Anatomy of the perfect betrayal: from tricolor flame to Brussels red carpet
Palazzo Chigi burns. Not with patriotic passion, but with that petty fever that grips turncoats when they sense power slipping away. In corridors where Mussolini signed racial laws, Giorgia Meloni now orchestrates her metamorphosis: from champion of sovereign Italy to servant of globalist Europe. The circle closes with perfection that would make Dante envious.
Giovanbattista Fazzolari, the man who whispers strategies in the premier’s ear, has charted the course of betrayal. On Palazzo Chigi’s table lie projects of conversion that beggar belief: Meloni at Sanremo Festival amid tears and ditties, domesticated journalist pools on state flights, Americanized events where Italy gets sold to the highest bidder. The tricolor flame extinguishes in the mud of spectacle politics.
Three years ago she screamed “Italians first,” today she pleads “Europe first.” Three years ago she denounced Brussels bureaucrats, today she kisses their foreheads hoping to stay in command. This isn’t evolution—it’s total capitulation.
TIME MAGAZINE: THE KISS OF DEATH DISGUISED AS GLORY
July 24th, Time gifted her the cover she dreamed of: “Where Giorgia Meloni Is Leading Europe.” Roman establishment toasted like they’d won the World Cup, proving they understood nothing. Those who read Massimo Calabresi’s article discovered brutal truth: Time doesn’t celebrate Meloni—it dissects her like a corpse on the anatomical table.
“After establishing a moderate reputation initially, Meloni is tacking back to the right now that Trump is in power,” writes the American journal with surgical precision only Anglo-Saxons master when they want to sink the knife. Time denounces how the premier is taking “small but familiar steps to erode democracy,” preparing “an international alliance of right-wing extremists threatening postwar European liberalism.”
Translated from bureaucratese: Meloni is useful while she serves, dangerous when she no longer does. Washington uses her as a bridge to Europe, Brussels tolerates her while she does dirty work, but neither considers her an equal. She’s the perfect maid: efficient, submissive, disposable.
Meloni’s establishment celebrated the cover while carefully omitting uncomfortable parts. Typical. These provincials get excited over any international attention, even when they’re being kicked. Colonial syndrome—thanking the master for beatings.
THE PURGE: WHEN REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS CHILDREN
Fratelli d’Italia prepares for final reckoning. Meloni has ordered “cleansing” of parliamentarians too extreme, those who actually believed sovereignist rhetoric, those naive enough to think “God, homeland, family” was more than electoral slogan. Out with nostalgics, romantics, anyone with a gram of ideological coherence.
What remains: technocrats, yes-men, professional turncoats who change opinions following polls. Fratelli d’Italia’s new leadership class increasingly resembles the Democratic Party: same faces, same careers, same servility toward Europe that matters. The only difference is the electoral symbol, but that will probably change too.
The grand pre-electoral event of autumn 2026 will serve as runway for presenting this new political creature. Following American convention models, Meloni will show the world her lobotomized party, freed from every residue of national dignity. Brothers of Italy without brothers, without Italy, without anything but pure careerism.
THE NEW CATECHISM: “I AM NOT WHAT I WAS”
“I’m not racist, not homophobic, not fascist,” Meloni recites today with passion of one abjuring under torture. She’s abandoned the famous “I am Giorgia, I am a mother, I am Christian” that made her icon of European right. The new mantra is simpler: “I am whatever you want me to be, provided you leave me in power.”
Conversion is total. She who denounced ethnic replacement now opens ports to anyone. She who screamed against the euro now kisses Christine Lagarde’s hand. She who promised naval blockade now provides ships to escort migrants into Italian territory. This isn’t pragmatism—it’s systematic betrayal of every electoral promise.
The premier’s autobiography, translated in the United States, becomes instrument of this narrative reconstruction. Talk of a film adaptation would transform her biography into permanent electoral spot. Hollywood serving Palazzo Chigi: America blessing the new domesticated, system-functional Giorgia.
THE EUROPE THAT ALWAYS WINS
Meloni represents European social engineering’s final masterpiece. Brussels succeeded in the impossible feat: converting Europe’s last sovereignist party, transforming it into docile instrument of its own expansion. Where economic blackmail and infringement procedures failed, seduction of personal power triumphed.
Italy’s premier became Europe’s “Trump whisperer,” the only continental leader capable of mediating between Washington and Brussels. A role guaranteeing international visibility while reducing her to service maid between two masters. This isn’t leadership—it’s institutionalized subordination.
Time grasps this dynamic with brutal precision: Meloni is “building a new kind of nationalism: populist, nativist and pro-Western, but committed to European and Atlantic alliances.” Translated: fake nationalism serving to hide real submission. Façade sovereignism for substantial Europeanism.
Europe won this game too. It took the last leader who resisted and transformed her into its best ally. The system is perfect: it allows European peoples to vent rage by voting “anti-system” parties that, once in power, become more Europeanist than traditional parties.
THE PRICE OF BETRAYAL
Meloni’s metamorphosis costs Italy dearly. We traded our last chance at national autonomy for stability of a government governing on behalf of others. Meloni remains premier, but Italy becomes increasingly European province. The accounts balance for everyone except us.
Italian politics enters a new phase: that of algorithmic leadership, where polls determine not only strategies but leaders’ very identity. Meloni pioneers this anthropological mutation, prototype of European right seeking respectability by renouncing every principle.
In a few years, when the system has squeezed and discarded her, someone will remember that once in Italy there existed a party promising to change things. Before it discovered how much more comfortable it was to be changed by things.
The great performance continues. The audience applauds, unaware the comedy has ended and all actors are dead.