Grazia Di Maggio is one of Fratelli d’Italia’s youngest candidates for the Chamber of Deputies for the Lombardy constituency. Born in 1994, she has a European and International Politics degree from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and is a freelance journalist. She was a candidate in the municipal elections in the city of Milan in October 2021. She spoke with us about the upcoming Italian elections and the figure of Giorgia Melloni.
You are a journalist, but you have been in politics for a long time. What brought you to Fratelli d’Italia?
I like to believe that what is destined for you finds a way to reach you. It all started during my university years in Milan, immersed in a radically modern environment and surrounded by increasingly aberrant ideas. I said to myself: I can’t be the only one who thinks like this, who wants to change my environment. I found myself fighting to defend what I believe in the founding values of our society. I grew up in a right-wing family, but nobody pushed me into politics. A good dose of curiosity and affinity for values led me to follow Fratelli d’Italia and Giorgia Meloni more and more closely until I signed up during an event, and a beautiful love story with the people of our community began.
How is the campaign going in Lombardy? I think there were some violent incidents in Milan with the extreme left. Is that right?
Milan is the city I love, the one I chose because I was not born there, but where I decided to do my life project. It is a very intense election campaign, but what counts most is the contact with the territory, with the associations, and with all the people you meet in the local markets. According to the polls, we are the leading party in Italy, and Italians believe in our project; they trust in the coherence of Fratelli d’Italia, they are enthusiastic, and they deserve change.
For the first time, Italians are coming closer to our ground, which is a victory for those who started when the party was below 5%. Unfortunately, there are also regrettable episodes like the one a few days ago, when, in downtown Milan, a group of vandals smashed and destroyed one of our stands. This is just the umpteenth action of the supporters of single thinking, those who want to silence us, and those who are afraid because they cannot beat us on the field of argument. They will never corner us.
Last Sunday, Giorgia Meloni presided over a massive rally in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo. What did Giorgia Meloni convey to the Lombard candidates?
Every time I listen to Giorgia, I am surprised, and this is because her preparation and her simple way of explaining complex issues manage to win over even the most skeptical. We certainly have many ambitious challenges ahead of us that make our hands tremble; we are in a time of great crisis, not only economic but also social and cultural, and the first hundred days of the new government will not be easy. Fratelli d’Italia will demonstrate the seriousness of its contents, the authority of its leadership class, and the solidity of its principles even in the nation’s government, as it has done in recent years from the opposition. It is not for nothing that the motto of this election campaign for us is “We are ready.”
Polls have been banned ten days before the elections. Do you think this is because Giorgia Meloni’s gap with the left is growing?
The left lives with anxiety about polls, while we are thinking of running an election campaign based on proposals and content, not on demonizing our opponents. We will continue to do what we have always done. Those who should say yes to us are the Italians. Perseverance always pays off in the end.
What do you think of the campaign against Giorgia Meloni? She was even accused of taking part in the tribute to Sergio Ramelli, a victim of communist violence.
I think that this campaign of defamation and hatred created by the left is the modus operandi of the hegemonic power system that they have built up over the years. We are victims of this way of doing politics of those who, having no proposals to contribute, base their arguments on the demonization of the adversary.
Simply put, Giorgia Meloni is a woman; she is right-wing and does not need to tell what her political opponents did when they were 15 years old or to take phrases out of context in order to distort reality. Just as she does not need to justify herself for having participated, in an institutional capacity, in the commemoration for Ramelli and Pedenovi that took place in Milan in the presence of Mayor Giuseppe Sala and other personalities. Moreover, using a story of pain and injustice, such as that of young Sergio Ramelli, to defame the leader of a party is not only wrong, it is downright disgraceful.
These campaigns that stir up the ghosts of the past are less and less successful, as we have seen in Sweden. What do you think of the result of the Sweden Democrats? Do you think it favors Fratelli d’Italia?
The exponential increase in crime and violence as a consequence of the increase in immigrants in the Nordic countries, as well as the failure of the integration model that the left had intended, have led to this excellent result for the Sweden Democrats. The right-wing received the vote of 58% of young Swedes, a historic result. I don’t think this directly favors the Fratelli d’Italia. Still, it is certainly an important result for the family of European conservatives of which the FdI is a part and whose president is Giorgia Meloni.
If the polls do not lie, Giorgia Meloni will be Prime Minister. What does this mean for Italy and the rest of Europe?
On September 25th, we will be able to give a future back to our country after more than ten years of miserable elections and governments never legitimized by the people. Fratelli d’Italia has shown that it is the only real and credible alternative to the current left-wing system of power. For us, those who do business and create wealth are a resource to be valued; work expresses the dignity of the citizen and is a value to be protected; respect for the environment and economic growth must find a home in a compatible idea of development; the family is the founding community of society, not an old and outdated institution to be torn down.
For us, Italy’s western location is a natural choice, not a political calculation. Our country must regain its footing in international fora after too many years of marginalization. Challenging times lie ahead, but with the Fratelli d’Italia in the government of this nation, with a government legitimized by the popular vote, together with a new national cohesion, we will lead Italy out of the crisis into which irresponsible politics have dragged it. With Giorgia Meloni and the Italian patriots, the good of the homeland will come first.
Álvaro Peñas es redactor de deliberatio.eu, colaborador de Disidentia, The European Conservative, El American y otros medios europeos. Analista internacional, especializado en Europa del Este, para el canal de televisión 7NN. Autor en SND editores // Writer at deliberatio.eu, contributor at Disidentia, The European Conservative, El American and other European media. International analyst, specialized in Eastern Europe, for the television channel 7NN. Author at SND editores.