ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP via Getty
A snippet from a 2019 speech given by the incoming Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni went viral on Twitter this week.
In case you missed it, Meloni (according to the translation) alleges that “everything that defines us is now an enemy.” She adds that “they” attack “national identity,” “religious identity,” “gender identity,” and “family identity.” (Sure sounds to me like that bête noire of the right, identity politics.)
Next, Meloni says that “they” want to turn her into a number, because “when I am a number, I no longer have any identity or roots.” This process, she says, is done to make her “the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators—the perfect consumer.”