Giorgia Meloni entered the Chigi Palace with a mandate that went far beyond fiscal policy or border control. She promised a total overhaul of the Italian soul. For decades, the Italian right has complained that while they might win elections, the left retains an iron grip on the nation’s "hegemony"—the schools, the state broadcaster RAI, the prestigious film festivals, and the museums. Meloni’s mission was to break this siege. Yet, two years into her term, the grand offensive has bogged down into a series of awkward skirmishes and self-inflicted wounds that suggest capturing the culture is much harder than capturing the vote.
The primary failure isn't a lack of will, but a lack of a deep bench. To replace the "radical chic" establishment she loathes, Meloni needs a new generation of conservative intellectuals, directors, and administrators ready to take the reins. They don't exist in the numbers required. Instead, the government has frequently resorted to blunt force personnel changes that look more like a spoils system than a cultural rebirth. When you replace a world-class opera director or a seasoned museum curator with a political loyalist, the result isn't a "new right-wing culture." It is usually just a less efficient institution.
The RAI Trap and the Myth of the New Narrative
The most visible battlefield is RAI, Italy’s massive public broadcasting network. In Italian politics, the tradition of lottizzazione—partitioning channels based on party influence—is as old as the Republic. Meloni’s team didn't invent political interference, but they have executed it with a heavy-handedness that has backfired.
By pushing out established presenters and attempting to inject a more "patriotic" tone into daily programming, the administration has seen ratings crater in key slots. Viewers don't want a lecture on national identity with their morning coffee; they want professional television. When top-tier talent like Fabio Fazio moved to private networks, the audience followed them. This highlights the central flaw in the Meloni strategy: culture cannot be legislated from the top down. You can occupy the buildings, but you cannot force the public to watch the screen if the content is dull or overly didactic.
The Problem with Meritocracy as a Weapon
Meloni often speaks of "merit" as the antidote to the old leftist networks of patronage. It is a powerful talking point. However, in practice, the definition of merit under this administration often looks suspiciously like ideological alignment.
Take the appointment of figures to lead major cultural foundations. When the criteria for leadership shift from international prestige to domestic loyalty, Italy’s cultural exports suffer. Italy’s "soft power" relies on being a global lighthouse of art and history. If those institutions become parochial or hyper-fixated on narrow nationalist themes, they lose their ability to influence the global stage.
The Dante Obsession and the Search for Ancestors
One of the more curious aspects of this cultural push is the attempt to "reclaim" historical figures. Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano famously claimed Dante Alighieri as the "founder of right-wing thought in Italy."
It was a move that invited immediate ridicule from historians. Attempting to shoehorn a 14th-century poet into modern political binaries is an exercise in futility. This desperation to find a historical lineage reveals a deep insecurity within the Italian right. They are searching for an intellectual pedigree that justifies their presence at the top of the cultural food chain.
- The Goal: Establish a conservative canon that rivals the Marxist-influenced tradition of the 20th century.
- The Reality: Modern Italian conservatism remains a reactive force, defined more by what it opposes (globalism, "woke" ideology, Brussels) than what it creates.
- The Result: A series of museum exhibitions and seminars that feel like homework rather than inspiration.
The Film Industry Stand-off
Cinema has long been the fortress of the Italian left. Meloni’s government has moved to slash subsidies and overhaul the tax credit system that keeps the industry afloat. From a purely fiscal perspective, some of these cuts make sense; the previous system was bloated and rife with waste. But the rhetoric surrounding these cuts tells a different story.
Government officials have openly stated that they are tired of funding movies that "nobody watches" or that "disparage the nation." By tightening the purse strings, they hope to starve the leftist cinematic establishment into submission. However, art often thrives under pressure. Instead of creating a new "right-wing cinema," the government is simply creating a hostile relationship with its most famous creative class. This doesn't win the culture war; it just ensures that every Italian film at the Cannes Film Festival for the next decade will be a scathing critique of the Meloni government.
Gramsci in Reverse
There is a profound irony in Meloni’s approach. She is essentially trying to use Antonio Gramsci’s theories against his own heirs. Gramsci, the Italian Marxist philosopher, argued that for a revolution to succeed, it must first win "cultural hegemony" by infiltrating the institutions that shape public consciousness.
Meloni is attempting a "Long March through the Institutions" in reverse. The problem is that the original Long March took forty years and was fueled by a distinct, cohesive ideology. Meloni is trying to do it in a single legislative term with a fragmented coalition. Her allies in the Lega and Forza Italia often have very different cultural priorities, ranging from Northern regionalism to old-school Berlusconi-era commercialism.
