ROGER KIMBALL: Giorgia Meloni and Common Sense.

Italy’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, seems to be a rare member of the genus homo politicus in embracing such commonsensical positions.

In a speech three years ago at the World Congress of Families, she listed Orwellian by quoting not him, but G.K. Chesterton.

“Fires will be kindled,” she quoted, “to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in the summer.”

Chesterton’s wise words come from the end of his book “Heretics” (1905).

“The great march of mental destruction will go on,” he writes. “Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed.”

Meloni, founder and head of Italy’s Brothers of Italy party, is a euroskeptic.

This makes her a heretic.

She objects to the effort of the people in charge of Project Europe to turn her into a “perfect consumer,” a “consumer slave.”

This makes her a pariah.

Meloni refuses to be treated as a cipher, a number.

This makes her a threat.

She proudly defines herself as “Italian, Christian, woman, mother.”

This makes her a fascist.

That, anyway, is what the major news networks want you to believe.

On the eve of her stunning election victory—in 2018, the Brothers of Italy won only 4.5 percent of the vote—CBS indulged in a hysterical (I don’t mean “funny”) bit of rhetorical overkill.

“Voters in Italy appear poised to elect a far-right prime minister,” CBS informed viewers.

That’s not all. According to CBS, Meloni “leads a neo-fascist movement, reminiscent of Benito Mussolini’s own political party.”

Mussolini, eh?

Oh, yes.

This woman wants to reclaim her own identity as an individual, to champion the two-plus-two-make-four reality that she’s Italian, not a global citizen, a Christian, not a “consumer slave,” a mother, not “parent No. 1,” and a woman, not a “gender.”

All this makes her, if CBS is to be believed, the exponent of a political philosophy that has “roots in neo-fascism.”

Related: Giorgia Meloni is no springtime for Italian fascism. “With Italy already mired in economic woes, Meloni isn’t going to be able to convert it into a fascist state. Quite the contrary. Given the turbulent nature of Italian politics and the tawdry character of her political allies, she’ll be lucky if she can hold her coalition together for six months. Her Roman Holiday ends the moment she enters office.”

UPDATE: Jon Gabriel on Meloni, Mussolini, and the Media: “I’m no scholar in Italian politics, nor have I invested much time researching the 317 parties jockeying for control from Turin to Taranto. But considering the news media’s coverage of U.S. politics, I didn’t fall for their latest imprecation. They claimed Ronald Reagan was a fascist. As was Bush Sr., Bush Jr., McCain, Romney, and Trump*. As I type, the press is pivoting from ‘Trump is literally Hitler’ to ‘DeSantis is even more Hitlery than Hitler.’ Hell, they thought Liz Cheney was a fascist until a few years ago. So, their track record is, let’s say, spotty. And provincial. Which is why our political press called Jair Bolsonaro ‘Brazil’s Trump’ and Viktor Orbán ‘Hungary’s Trump.’ They view every election around the world as a proxy battle on whatever Beltway buzz is circling the cubicles this week.”

* Don’t forget Calvin Coolidge!

(Updated and bumped.)