In last month's election, Italians expressed through their votes that they now want a right-wing coalition – the first since WWII – to lead the country out of the myriad of troubles it's facing, from rampant inflation to skyrocketing energy bills.

Leading this coalition while posing to become Italy's first female prime minister is Giorgia Meloni, whose party Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d'Italia) won more than a fourth of the total votes cast in a snap general election held in late September.

She is likely to govern with two other right-wing leaders, former interior minister Matteo Salvini and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. 

As a rising star in Italy's right-wing political circle, Meloni has been described as an astute and tenacious politician who's able to play the long game.

Since leaving Berlusconi in 2012, she has painstakingly built Brothers of Italy from a fresh venture with a little following to the largest party in the recent general election – all the while cultivating a powerful personal brand.

"I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian," she declared at a 2019 rally in Rome.

Over the years, she has built a public image of a tough female leader who doesn't shy away from controversies as she defends conservative values. Often appearing combative yet eloquent as she protests the unfair treatment by the European Union or the dangers of mass immigration. At times, she's willing to go overboard to make a point.

In August, Meloni reposted a blurred video on Twitter showing a Ukrainian woman who has lived in Italy for years being raped by an asylum seeker from Guinea.

"One cannot remain silent in the face of this atrocious episode of sexual violence against a Ukrainian woman carried out in daytime in Piacenza by an asylum seeker," she wrote in her Twitter post, adding "a hug to this woman. I will do everything possible to restore security to our cities."

Meloni's sporadic display of extreme views and actions have led Western media outlets to compare her to Benito Mussolini, the country's infamous dictator during WWII, even pondering on the possibility of the country's return to fascism.

There are reasons to be concerned. As Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat pointed out in The Atlantic, the tricolor flame in her party's logo runs in striking similarity to the emblem of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), which is formed by supporters of Mussolini after WWII. Most of all, Italy never really underwent a de-Nazification process as Germany had. 

But saying she will govern as a fascist dictator is likely an overstatement, according to Professor Iain Begg, Professorial Research Fellow at the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

"Meloni is much more pragmatic, she's made a very strong effort to distance herself from the fascist elements in her party," Begg told CGTN. "She seems to be more of a Euro-skeptic, right-wing party (leader) as in other parts of Europe like Hungary and Poland, not an out and out fascist who risks becoming a dictator." 

Meloni's discovered her political ambition early in life.

In her autobiography "I am Giorgia", Meloni described herself as an irascible, defensive child and credited everything to her mother Anna Paratore, who almost terminated her second pregnancy due to poor finances and a difficult relationship with Meloni's father, who abandoned the family.

She discovered a second family when at age 15, she joined the local chapter of the Italian Social Movement, which presented itself as the defender of Italian fascism's legacy until the 1990s before going through merges with other right-wing political groups.

In 1996, still a teenager while campaigning for the conservative National Alliance, Meloni told TV reporters that "Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy."

Meloni's ambition and determination helped gave rise to an early political career as she became the youngest vice-president of the National Alliance (AN) as well as the youngest minister at 31 in Berlusconi's government.

In the biggest gamble of her political career, she left the relative security of Berlusconi in 2012 with another AN veteran and founded Brothers of Italy, named after the first lines of the Italian national anthem.

The party has since developed an affinity with other right-wing forces around the world, including the U.S. Republican Party which has become increasingly dominated by the agenda of populist leader Donald Trump. They share almost identical stances on a wide range of issues from reproductive rights to protecting the borders.

"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," she said in a speech in June to supporters of the Spanish rightist party Vox.

"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," she continued, speaking in Spanish, her voice raising to a crescendo of anger.

(Video by Yang Yiren)