ATHENS – Divided over everything else, Greece’s ruling New Democracy Conservatives and major opposition SYRIZA Leftists are united in their stance against Italy’s incoming ultra-far right led coalition government.

Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni will be the country’s first Prime Minister and has rejected criticism that she’s Fascist despite her admiration for Benito Mussolini, who came to power 100 years ago.

Greece has seen the fall of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party whose leaders and dozens of members were jailed after being convicted of running a criminal gang, one over the murder of anti-Fascist hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas.

Speaking to EURACTIV Greece, ruling New Democracy Parliamentary Representative Christos Boukoros said that, “Naturally, the prevalence for the first time of a post-fascist political force in Europe’s third-largest economy is a cause for concern.”

Italy’s governments have a tendency to last as long as a snowman in the sunshine, however, and he pointed out that former Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini’s right-wing Northern League started as a separatist movement and ended up as a partner in Mario Draghi’s government.

Boukoros told the site that the real worry is why more Europeans are being driven to “extreme political choices,” with Sweden also electing a far-right government in a country that had been known for tolerance.

“It is time for Europe to start addressing the causes instead of commenting on the results as an impassive spectator,” said Boukoros.

Greece’s major opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance Secretary Rania Svingou, told the site that, “exactly one century after the ‘march to Rome’, the ghost of fascism has reappeared in the country that gave birth to it.”

She said that “in this difficult period for the future, the democratic, progressive forces in Europe have a historic responsibility. To fight with unity and determination a two-front struggle against the neo-fascist far-right, but also against the neoliberalism that feeds it.”

Greek Member of Parliament Pavlos Christides, who was spokesman for the center-left former PASOK-KINAL alliance, told the site that Meloni’s election should be troubling to the EU’s leaders.

He said the results showed a “resounding message that “the alliance of mainstream politicians with extreme forces is shaping new political conditions,” giving room for the extreme far-right to rise up.

Republicans in the United States rallied around her though, seeing a kind of cult figure like former President Donald Trump, whose minions are ready to die for a man most have never met, wanting an extremist firebrand.

Writing in the British newspaper The Guardian – which noted the love that Trumpies have for her – philosopher Lorenzo Marsili said that, “Those who brand the Brothers of Italy as fascists miss the point. Meloni’s party is not so much the heir to Benito Mussolini’s fascist movement as the first European copycat of the US Republican party.”