Resistance from the Bureaucracy
Even when the government successfully appoints a leader to a museum or a theater, they face a subterranean resistance from the civil service. The mid-level managers, the technicians, and the researchers who keep these institutions running are often ideologically opposed to the government’s "sovereigntist" agenda.
In Italy, the bureaucracy is where grand political visions go to die. We have seen this with the attempts to reform the school curriculum. Orders are issued from Rome, but by the time they reach the classroom, they are diluted, ignored, or actively subverted by teachers who view themselves as the last line of defense against a perceived "neo-fascist" encroachment.
The Youth Gap
Perhaps the most significant hurdle is the generational divide. Meloni’s cultural vision is heavily rooted in the past—family, tradition, the greatness of Rome, the sanctity of the borders. This resonates with an aging electorate, but it falls flat with younger Italians who are more concerned with precarious employment, climate change, and digital integration with Europe.
While the government focuses on traditional festivals and historical revisionism, the "culture" that young people actually consume is globalized. They are on TikTok, Twitch, and Spotify. They are influenced by American trends and European pop culture. Meloni’s attempt to build a "patriotic" cultural wall is being bypassed by a digital world that doesn't care about national borders.
The Ministry of Sovereignty and Its Discontents
Renaming the Ministry of Agriculture to the "Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty" was a symbolic gesture intended to signal a new era of protectionism. It was supposed to be a defense of the "Made in Italy" brand. But culture isn't like Parmesan cheese; you can't put a protected designation of origin label on an idea.
The aggressive promotion of "Italianness" often descends into kitsch. When the state tries to manufacture culture, it usually ends up with something that feels like a theme park. Real culture is messy, subversive, and often critical of power. By trying to harness culture as a tool for national unity, the government is stripping it of the very vitality that makes it influential.
Failure of the Counter-Elite
To win a culture war, you need a counter-elite. You need novelists who write bestsellers from a conservative perspective. You need songwriters who capture the zeitgeist without sounding like they are reading a party manifesto.
Currently, the Italian right lacks these figures. They have plenty of polemicists and talk-show pundits, but very few world-builders. Without creators who can compete on an aesthetic level, the government’s cultural project will remain a series of bureaucratic reshuffles. You can fire the director of a museum, but you can't fire the artists whose work the public actually wants to see.
The Economic Reality Check
Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio remains a looming shadow over every grand plan. Cultural revolutions are expensive. To truly reshape the educational and artistic landscape of a country, you need massive investment. Meloni is constrained by Eurozone rules and the need to keep markets calm.
Every Euro spent on a "Museum of the Sovereignty of the Italian Language" is a Euro taken away from healthcare or tax cuts. As the economic reality of governing sets in, the appetite for expensive cultural crusades is likely to wane. The voters who put Meloni in power did so primarily because they wanted lower prices and fewer migrants, not because they wanted a new interpretation of the Italian Renaissance in primary schools.
Strategic Errors in Communication
The government has also suffered from a lack of discipline in its cultural messaging. Ministers have frequently made gaffes that distract from the core mission. Whether it is bizarre claims about ethnic replacement or clumsy attempts to defend Italy’s colonial history, these moments provide easy ammunition for the opposition.
Instead of appearing like a sophisticated new governing class, the administration often looks like it is still in campaign mode, throwing red meat to a base that is already convinced while alienating the undecided middle. To change a culture, you must win over the people who don't already agree with you.
The strategy of "conquering the forts" (the institutions) while ignoring the "hearts and minds" of the unaligned public is a recipe for a temporary occupation, not a lasting shift. When the political winds eventually change, a new government will simply reverse the appointments, and the "Meloni Era" of culture will vanish like a sandcastle in the tide.
Italy’s cultural institutions are remarkably resilient. They have survived monarchy, fascism, the leaden years of the Cold War, and the chaotic reign of Berlusconi. They are built on centuries of tradition that transcend any single administration. Meloni’s mistake was thinking that the keys to the Chigi Palace were also the keys to the nation’s collective imagination.
The real culture war isn't fought in the boardrooms of RAI or the offices of the Ministry of Culture. It is fought in the cafes, the galleries, and the digital spaces where ideas are exchanged freely. Until the Italian right can produce a creative vision that is more compelling than the one it seeks to replace, its "cultural revolution" will remain a series of empty chairs and forgotten speeches.
The struggle for hegemony requires more than just winning an election; it requires the creation of something new, vibrant, and undeniably excellent. Blaming the "leftist establishment" for one's own lack of creative output is a strategy with a very short shelf life. Meloni has the power, but she has yet to prove she has the poetry.
