Giorgia Meloni: the great replacement moves in

Demographic angst is a terrifying thing, especially to leaders concerned about poor returns from horizontal folk dancing. Viktor Orbán of Hungary is particularly apprehensive that precious Hungarian blood is not being propagated, facing dilution, if not disappearance, from hordes of swarthy immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.

In Italy, the country's imminent first female prime minister is much of that same view. Giorgia Meloni speaks about being a "woman, mother [and] Christian" with messianic purpose: to defend "God, country and family". The stress is on mother virtue rather than female rights, the latter only being relevant when it comes to highlighting migrant violence in fits of what has come to be known as femonationalism.

Unlike other conservatives and those of the Right in the Anglo-American tradition, welfare, in her political constellation, is not ill-fare. People – provided they come from a certain traditional demographic and background – should be supported and encouraged by the state. What matters is that they are the right sort of people.

To that end, Meloni insists on a pro-natalist platform to arrest Italy's demographic decline, including reducing VAT rates on nappies, baby bottles and formula; increasing child benefits; and making childcare free.

The spectre she claims to combat is that of the Great Replacement, a view promoted by the French novelist and critic Renaud Camus. In his essay, "Le Grand Remplacement", he describes a process of colonisation in reverse, with native "white" Europeans deluged and eventually overcome by black and brown immigrants. "You have one people, and in the space of a generation you have a different people," he warns threateningly.

The corollary of such natalist welfare is a deep suspicion of the dark forces of the market and the sinister elements that operate beyond government control. In this, Meloni shares ground with those on other sides of the political aisle concerned about the more destructive effects of predatory capital and its handmaidens.

On such policies as unwanted refugees, she sounds awfully like her counterparts in other parts of the European Union and the EU-exited Britain. While governments in Copenhagen and London have put forth programs to process asylum seekers in third countries, notably Rwanda, aping the grotesque Australian model of offshore processing, Meloni has repeatedly promoted much the same thing in the lead up to the 2022 elections.

She has even advocated the use of a "naval blockade" to halt illegal immigration, justifying it as a humanitarian gesture to prevent deaths at sea. In this, she could hardly improve on Australia's own justifications for its Pacific concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island. We will bar you, detain you, and torture you in order to save you.

Meloni has managed to weave a number of themes in a populist narrative she delivers with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, claiming that Italy's liberals have facilitated "the project of ethnic substitution of European citizens, desired by big capital and international speculators". Like her Hungarian counterpart, she has pointed the finger at the financing activities of George Soros, drawing heavily from the anti-Semitic trope of the Jewish usurer.

Allegations abound that the leader of the Fratelli d'Italia (Brothers of Italy) is a fascist. Given that the Italian constitution openly prohibits "the reorganisation in any form of the dissolved Fascist Party", this would be a remarkable coup indeed. That said, the party can be said to be the spiritual heir to Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement), a creation of Benito Mussolini's supporters after the Second World War.

In an interview with Corriere Magazine, Meloni explained how she had a "serene relationship with fascism". Mussolini, she conceded, had made "several mistakes". Despite producing "a lot", this fact did not "save him."

In 1995, MSI joined a larger agglomeration of parties to become the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance). AN, in turn, joined Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right People of Freedom party in 2009, where Meloni found herself Minister for Youth. Three years later, she was part of a splinter group that ultimately became the Brothers of Italy. Italian politics remains, as it has been for decades, populated by changelings.