Giorgia On My Mind

A discussion with the Italian journalist and political commentator Alessandra, aka Alias Vaughn

Alessandra, my guest on today’s PREVAIL podcast, is an Italian journalist and political commentator who goes by the pseudonym Alias Vaughn. Her work has been helping me understand the global political landscape—including what’s happening right here in the U.S.—for going on eight years now.

Here are three takeaways from our far-ranging discussion:

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Giorgia Meloni, the rightwing prime minister of Italy, is not as awful as initially feared. . .

Meloni is 47 years old. She is the head of the Fratelli d’Italia—the Brothers of Italy—a reactionary political party charitably described as “right-populist,” despite being a sister, not a brother. Victor Orbán in heels, she is the most reactionary leader Italy has had since Il Duce’s corpse graced the Piazzale Loreto. There was real fear when she took the helm in October 2022 that she would be another Russian puppet in the European Union. That, at least, has not come to pass.

“I have to say that—and I say this as a vehement critic of her side—I have to say that she was better than expected,” Alessandra tells me. This isn’t because of some greatness on Meloni’s part, but rather the constraints on power imposed by the European Union. She explains:

The European Union doesn’t fool around, and no one can survive nowadays without being a member of the European Union. So because of EU regulations, she is very limited in her—you know, trying to impose certain things, because they go against European law, and she can’t really do them. So there’s that. That is one part.

Naturally, I mean, if we’re speaking about moral issues or things that...she will always have a very…let’s say conservative—a conservative approach to things. But, and it’s a big “but,” she is actually better than others on her side—which is not saying much, as in she has [Matteo] Salvini on her side. Salvini is the secretary of the party that’s called Lega Lombarda, and they are xenophobic imbeciles.

Meloni, Alessandra says, is “better than them.”

“I wouldn’t compare her to the extremists in the U.S. She’s not like, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene or that kind of horrible show that you see in the U.S.”

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. . . but she’s still awful.

Unlike an American rightwing leader, Meloni cannot go after abortion rights, Alessandra tells me. “On abortion, we have a very, very good law. I guess our law would be considered probably slightly, not a lot, just slightly conservative in the U.S., because for example, abortion here is up until the fourth month, then that’s it—unless of course there [are] health issues or things like that. . . It’s done in a way that makes sense, in my opinion. And so they can’t really touch that.”

So Meloni riles up the base in that time-honored fascist way, by railing against gay people and immigrants. “What she can do damage with is immigration reform [and] economic policy just up to a certain level.”

Like all far-right governments, Meloni’s has its share of corruption. “One of the members of their coalition just appropriated millions of funds,” Alessandra says, “and now there’s a big scandal over that.”

She continues: “But basically, the way the system is conceived here, because of what we went through—I want to underline, like: we have tried before. [Italians know] what it means to have a dictator. So they were wise in setting up a system that limits powers, and there’s checks, and so you can’t do just whatever you want.”

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Trump is a lot like Mussolini.

Perhaps because the memory of Mussolini is still alive, Italians in general are wary of strongmen. “I don’t think that people in the U.S. have the full perception of how bad it was here,” Alessandra says. “You know, how people were forced to do things, and how they were threatened, how they were literally held hostage by the government—and I’m not saying figuratively, I’m saying literally.”

There are myriad similarities between Trump and his Italian prototype:

The similarities are [that] the personality is the same. You know the personality: the person who is weak, ugly, really ignorant and sly—not smart, sly—and who knows how they can play people. That is the key because every person who is a dictator has this characteristic of making people believe that they are the man to solve a problem.

And they make people believe that because they’re very, very good liars. And they’re very good at putting up a certain image, and they’re also very good at telling certain fringes of people what they want to hear. They are in tune with the gut of a certain electorate, and they only speak to that. Intellect be damned.

The number one rule of that type of situation is that the more ignorant you keep the people, the better it is for you. And the more ignorant people you attract, the better it is for you. Because of course, if somebody is ignorant—and I don't mean that as an offense, I mean that literally in the etymological sense of the word—like, you do not know things. The fewer things you know, the less freedom you have.

That’s why education is important. Education is the freedom to know things. And if you know a lot of things, you can have what is called discernment. And you can choose what is better for yourself. That is freedom. Freedom is not “I can do whatever I want.” Because there are laws everywhere and we live in a civil society. Freedom is being free to choose what is best for you. That’s what freedom is about. And that’s why dictatorship is the opposite of it.

And that’s what Trump has in common with Mussolini. They are people who know how to play the audience and make them believe that they are something that they are not in the least.

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LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

S7 E13: La Politica è Compromesso  (with Alessandra, aka Alias Vaughn)

In this conversation, Greg Olear interviews Alessandra about her background and her interest in US politics. They discuss JFK’s policy towards South America, with Alessandra sharing her research on the topic; the current political situation in Italy, including the prime minister and her stance on various issues; the public opinion of Trump in Italy; the similarities between Trump and Mussolini, and much more. Plus: a both sides superhero! 

Follow Alessandra:
https://twitter.com/aliasvaughn

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Photo credit: Vox Espana. CPAC 2022 con Hermann Tertsch y Victor Gonzalez. Meloni at CPAC in 2022.