Fascism has returned to Italy. A right-wing coalition, including the far-right brothers of Italy party, won 44% of the vote at the last election, meaning that the brothers of Italy party leader, Giorgia Milani, will become the country's first female prime minister and first fascist to lead the country since Benito Mussolini. So, um, yeah, hashtag fascist girl boss, am I right? Now, there's a lot of people on the far-right in the United States who are celebrating this victory, because of course, and as I talk about this, you're going to see that there's a lot of parallels between Italy and the United States currently. And this isn't necessarily a unique phenomenon to Italy, but nonetheless, there's a lot of similarities. So let's get to the far-right and their celebration. This includes individuals like Mike Cernovich, Jack Psobjeck, and Steven Crowder. Of course, all taking to Twitter to celebrate her victory. Charlie Kirk writes, Trump has sparked an international movement from Brazil to Sweden to Italy. The only international movement Joe Biden ever sparked is the mass invasion on our southern border. In 2022, we turned the tide shore. Marjorie Taylor Greene congratulated her as did Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake. And also Bobo Chymdean is saying, this month, Sweden voted for a right-wing government. Now Italy voted for a strong right-wing government. The entire world is beginning to understand that the woke left does nothing but destroy.  Let freedom reign. Now as usual, the right, as Bobo did, will try to blame all of these victories on the unpopularity of the left. But as you're going to see, that is wrong flatly. But there is a reason why these parties are coming to power. But first, I've got to share another individual who is presumably celebrating because last month she said something very positive about the new prime minister before she knew that she was going to be prime minister. But I mean, there was an indication that the far right would do well in this party. That individual who also is happy, I'm assuming, is Hillary Clinton, who said this, the election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past. And that is certainly a good thing. Hillary Clinton said to an Italian journalist at the Venice International Film Festival earlier this month. So we have far right fascists in the United States uniting with neoliberals like Hillary Clinton in the US to celebrate this hashtag girl boss because she's the first female prime minister of Italy who also happens to be the first fascist to get elected since Benito Mussolini. Kind of an important detail there. But let's talk about the brothers of Italy party. This is a party with the history of explicit fascism. The Atlantic explains brothers of Italy, which Maloney has led since 2014, has an underlying and sinister familiarity. The party formed a decade ago to carry forth the spirit and legacy of the extreme right in Italy, which dates back to the Italian social movement, the party that formed in place of the national fascist party, which was banned after World War Two. Now just weeks before the 100th anniversary of the March on Rome, the October 1992 event that put Mussolini in power, Italy may have a former MSI activist for its prime minister and the government rooted in fascism. And now just days later we learned that that is indeed the case. Now, Maloney claims that this isn't a fascist party because will apparently fascism no longer exists. They're just a conservative party. But if you look at the way that they campaign, their policy platform, well, it's pretty obviously and transparently fascist. Now, this is fascism that is very similar to fascism in the United States. And it's also inspired by Hungarian fascism as well. As Claudia Turissi of Common Dreams explains, Maloney defines herself as pro-family and she and her party collaborate with anti-abortion and anti-LGBTIQ plus movements. One of her main campaign themes is the need to increase Italy's low birth rate by encouraging native women to have babies while at the same time denouncing the danger of an ethnic substitution by immigrants. Now, if you're mongering about immigrants seems to be their go-to strategy. And what we're seeing there is this Italy-first great replacement conspiracy that immigrants are going to replace traditional Italians there. So, you know, the same thing we see here, we're seeing there. And if they're not explicitly promoting this conspiracy theory, well, they're certainly priming people to think about immigrants in this way, which is deeply dangerous, which is inherently fascistic. Now, the question is, how did Italy get to this particular moment? Well, as Michael Lennarty, who's living in Italy, points out, brilessconism, the creation of the disastrous neoliberal and US NATO-controlled Democratic Party, modeled after the United States' own corporate-driven party, coupled with the general malaise and degradation of Italian culture, overall, have contributed to create the ingredients for the Steve Bannon-groomed Maloney to rise to the top like a toxic slime on the surface of a sea of contaminated waste. Italy has become like a country of spoiled children that has lost its identity. It