloni is indeed close to Trump, but the deepest root of her Atlanticism lies elsewhere. And it is not by chance that she had also forged excellent relations with the Biden administration. In this, Giorgia Meloni inscribes herself in an Italian tradition of foreign policy which, for decades, has consisted in taking advantage of the transatlantic link to reinforce the position of the peninsula on the European stage, in the face of the Franco-German couple. This strategy bore fruit in the particular circumstances of recent years, at least so long as the Trump factor remained manageable.
But it is on the terrain of immigration and security that important segments of public opinion—in villages and small towns, in the suburbs of metropolises, among the most disadvantaged social classes, and those most attached to identity and community ties—rebelled against the abstractions of the radical revolution for their most concrete and most everyday needs.
In response to public demands for security, the Meloni government strengthened the judicial repression of criminal activity by introducing numerous new criminal offenses and increasing penalties for offenses already recognized by law. In short, it followed a law-and-order logic, expanding both the powers and the scope of action of the judiciary. At the same time, however, following an opposite logic inspired by concerns for due process and institutional balance, the government sought to bring those same powers and spaces back under political control through a reform of the judicial system—a reform that was subsequently rejected in the referendum of 22 March 2026.
This contradictory double movement may be read as a sign of the cultural fragility of the current center-right majority. The counter-revolution claims to be conservative, yet it remains caught between populist impulses—which here take the form of penal populism—and liberal principles.
With regard to migration questions, Meloni’s strategy did not consist so much in inventing and imposing a new European line as in consolidating and accelerating a transformation already underway at the EU level since the crisis of 2015. Meloni contributed to shifting the center of gravity of the continental debate toward a vision of immigration centered on border control, deterrence, externalization, and the economic selection of migratory flows. Measures which, only a few years ago, appeared practically only in the rhetoric of the far right progressively made their entry into the repertoire of European public action. Through this framework, Meloni pushed for the agreements with North African transit countries, particularly Tunisia and Libya, and the protocol with Albania for the extraterritorial management of part of asylum procedures, which became one of the most controversial symbols of the new European approach. The “Mattei Plan” pushed further for the intertwining of energy cooperation, Mediterranean policy, and migratory control.
On a theme as crucial for the nationalist counter-revolution as immigration, Italy therefore could obtain results only by working at the European and international level. Without the power to forge a new world order in its image, Meloni’s government had to resign itself to the idea that the defense of its borders would be subordinated, to a large extent, to processes escaping the direct control of the nation state.
There Will Not be a Meloni Model
Italy had the good fortune to be able to count on Giorgia Meloni’s talent for reactivity. In a global context marked by a chaotic and dangerous geopolitical transition, a declining middle power can scarcely do more than respond to the historical challenges that are presented to them. To succeed in navigating these troubled waters, such states must conduct themselves without wishful thinking but with a sense of realities and power relations. Yet the center-right government succeeded in exercising a modest brake against the radical revolution of recent decades—even if it did so more by abstaining from acting than by doing anything positive. To a certain extent, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia succeeded in being counter-revolutionary by using the lever of national sovereignty to limit the push of individualism and globalism. By voting for her in 2022, Italian voters had perhaps sought exactly that: not a traumatic overturning of the status quo, but common sense, protection, and a bulwark against historical change. The Meloni style knew how to respond to this expectation of Italians.
But her political success takes on a paradoxical character. She succeeded in reconciling Italian public opinion with European constraints by resorting to nationalist rhetoric tinged with populism. By virtue of a change in the political climate that one may trace back to the Covid-19 pandemic, Meloni allowed subversive voices to express themselves while channeling them within the framework of EU and international legality. It was noted above that, given Italy’s exposure to global winds, the detractors of her sovereigntism were right in theory but wrong in practice because in a democracy, proclaiming an abstract truth is never enough. Yet one could say that, if Meloni was perhaps wrong in theory, her political practice ended up proving her right: she knew how to manage a democratic process whose structures denied her most radical goals.
After her defeat in the constitutional referendum in March, the leader of Fratelli d’Italia appears politically worn down. But the opposition parties remain very fragile. The elections that will take place next year will see weak coalitions confront one another. In this contest, where voters will most likely be motivated by the mantra “may the worst lose,” it is not evident that the center-right majority will prevail again—but it is not impossible either.
Whatever the outcome of the next election, “Melonism” appears to have run its course. Whoever seeks in it a constructive counter-revolutionary thought, the embryo of a twenty-first-century conservatism capable of imagining a new world order centered on the nation, in short, whoever claims to make of it a model, will unfailingly be disappointed. The Meloni moment does not seem to have the strength to become anything other than what we have attempted to describe here: a phenomenon founded on management and resistance to external pressures, not on the foundation of a new order.
Giovanni Orsina is a Professor of Contemporary History and Head of the Department of Political Sciences at Luiss-Guido Carli University in Rome. He is the author of seven monographs and around fifty essays, as well as the editor of fifteen volumes or special journal issues on twentieth-century European politics, published in Italian, English, French, German, and Spanish. His recent publications include: Controrivoluzione. Una storia politica del nostro tempo (2026); Una democrazia eccentrica. Partitocrazia, antifascismo, antipolitica (2022); La democrazia del narcisismo. Breve storia dell’antipolitica (2018); Il berlusconismo nella storia d’Italia (2013 and 2023; English translation, 2014; French translation, 2018); Political Enemies in Republican Italy (2017, co-edited with Marco Gervasoni); and European Political Cultures and the European Integration Process (2015, co-edited with Lucia Bonfreschi and Antonio Varsori).
