On Monday’s episode of his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson appeared to be a huge fan of newly elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a neo-fascist who was elected as part of a group called the “centre-right coalition” Sunday.
In a twisty commentary on Monday, Carlson asserted that Meloni isn’t actually a fascist because she is religious, and then said that Republican leaders in Congress pale in comparison to Meloni and the movement she leads.
First, in a clip you can see above, Carlson contrasted the public policy pitches Republicans are making ahead of the 2022 election to Meloni’s. Tucker isn’t a fan of the Republican pitch.
“House Republicans just spelled out what they’re running on, it’s a document called the ‘Commitment to America.’ It’s fine. Probably not much in it you disagree with it (sic). Have you heard of it? No, you probably haven’t. You probably haven’t read it. Nobody really cares. Why? Because there is nothing real in it.”
Carlson complained that the GOP document doesn’t mention “the attacks on the American family that you see every day,” listing for example concerns like dwindling prosperity and lower upward mobility. “People are upset about that, why wouldn’t they be? But nobody says it.”
Then a couple of minutes later, Carlson attempted to refute the popular description of Meloni as a fascist, saying “fascists don’t believe in God. God is a rival to their power. Of course. [Meloni] is a person publicly professing faith in God.”
Watch that clip here:
In actuality, Meloni is a member of the “Brothers of Italy,” a party formed by breakaways from the country’s center-right The People of Freedom party. Those breakaways, including Meloni herself, were largely drawn from membership of the National Alliance, a neo-fascist party that uses the symbol of the defunct neo-fascist party Italian Social Movement, which itself was founded by members of fascist parties that were banned after World War II.
And if that wasn’t enough to indicate Meloni’s true leanings, she has, quite literally, expressed admiration for Mussolini (the guy who founded fascism) and for Giorgio Almirante, an Italian Nazi collaborator who founded Italian Social Movement.