has been colonized and lobotomized by multinational corporate interests, the mythological concept of the American dream, mass consumerism, US NATO-dictated militarism and crass materialism for almost 30 years from Berlusconi's first election in 1994, and even going back to the post-World War II era when the United States asserted its fear of influence by steamrolling an anti-communist agenda in order to maintain geopolitical control over the peninsula. Italy has been slowly steadily pulling out its historical roots and erasing its historical memory, and really important here, wages have been stagnant for decades. The post-COVID-19 bailouts from the EU are drying up and the cost of everything is on the rise. The Italian people are suffering a major increase in economic hardship from the criminal and stratospheric rise of energy prices, leading to crippling inflation across the board, all compounded by the disastrous war in Ukraine where Italy does whatever the United States government dictates. This has allowed for Maloney to ride a populist wave of anger as her political party strategically positioned itself as the opposition to the unfolding neoliberal disaster that has set the Italian and European economy back decades. So after neoliberalism has hollowed out the country, you know, led to stagnation of worker wages, you know, mass corporatization of the country has been a phenomenon that's been going on for decades. Well, it led to mass anger and disillusionment with the government. And it's a lot of what we're seeing around the world like global capitalism is hollowing out democracies everywhere. It is devastating communities. So when you have, you know, bad worker prospects, lower wages, stagnation, economically speaking, people begin to get desperate. And when you're desperate, well, that leads to you being more susceptible to radicalization, especially when a demagogue comes along and explains to you why you're in this position. Now, it may be a false explanation. They're trying to blame everything on immigrants for the most part. And that's a bit of an oversimplification of their overall ethos, right? It's more, it's more profoundly and getting back to traditional values and whatnot. But overall, if they come with an explanation, even if that's a false explanation, it's an explanation nonetheless. And a lot of people will be galvanized by that seemingly populist message. That's the case in the United States. That was the case in Brazil. That's the case in Hungary. And the center left just didn't get their act together. Really, I should say the centrists didn't get their act together. They didn't read the room. They didn't ride on this populist wave. And ultimately it led to their demise. And now democracy is in danger in Italy, because a fascist will assume control. Now, the one thing, the one antidote to fascism, which is what I've been claiming on this program for years, is a strong left wing pro worker party. And we're seeing how powerful that is in countries like Brazil, where Lula, the former president of Brazil, is currently leading Jair Bolsonaro, their fascist president, by a large margin. The problem here is that fascists don't go down easily. And the best strategy is to keep fascists out of power. Because once they actually take power, they can do a lot of damage. For example, Jair Bolsonaro right now, knowing that he's most likely going to lose to Lula, who's a kind of Bernie Sanders like figure. Well, he's pulling a Donald Trump claiming that the only way he doesn't win outright is if there is fraud. And a lot of people are expecting a sort of January 6 type event in the event he loses where he doesn't concede. The problem is that it could be much worse in Brazil than it was in the United States. Because unlike Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro actually has a lot of sway with the military. So we could see a potential military coup in the event he does not concede. Now Lula is saying that he doesn't think that that is going to be the case after he wins. But we don't know, it could be a disaster. And this is why I always stress, the best thing that you can do is keep fascists out of power.  And they're willing to take down democracy just to cling to power. But the problem is that, you know, these capitalist parties who have been the status quo for decades, they don't realize what's happening. They don't see the creep of fascism until it's too late, which puts us in situations like we're now in the United States, in Brazil, and now Italy, among other countries. So you know, this is just another country that has fallen to fascism. We're seeing the rise of a global fascistic movement. There's solidarity among fascists internationally. You know, Maloney is somebody who is aligned with Steve Benin. And this is only going to get worse. So unless these countries start turning things around, giving up the status quo that has economically depressed their populations, then these fascist demagogues, these pseudo populists are going to keep coming to power so long as people are desperate. And that's a problem. So we have to push back against this and be wary that this trend is going to continue assuming nothing changes globally.