ROME — Italy’s Gen Z is embracing the far right.

With Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on a mission to make right-wing politics cool and U.S. conservatives finding a new generation of fans, young people from Rome to Milan are pushing nationalism and curbs on migration.

Around 10,000 activists from the youth wing of the Italian prime minister’s Brothers of Italy party gathered last week on the manicured lawns of EUR — the showpiece suburb of Mussolini’s Rome — to see out the summer at a festival-slash-political rally.

Between the DJ sets, inflatable obstacle courses and ping pong, an A-list of Euroskeptics, government ministers and TikTok stars rallied against threats to freedom of speech and derided the “violent” intolerance of the left.

Looming large over this year’s festivities was the killing of U.S. conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot at a university rally in Utah two weeks earlier.

Activists knew of Kirk from social media. His death has triggered anxiety within the movement, according to Antonio Toscano, a 31-year-old Sicilian entrepreneur who is one of the group’s leaders. “Many of the activists are attacked every day with similar language, called ‘nasty,’ or ‘fascists’.” he said.

Meloni herself addressed those parallels in a closing speech on Sunday, using the assassination to frame her governing party as underdogs.

In the eyes of the left, Kirk “was dangerous” and “had to be stopped because he was free, brave and capable,” she told the crowds, adding that “the left want to impose their convictions with force.”

The motive behind Kirk’s killing remains unclear, but the idea that the suspect was antifascist has rippled through U.S. political discourse. The suspect was charged with aggravated murder, which could carry the death penalty if he is convicted.

“We must take Charlie as an example,” said Francesca Geraci, a 20-year-old student, along with “all those who have never stopped expressing their ideas, their values and principles out of fear of being attacked or killed.”

Digital detox

Under the baking Italian sun, Gen Zers in oversized T-shirts and flared jeans ate organic ice cream and sipped craft beer. Placards around the espresso bar depicted their heroes, ranging from Paul Atreides, the character played by Timothée Chalamet in the Hollywood film Dune, to Mahsa Amini, the Iranian 22-year-old whose death in police custody after allegedly violating rules requiring women to wear a headscarf sparked widespread protests.

For a generation who left school during the pandemic and came of age in the online world, the movement also offers an antidote to digital-era isolation: real-world friendships, purpose and goals.

Young people are attracted to the possibility of “community,” said Fabio Roscani, the leader of the youth movement and an MP for Meloni’s party.

While youth are stereotyped as disengaged, this generation is keen to come together around a common cause, Roscani said. “So much of life is online — political activism is, I would say, a healthy dose of reality.”

Student activist Nicolò Sangiorgi, 21, agreed. “People feel at home and soon they feel part of a big family.”

The movement often becomes “your entire life, 360 degrees” to the exclusion of all else, another activist said. “Inside the branch you make solid bonds, so you become friends outside of the political context. There is trust, there is friendship, you go out together at night, you even find love. That happens, absolutely.”

Smells like teen spirit

At the four-day event, which ran with the tagline “#NoFilter,” the young activists followed in Meloni’s footsteps: Italy’s leader rose to prominence on the right as founder and organizer of the equivalent youth festival of the day.

When Meloni joined the equivalent movement aged 15, it was at the tail end of decades of political violence, on both right and left, which she said Kirk’s killing echoed. She has often cast her teenage activism as a rebellion against her school teachers and the leftist mainstream in the neighborhood in which she grew up.

Now, with her party leading the government, right-wing activism has become less toxic.

According to Alfonso Pepe, a 29-year-old lawyer from Salerno who joined the movement aged 15, it has “definitely become easier, because we are in government … before, you were marginalized by society.”

But movement leader Roscani said it is still challenging for students, who come up against broader perceptions that the National Youth’s views are outmoded and unacceptable. “We always say they have to study more, be the best in the class.”

“As we’ve shown, we can govern this country,” Meloni told attendees. “We are not afraid. We will never be like the left, who hate.”