European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has spent a year courting right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a potential partner on the European stage.
From the outside, it was an unlikely friendship.
“Unlikely” they said, ignoring history.
Meloni went from a “scary far right figure” to “potential kingmaker” in Europe. Le Pen was called a fascist, and now she is being taken seriously. Just lberal mainstream media slowly legitimising and rehabilitating yesterday’s “far right extremists”. No wonder the far right is becoming more and more popular in Europe.
I would argue nothing much has changed. Only thing they lack is the official membership, but their families have successfully passed on their grandfathers’ ideology to them. The same goes for Baerbock by the way, and also most of the current political elite of the Baltic “states”. Kallas PM of Estonia, Landsbergis FM of Lithuania, both coincidentally had grandfathers in the SS or some Baltic equivalent iirc. Just Nazis descended from Nazis doing Nazi things.