Earlier this week on a morning, when I opened up the news on my phone, across social media, the “powers that be” had rent their garments and donned bear shirts because Italy had elected a “far right prime minister” (cue very spooky music). Her name is Giorgia Melo and she has some things to say, which are making the global elites nervous. Take a listen to this speech she gave in 2019:
Right out of the gate she asked, “Why is the family the enemy? Why is the family so frightening?” She answered her own question, because the family is part of our identity as people. As Latter-day Saints we know and teach that “[T]he family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children”. The family structure is how society has been organized on this earth since the beginning, with Father Adam and Mother Eve. It is in the structure of the family and thru the covenants that we make in the temple that we are exhaled. We only have to look thru the pages of history to see, that when families break down, society is not far behind. The devil and his agents want to destroy the family.
The devil directs the work of destroying families and has a lot of willing helpers that work to destroy the family unit on his behalf. In the the book Abolish the Family, by Sophie Lewis, the author argues that the family structure enslaves people and is abusive. Lewis’ thesis is based in the tenets of Marxist philosophy which seeks to break the family structure and break the individual sense of self & being and then to remake the individual as a serf to the state. The state will be your family now. The state will provide your means. There are no individuals, just the state. All of this, of course, is pure nonsense.
Marxisim also seeks to break institutions like traditional churches that support the family structure. This is why, as the Bolsheviks terrorized their way across Russia during the Russian Revolution, they would first destroy family homes, and farms, thru collectivization and brutal pogroms, and then destroy and loot the churches and replace them with “Dom Kultura” or Houses of Culture — which glorified the Soviet State, and Marxism. You were no longer the son or daughter of your parents, you were the son or daughter of the mighty Soviet State, and that was to be your first and only identity and fealty.
Ms. Melo continued in her speech, “Everything that now defines us is an enemy for those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be consumer slaves. So they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity. I can’t define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother, NO! I must be citizen X, gender X, parent one, parent two, I must be a number. Because when I am only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators, the perfect consumer. We do not want to be numbers. We will defend the value of the human being. Each of us has a unique genetic code that is un-replaceable (sic), and like it or not, that is sacred.”
We see these attacks religion, gender, and family play out every day with intersectional labeling and woke identity politics. Society would have us reduced to just our sexual preferences, the color of our skin, or our political affiliation. When we fall into that trap, we short change ourselves of every good thing God has for us.
President Nelson taught earlier this year, that first we are a child of God. Second, we are a child of the covenant, and finally that we are disciples of Christ. The order of President Nelson’s identity hierarchy matters too. For years young women around the world would stand and repeat the phrase, “We are daughters of a Heavenly Father who loves us, and we love him.” That weekly reminder was a re-calibration to our true identity as daughters of God. Our covenants bind us to Jesus Christ, and to our families and help us to realize our potential as disciples of Jesus Christ.
I’ve long said that if the devil can make you forget who you are — your true identity as a child of God, then he can get you to do awful things. If he can get you to forget that the people around you are also children of God, then it’s really easy to justify harming and sinning against each other. As Saul Alisnky wrote in his 10 Rules for Radicals, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” I would add and destroy it.
I don’t know what Giorga Melo’s politics are, or how she will govern Italy. But, I don’t think she’s a fascist and I reject the comparisons to Mussolini. That said, it’s nice to hear someone stand and boldly defend the family and the worth of a soul.
For more on this speech, please take some time to watch Greg Matson’s analysis of Ms. Melo’s speech.