Sometimes When there is a choice to be made, none of the options are good. The choice between hooking up with communism — in its Chinese iteration, the one that bugs Taiwan the most — and neofascism, of the back-to-the-roots Italian variety or any other kind, is such a choice.
The good news is that Taiwan does not have to choose. It neither needs to cozy up to China — the successes of President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration, despite its shortcomings, are evidence of that — nor does it need to embrace Italy under its likely new leader, Italian lawmaker Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy party won Sunday’s general election.
Should Meloni become prime minister, distance the country from China and cut its ties with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, as indicated in “Italy ahead of Taiwan-friendly shift” (Taipei Times, Sept. 25, page 3), it would indeed be good for Taiwan, but her administration as a whole would be bad for democracy worldwide.
Despite slightly toning down its euroskeptic messaging over the past few years, the Brothers of Italy, a successor of the neofascist Italian Social Movement party, until Feb. 24 advocated boosting the EU’s ties with Russia. Last year, Meloni said that the US’ foreign policy doctrine, ironically with the exception of from January 2017 to January last year, was to “create chaos” abroad, implying that Italy and Europe should no longer play along.
While other far-right parties in Europe took a hit in the polls due to their continued calls to cozy up to Russia even after its invasion of Ukraine, Meloni’s party immediately took a stance against Moscow, which contributed to its wave of public support that is likely to carry her into the Chigi Palace in Rome.
While Meloni’s position on China is fairly consistent — she championed the “Tibetan cause” during the 2008 Beijing Olympics — the party’s about-face on Russia shows that her administration would likely be a source of international volatility. Nothing could be taken for granted with her at the helm. While Italy leaving the EU seems off the table, her election platform called for a renegotiation of the rules of membership in the bloc “without destroying it.” A veiled warning cannot be clearer.
In the center of her agenda would be the idea of a “Christian nation” that defends its interests — defined as essential to it, but not necessarily democratically negotiated. It would upend the “status quo” wherever it thinks its idea of national interest is not fully represented, and upending Italy’s Belt and Road participation would be part of the agenda.
Taiwan, seeing itself as a “champion of democracy” and relishing any moment when others attach that label to it, should be aware of the danger.
Taiwanese proponents of democracy should know, or in some cases finally learn, that not every right-wing government engaging in verbal skirmishes with China does so for the right reason. On the contrary, it can be assumed that those engaged in dismantling democracy at home — the previous administration in the US, the current one in India, the previous and current ones in the Philippines, to name just a few relevant to Taiwan — are not interested in championing democracy vis-a-vis China, even if they are.
If the result of such a skirmish is that China loses — and Beijing is really not on a winning streak at the moment — Taiwan in many cases profits. In the case of Italy, if a Taiwan-friendly stance is part of how a Meloni administration seeks to engage China, a polite but careful “thank you” from Taipei might be warranted, but as a democracy, it should never seek to make neofascism its bedfellow.
Chris van Laak is a copy editor at the Taipei Times.
The views expressed in this article are his own.
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