A look at Giorgia Meloni's ascent to power as a far-right leader set to become Italy's next prime minister

• Far-right politician Giorgia Meloni is poised to become Italy's first woman prime minister.
• Her ultra-conservative party got the most votes in the country's national election held on Sunday.

Far-right firebrand politician Giorgia Meloni is poised to become Italy's first woman prime minister after the 45-year-old's ultra-conservative party garnered the most votes in the country's national election held on Sunday.

Meloni led the Brothers of Italy party — which has roots in the post-World War II neo-fascist Italian Social Movement — to victory after co-founding the party in 2012 and becoming its president two years later.

Early Monday morning, Meloni called it "a night of pride for many and a night of redemption," CNN reported.

"It's a victory I want to dedicate to everyone who is no longer with us and wanted this night," Meloni told a crowd of supporters, according to the news outlet. "Starting tomorrow we have to show our value ... Italians chose us, and we will not betray it, as we never have."

Meloni's Brothers of Italy party won the most votes in the election with about 26% of the vote, putting Meloni on track to become the next Italian prime minister.

With Meloni's party in power, Italy's government is expected to be the most right-wing since the era of late Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who ruled the country from 1922 to 1943.

Meloni, a mother of one, was raised by a single mom in Rome's working-class district of Garbatella after her father walked out on the family.

In her teenage years, Meloni got involved in the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, a political party that supporters of Mussolini founded in 1946.

Meloni went on to head the youth branch of the party, which was renamed the National Alliance, the Associated Press reported.

She won her first local election at age 21. One decade later, Meloni became Italy's youngest minister when she was appointed to the youth portfolio in 2008, when Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister.

Four years later, Meloni co-founded the Brothers of Italy party, which she has compared to the Republican party in the United States and Britain's Conservative party, according to Reuters.

"Yes to natural families, no to the LGBT lobby, yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology, yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death," Meloni said in June to supporters of Spain's far-right conservative party Vox, Reuters reported.

Meloni continued in the speech: "No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders, no to mass immigration, yes to work for our people, no to major international finance."

In an interview with Reuters last month, Meloni pushed back on her party's fascist ties and previous comments she made as a teenager about Mussolini being a "good politician."

"Obviously I have a different opinion now," Meloni said without elaborating, Reuters reported.

The global rise of the far right

Meloni's rise to power comes during an era in which far-right parties and politicians have gained significant influence in the West and wider world. From France to India and beyond, there is a global trend of the far right increasing its power.

A party with neo-Nazi origins won 20.5% of the vote in recent elections in Sweden, which for years has been considered among the most liberal countries in the world.

In the US, some historians and experts on democracy have warned that former President Donald Trump has behaved like an authoritarian, with some even comparing him to leaders like Mussolini.

Trump — who is widely considered a frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination — made false claims regarding the 2020 election that sparked a deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Meanwhile, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has employed a similar playbook to Trump as his country heads into an election, making baseless allegations of voter fraud as he trails his opponent in the polls.

There is also more and more collaboration and solidarity between far-right groups in different countries, as evidenced by the increasingly close ties between Republicans in the US and leaders including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In a major rebuke of Orbán's government and the steps he has taken to consolidate power, the European Parliament earlier this month backed a resolution that stated Hungary could no longer be considered a democracy and has become a "hybrid regime of electoral autocracy."

Leaders associated with these far-right movements often utilize near-identical rhetoric and tactics, and experts say Meloni is following a similar trajectory.

"Meloni in many ways sounds more like other modern national-conservative politicians such as Hungary's Viktor Orbán and America's MAGA Republicans," Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU historian and expert on fascism, wrote in a recent op-ed for the Atlantic.

"Meloni's enemies list is familiar: 'LGBT lobbies' that are out to harm women and the family by destroying 'gender identity'; George Soros, an 'international speculator,' she has said, who finances global 'mass immigration' that threatens a Great Replacement of white, native-born Italians," Ben-Ghiat added.

She continued: "Meloni seems unlikely to tone down her extremism or change her alignment with illiberal parties in Europe" such as Orbán's Fidesz in Hungary.

"After all, pursuing hard-line anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ policies in the name of defending white Christian civilization has worked well for them," Ben-Ghiat wrote.