As dusk falls in Turin’s Piazza Carlo Alberto, at least 500 supporters of Giorgia Meloni are chanting and waving Italy’s green-white-red tricolore and flags bearing a flame in the same colours. Since 1945 this flame has been a symbol of the political heirs to Italian fascism and today stands for her post-fascist party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy, or FdI). In every one of the narrow streets feeding into the square stand hordes of peak-capped Carabinieri and officers of the civilian Polizia, who gather quickly around one young woman when she unfurls a rainbow LGBT flag. Rows of police motorbikes and vans are parked, ready, in the surrounding alleys. I have covered political rallies all over Europe, but none as heavily policed and secured as this one.
Giorgia Meloni marches on to the stage, short and slight, but easily visible across the square thanks to her platform trainers, a bright-green, satin blazer and blonde hair. She starts by joking to the crowd that she no longer bothers with the newspapers. “I talk to you!” she says to cheers. “I go out into the street and talk to you. And the left can say whatever it wants.”
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